Yerrrrr, how ya doing fam? I'm pretty good, just drank some Guinness, having a nice night watching the 1952 classic Invasion USA.

Any of yous guys know how to grow fungus? I want a source of organic vegetarian tacos and vegetarian tacos fucking suck without a mushroom base to take the place of the meat. Yous guys know how to grow portobellos? Shittakes? lmk how to properly grow fungus because I aint know shit and I wanna learn

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Apparently it's actually pretty hard because you need to like completely sterilize the growing substrate to make sure no unwanted funguses colonize it. You should write to your local library, they're usually really good at helping people find resoruces for things like this.

    • TheCaconym [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It's actually surprisingly easy even with common kitchen materials, thanks to years of hobbyists refining the process. You need:

      • A bunch of big transparent boxes (monotubs or pf fruiting chambers). That's where your mushrooms will fruit.
      • Some glass jars, for initial mycelium development (required both for monotub and pf cake approaches).
      • A pressure cooker; allows you to sterilize the growing substrate (after putting it into the aforementioned jars) for initial mycelium development. If going the pf cake route (much smaller yield, more effort, but also lower tech), even that is optional - a simple kitchen pot is sufficient.
      • A still air box - this is basically a large plastic box with holes for your arms, and is the ghetto replacement for a flow hood; you put your sealed substrate / petri dishes / whatever in there, wait ten minutes for foreign spores and bacteria to settle, and get to work. It works surprisingly well if you work quickly.
      • If planning to take this as a serious hobby, I can't recommend going the agar-agar / petri dish route enough; it guarantees you'll be able to spot and put aside contaminations, and can even allow you to select the best performing mycelium and conserve it for long durations for future cultures in the fridge.

      Mind you, my experience is entirely related to the psychoactive kind but the principles for food-related mushrooms are the same.