Amazing...you grew OYSTER mushrooms from a bag without any sort of wood? I kinda doubt this for some reason. All of the Pleurotus sp. require wood substrate of some sort. Anyone else having posted this I'd tell them try again? Are you sure you had no substrate at all in that laundry with 'plugs' of Oyster mycelium in there?
No, not photoshop. Oyster mushrooms will grow on straw, paper, wood, sawdust, and cotton which are all composed of cellulose. I sterilized some wheat, inoculated it with tissue from an oyster mushroom I bought at the supermarket, and when it was fully colonized with mycelium I mixed the wheat with the laundry. About a month later, presto! Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus, the blue oyster mushroom. About six months ago, I tried to take a spore print from a supermarket oyster mushroom by putting it under a drinking glass. The glass fogged up. In an attempt to establish ventilation, I put some starbucks napkin under the mushroom and the glass and the mushroom went fuzzy and started eating the napkin. This was how I became interested in cultivating mushrooms. I grew my first oysters on a phone book, and my second batch on laundry. One fellow, at peril for his soul, grew psilocybes on a bible. Now I have moved to a farm and have about ten gourmet and medicinal species en route to very small scale production. It is very obsessing ! Hope you have no hard feelings with my having a little fun with you. I also have a couple of posts up for wildcrafted mushrooms that I really would like IDs for.
What does it do to the quality of the laundry? Can it be cleaned and re-used for its original purpose?
I've seen ads for the blues plugs to grow but have never seen them personally. I find our Late Fall and Winter varieties so abundantly out here so never have considered trying my own growing. Do they taste the same?
I haven't tried wearing the clothes again, but since the fungus eats them, my guess would be no, they can't be used as clothes again. I think they taste similar, but all I could compare is clean pristine, fresh grown ones with dirty, sometimes dry, sometimes waterlogged, wild ones and at differeent times. I have cloned some of this spring's crop, so I will be able to compare side-by side in a few months, and will let you know. Thanks for the interest.
There is, unexpectedly, another chapter in the saga. I lost interest in my laundry grow and threw it aside on the patio. Today I was cleaning up, and found these growing on the same laundry as the Blue oysters had grown on. I had been growing King Oysters separately and also from tissue. There had been no spores for these around, but I guess my sterile technique was somehow lacking and I cross contaminated cultures. These are the nicest King Oyster mushrooms, Pleurotus eryngii, I have grown yet. Mind you, I have only grown one before. After I get a spore print tonight, they'll be breakfast in the morning.
I'm not finding any reference to the King Oysters even being native to North America or Canada...nor the Blue Oysters.... Is it a good idea to be tossing these out where their spore will proliferate? (not that I mind having more edibles out there...but..........)
King Oysters are native to the mediterranean region, and extensively cultivated in Holland, Germany and all the Far East. My strain of Pleurotus ostreatus is from a supermarket and to my dismay, is sporeless. It probably did originate in North America, judging by the name. Probably every product, pet or person who ever travels anywhere brings millions of spores with them just on their surface. Shitake and regular mushrooms are also not native and release spores into the environment. Probably every spore that could naturalize elsewhere has already done so, because they are so small, light and long-lived. Should all goods and travellers be repeatedly disinfected ? The planes ? The trucks ? The trains ? My area is devastated by infestations of introduced plants called Broom and also Himalayan blackberry. If you dug up every plant in your garden that was not native, you probably would have nothing left, not even the lawn. Should gardens be strictly regulated ? I have seen mushrooms that are not known to be native, growing with the non-native mycorrhizal host trees with which they can only live in relationship. Should the tree be banned to prevent fungus ? I would not cultivate Armillaria species because they are a known strong pathogen of living trees, but King Oysters are, in general a decomposer of already dying plants of the carrot family. So if you would draw a line..... I would not like to advise you as where to draw it...it's way beyond my wisdom. I avoid such things I know to be too harmful. Speculative harms are a bit too much for me.
