BS: Growing mushrooms

Subject: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 03:44 AM

I got a kit for growing mushrooms as a Christmas present and have just reaped the first benefits. I didn't start it until late January and the timings were exactly as per the instructions. They are pink oysters and, fried in butter, they are delicious :-) The kits are not cheap so it is not viable to do it that way regularly but it is a very interesting thing to do - especially when they start to grow.

Does anyone out there grow mushrooms or have any advice for growing them more economically?

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 03:49 AM

Have you checked with Donuel? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 04:03 AM

:-D


If that discussion starts up I shall request thread closure!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 04:17 AM

LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 04:18 AM

We watched the last episode of Rick Stein's Cornwall series (series3) last night on the Beeb and he featured an organic mushroom grower who lives just a mile down the road from us who we didn't know about! Dunno whether watching that would inspire anyone to grow their own, but it was quite interesting...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 06:15 AM

Dave the gnome should use his new learning and incorporate mushroom growing into his fantasy creative writing. Gnomes and mushrooms seem to go together.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 07:49 AM

You can never see when you're being ridiculed, can you? Is it because you think that you're a visionary? If so, it must be those magic mushrooms getting at you again...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 07:58 AM

Of course I do but I don't engage in cruel anti loving rhetoric.
There is no point to it, at least not for the healthy.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 08:16 AM

I may like mushrooms but I never sit on toadstools

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 08:21 AM

Why can only one pixie sit on a toadstool?

Because there's not mushroom for any more...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 10:29 AM

Are the King's subjects like mushrooms? Fed shit and kept in the dark?

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 10:45 AM

As an American citizen, you don’t ‘get’ irony either, do you Don?

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 12:53 PM

What bitterness. Just like yellow stainers...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 01 Mar 23 - 01:34 PM

Symptoms of yellow stainer poisoning include nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting. Funny but I find some posts on here have the same effect :-D

Oh, and don't eat yellow snow either.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 12:29 PM

Enough, you chaps.

Congratulations on your success, Dave. I once tried to grow mushrooms. Bought the spores, followed the directions. Nothing came of it.

I just had a thought. If you allowed one of your mushrooms to overripen and produce spores, and maybe if you bought fresh medium, could you grow a new batch at little expense? You already have the container and the directions.

Have you encountered the delightful Chef Jean Pierre on YouTube? I have adopted his method for cooking mushrooms.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 12:36 PM

Good idea leeneia. Thank you :-) I shall look up how to collect the spores.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 05:36 PM

Dave, how long does it take for the mushrooms to grow?

You made me curious, I really love mushrooms, from July to November I go to the forest almost every weekend to harvest ...

So I just ordered a pink oyster set for myself ...


(and yes, I am still cycling, but I'd need a passport now to go cycling in England, id card is no longer sufficient ...)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 06:01 PM

Mrs Steve is horrified, but I enthusiastically pick and eat a number of wild fungi. My favourites are giant puffball (which you really have to gather before all those spores start to form inside), horse mushroom, shaggy ink cap (when they're young, generally on my compost heap) and parasol (I think they're my top favourite). Unfortunately, I don't have easy access to woodland round here so there are some I'm missing out on (I once found a load of ceps, aka boletus, in a wood on Dartmoor). Mostly a quick slice and sauté in butter is all they need, but giant puffballs are very nice if sliced half an inch thick then dipped in egg then breadcrumbs, fried in butter and eaten with a proper kipper (no boil-in-bag rubbish). Now that's what I call eating.

Horse mushrooms grow alongside yellow stainers round here. I always scratch the bottom of the stems of such things. If it stains faintly yellow and smells of aniseed, it's a delicious horse mushroom. If it stains very yellow and smells of ink on blotting paper, it's a yellow stainer and will gave you a bellyache. It sounds dodgy but it's easy once you get your eye in. Dried-out old caps and maggoty specimens are worth avoiding. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 06:03 PM

I forgot to mention field mushrooms, ten times better than shop ones!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 06:08 PM

I left them for 2 weeks in a black bag in a box in a warm dark place. I then opened the box and cut slots in the bag and left it in the light for about 30 days before I saw any growth. There is more to it than that but growing takes about 6 weeks. I have just harvested the first crop and hope to get at least 2 more.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 03:23 PM

Thanks Dave!

Steve, the biggest giant puffball (Riesenbovist in German) I found was about the size of an American football.

Horse mushroom - Anis-Champignon, I find them quite ofent, but ignore them - don't like the taste ...

Shaggy ink cap - Schopf-Tintling (ink = Tinte). They must be young, and you don't have long after picking them till they have to be used, they disintegrate into a blackish fluid (which actually was used as ink ...)

Parasol - Parasol (same name in German): just use the cap, without the center, powder them with flower, then dip them in mixed-up raw egg, then in breadcrumbs, then fry in the pan -> delicious!

Boletus - Steinpilz - in my opinion the best - just cut in 4mm slices, fry them in loads of butter till they get golden brown. Add a little salt and pepper ... Oh, why is boletus season so far away ...

I find a lot of Neoboletus luridiformis (Flockenstieliger Hexenröhrling). When cut, it appears to be bright yellow for a short moment, before it turns green, then blue,then almost black ...

I also love Pfifferlinge (Chanterelle)! (second best after Steinpilz)

And I find lots of bay bolete (Marone(nröhrling)).

And about 40 other kinds of eatable wild mushrooms ...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 04:06 PM

I bet it's really nice to get out in the woods, find food and cook it up.

I high school biology class I once saw a puffball as big as a soccer ball. Fine black spores were coming out of a hole in the top, like smoke. Later when my family was camping, I found a small puffball and suggested frying it up, but my mother was horrified at the idea.

I have a friend with Czech heritage, and her family hunts for mushrooms in Nebraska. They call it shrooming.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 05:38 PM

A responsible mushroom hunter would mention certain precautions and warnings. An incomplete alert includes the angel of death bright white mushroom. There is no cure or antidote.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 06:14 PM

Yea, there are some mushrooms that if you eat one it will feed you for the rest of your life. Be careful out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 06:22 PM

Certainly. I would never recommend anyone to collect and consume a fungus they weren't absolutely sure of. The one you refer to is the destroying angel, Amanita virosa. It's unmistakable as long as you have a little knowledge. The trouble is, you have been recommending the consumption of Psilocybe mushrooms, potentially dangerous, with no caveats at all regarding the amounts consumed or the unknown concentration of its active principle. So I could say that you're a fine one to talk.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 07:26 PM

I might try growing mushrooms from kits this year. In past times, Mrs Steve has generally demurred from the consumption of fungi, but my skilful construction of rubbly mushroom soup has swayed her, and she'll now join me in a goodly portion of sautéed mushrooms in butter on a wintry plate of bangers, mash and green veg of some kind (tommy-k not optional). If you buy mushrooms in the UK, I'd strongly suggest the chestnut article from M&S, though I haven't been disappointed by the organic closed-cup jobbies from Sainsburys. I suppose that home-grown would be that much fresher and tastier. I'll give it a whirl. A lot of shop-bought mushrooms quickly go to a very unpleasant black liquid on cooking. What a disgrace.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Mar 23 - 03:40 AM

Mossers chestnut mushrooms are pretty good too as are their mixed field mushrooms.

Anyone remember Chesswood creamed mushrooms? Not seem them for years but they were nice on toast.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 01:24 PM

my mushroom kit (Rosenseitling, pink oysters) has arrived today.

I opened it and watered it as instructed.

But there is still no mushroom yet ...

Seems to take ages and ages ...

;-)

(see joke thread - patience is one of my best qualities ...)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 01:31 PM

LOL :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 07 Mar 23 - 02:19 PM

just checked again - still no mushrooms.

Have to consider sending the kit back - doesn't work ... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 02:34 PM

at very long last - some very tiny little orange-pink things have appeared ...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 07:17 PM

Ye gods, man, pull your trousers back up...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: leeneia
Date: 10 Mar 23 - 11:51 PM

Mudguard, I had a similar experience with seeds of a beautiful flower called Lisianthus. I spread the teeny-tiny seeds over a flat of good soil, and it seemed like months passed with no results. Then one day I bent down and looked right across the surface of the soil, and there was a green shimmer - the tiny stems of little sprouts about 1/8 inch high.

Later a friend said that it isn't good news when you open a seed packet and inside it is another packet with tiny seeds in it.

The lisianthus was beautifully elegant, but then they all succumbed to powdery mildew, so I never tried again.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 12 Mar 23 - 07:59 AM

Once the starts have appeared, they grow quite fast. I guess I can have the first harvest on Monday or Tuesday.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: leeneia
Date: 16 Mar 23 - 02:22 PM

Congratulations!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 16 Mar 23 - 06:07 PM

yesterday, I had the first harvest of 80g (2.8 ounces).

Fried them in butter, with some onion.

When the pink oiysters got hot, they turned light orange, then after some time golden brown.

Very delicious!

Looking forward to next harvest ...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Mar 23 - 03:36 AM

My second lot have just started peeping out

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 23 - 07:41 PM

Is that a euphemism?

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Mar 23 - 05:52 PM

Come on you lot, someone had to say it.

DtG - you must be a fun guy to be with!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 26 Mar 23 - 06:49 AM

I had two more harvests - 60 and 120g (~2 /~4 ounces) - a total of 260g so far

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 23 - 07:02 AM

Not doing so well with mine. Only got 1 mushroom from the second harvest!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 18 Apr 23 - 01:00 PM

after a long wait now the next generation starts appearing ...

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Apr 23 - 01:08 PM

After the first crop and the second minor showing nothing happened. So the medium it was growing in is now feeding a small batch of cauliflowers!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: MudGuard
Date: 18 Apr 23 - 01:11 PM

will that be pink cauliflower? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing mushrooms
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Apr 23 - 09:34 PM

That would be great :-D