I've been started some oyster mushroom cultures, using wild bird seed as a spawn material. One of my jars got contaminated with some sort of fuzzy white, fast spreading mold and some of it decided to sporulate. I think it some sort of aspergillus but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Can anyone be more specific? :-D So what mold has white/grey mycelium and with yellowish conidiophores? http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/5629/fungusamongusno0.jpg After noticing and photographing, I pressure cooked the jar to sterilize (15 psi for 90 minutes) then dumped it out back.
is there a way u can post the image here? when clicking on it i get a MASSIVELY large image that i can't view smaller to see details....... what made u decide to use bird seed to spawn u'r oysters? just curious...never heard of that before.
Here you go. Also, you might want to upgrade to a better browser, like firefox :-D It'll automatically scale your pics to your window size with 1 click then another click to go full size.
Thanx! An art site I post on suggested FireFox recently...I've just been very leary about uploading any new programs as I just got this motem after my last one died without warning. I was also wondering however, what made u decide to use bird seed as you're growth material? Normally woodchips would be the compost use as they're closer to the active host.....Bird seed that I've had is VERY prone to mould that I've noticed...
Firefox is pretty secure as far as browsers go, I havn't had nearly as much trouble with worms/trojans sneaking in as I did with internet explorer. I read that you could start your grow on grain then spawn that to wood chips, saw dust or straw. So far so good except for a few contams which are mainly my fault, noob mistakes.
Have you done starters straight off the straw or chips? I'm just wondering what is the best....thinking maybe if you did the chips or dust u wouldnt' have to do the moving and since they are a 'food' the mould issues would be different? I'm just extremely curious as I'd like to do some pink oysters sometime....
From what I've read, using grain as spawn is pretty common. It's a good for source plus lots of inoculation points. I believe my troubles stemmed from not using good enough air filters (micropore tape alone) so I'm gonna try tyvek + micropore tape. I've read that's pretty effective.
