not only are beans healthier, we have the technology to perfectly recreate meat and should replace all livestock industry with it

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    So the generalities between actives and culinary mushrooms are pretty similar. Both are usually saprophytes/wood-decaying fungi which need a source of cellulose and 80% relative humidity. You'll fruit them in different ways, but you can grow out the colonies in the same fashion using the same basic techniques.

    First you'll want to go to r/mushroomgrowers, the big culinary one. r/mycobazaar is the culinary spore subreddit where you can get liquid cultures of most species and growing supplies if you don't have a pressure cooker. Personally I buy from u/mushies81 and haven't had a problem with contaminated syringes. To start out, I'd look for a species/strain of Pleurotus ostreatus, the oyster mushroom. It's very easy to grow, adds a great bacon taste to eggs and pasta, and they fruit well indoors. Blue oysters will do well in the cold season, black pearl oysters have the texture of Pleurotus eryngii which give them more versatility in the kitchen, pink oysters don't last as long but grow very fast. A liquid culture/LC is going to have about 10 colonies' worth of 1ml inoculations and stores in the fridge for months.

    Next you'll want to start those colonies. Use the uncle ben tek. It's more expensive than the horse oats I use but doing your own grain spawns only becomes economical if you know you like fungiculture. Inject the LCs, cut an air-exchange hole in the top, cover the hole with micropore tape, sit it on a counter and wait for about two weeks for it to start shrinking inward as the mature colony consumes its food source. When it's done and you see mycelium overtake the bottom of the bag, you'll want to build a fruiting chamber for which I recommend Bod's Unmodified Monotub Tek. That can be constructed in your kitchen or bedroom, just using a spray bottle a couple times a day to maintain humidity, and houses about 2-3 colonies.

    Fruiting is where it becomes a little tricky. Your best bet if you live in an area with agriculture is to get a hay bale for like $8 and then create straw logs. For those you only need to pasteurise the straw rather than sterilising it so it's very easy to work with. What I do is cut open my grain colony, inspect it for any sign of contamination (discolouration, different textures, sweet/sour smells), and then layer it in a grow bag with the pasteurised straw. Then I place three of those in the monotub and let them colonise for another two weeks or so. When the bags are fully mature, I cut holes around the sides every 3-4 inches. They'll fruit 3-5 times over the course of another month or so before contamination, usually one of these and especially that blue trich, ruins the fruiting potential. At that point I use the mycelliated straw either in my garden where it decomposes detritus and creates new mushrooms or as food for my worm composter.

    From there it's just a matter of dialing in the right parameters and right substrates for whatever species you want. The only ones you won't know how to grow are mycorrhizal ones like morels/chanterelles which require a living tree. Actives are grown on the same grain colonies and spawned to the floor of that monotub with a layer of coconut coir/gypsum, lion's mane and king oysters are grown on sawdust blocks, if you have access to freshly cut hardwood logs you can grow shiitake/maitake/chicken of the woods outdoors using wooden dowels- works great for urban gardeners without soil. Some species like chestnuts/enoki/king oysters/beech grow well in jars so I just line a tub with those.

    Now if you were to accidentally grow actives in that same tub, with one tub you can have enough to microdose for a year or more. With a couple the cost of psilocybin is so negligible that I just give it away to anyone in my life who is receptive and would benefit from it.

    edit: Oh, and this book. This is the book. 500+ pages of every species you can grow, everything about them including specific parameters. Highly recommended if you pick up the hobby as I refer to it with every new colony.

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yep! Hopefully it works out. Plants are great in their own right but fungiculture is special. It's an alien ant colony that gives you meat and medicine if you keep it healthy.