Sudoshroom

Don't laugh - haven't you seen Six Ways Mushrooms WIll Save the World?

Mycology experiments for fun, heath, and world-saving!

State of SudoShroom

• Some brief discussion was had at our First Annual State of the Room
• Matt has set up a bin for collecting coffee grinds in the common area kitchen.
• Many seem interested. Momentum!
• Evan suggests the name, Sudo Shroom!
• This wiki page was born.

As of 29th of January, 2013:

• Hol has brought a pump and mister.
• Morten will bring in the aquarium from Adeline that will be the host of our first growing station.
• Marina joins the group.
• The time for innoculating is near!

As of 5th of February, 2013:

• Morten has met with Farley's and they're in on giving us their espresso grounds. We can start a daily pickup (drop by at 9:30PM and pick up a bag full of it) when we're ready (and on the days where we cannot pick up / don't need more grounds, the fallback is that the grounds are composted).
• Aquarium is in place in sudo room.
• Our next step is to inoculate some spawn Hol has, into our substrate grounds. We will meet Tuesday 12th of February and set up + inoculate + go!

February 19th, 2013:\

• Alan from Tastebridge most generously allowed us to migrate the Tastebridge grow-gear to sudo room> a rack, a humidifier, an arduino controlled timer for humidifier, insulation mat. We picked it up the 18th of feb.
• We cleaned the aquarium brought in weeks earlier, and all the gear from tastebridge.
• Today (19th) we picked up our first grounds at farley. Good and dry espresso grounds, Morten found a few receipts and 1 salad leaf. But otherwise clean. Really good quality, dry. Around 6-7 KGs estimated.
• Hol brought a diluted spawn mixture> parts of an oyster mushroom grow kit, mixed with water and some other grounds, and some... other thing that would add some nutrients.
• We inoculated the farleys grounds in 2 milk-gallon containers and one 1.5L soda bottle (submerged in bleach & waterto clean), layering in the "Hol Spawn" with the grounds. Covered with ripped-open zip-lock plastic bags, allowed airflow in different ways (1 with holes in the plastic on the top, 1 with spacers creating flow channels, 1 with similar flow channels and holes by them). Placed the containers in the aquarium.
  • Note> No nutrients nor water/humidity added. We will connect the humidifier tomorrow when the hose has been properly cleaned. Mortens sense is that it needs more humidity as the grounds were quite dry.

March ~10th, 2013:

• Morten and Hol set up the tastebridge-gear, and tweaked the arduino timer to run the humidifier one minute every hour.

March 30th, 2013:

• Batch #1 evaluated by Morten and Corey:
  • The soda-bottle had some contamination (of the orangy-watery sort), and from Mortens memory had next to none 10 days before. Alas, it seemed to get some anaerobic contamination since then. Proceeding with fruiting it for the sake of seeing it grow, though shouldn\t be eaten due to risk of contaminants.
  • The two gallon-milk-bottles were both slightly contaminated with both the orangy-watery type, and mold of blue-ish color. Morten took these to his compost to let them assist in that process.
  • The big kombucha container was full-on contaminated. Might be because of bigger container/more densely packed/less spawn to substrate/got some contaminated subtrate? This was discarded with care, per the advice of Corey, as the contaminants might've been carrying unhealthy spores.
• Batch #2 started out!
  • Cardboard (the innerparts) and ziplock bag style! 6 bags prepared in total.
    • 4 with pasteurized cardboard, 2 of which with spawn from our soda-bottle spawn, other 2 from grain-spawn of the strain "grey dove oyster".
    • 2 with non-pasteurized and dry cardboard, 1 with spawn from soda-bottle and 1 from grain spawn mentioned above.

What we need in the future

• Steady supply coffeegrounds (morten is setting up a deal with Farleys to take theirs)
• More containers for growing (aquariums, metal racks, thick plastic for "shielding", empty milk-gallon containers)

Resources (familiarize yourself with the art and science!)

• Mushroom Growers' Handbook 1: Oyster Mushroom Cultivation
• Mushroom Growers' Handbook 2: Shiitake Cultivation
• Oyster Mushroom Cultivation guide
• Mushroom books on bookfi.org
• Tastebridge learnings etc.
• Shroomery is a huge mushroom forum. This board s focused on edibles and medicinal shrooms. Lots of wise words.
  • Idea on this one: a box in the kitchen that our own grounds can be moderately fed into, constantly giving a steady mycelia culture more substrate to grow on. also mentioned is how cardborad can be used in creating of spawn.
  • Non-traditional way of growing on suspended straw-logs. Straight from inoculation to growing conditions. She seems to have eliminated spores from oysters thru slihtly colder environment, less humid and 24/7 light.
  • Nice way of growing out of food-safe buckets!
  • Discussion about the healthrisks of spores from oyster shrooms.
  • Good notes on cleaning.

The Growing Process

[the] life cycle of mushroom is divided into two phases: vegetative and reproductive growth. Vegetative growth indicates linear growth of fungal mycelia dissolving complex substrate components into simpler molecules and absorbing them as nutrients. When low temperature, high humidity, much oxygen, and sometimes light are offered,the mycelia cease vegetative growth and begin to produce fruitbodies, which we call mushroom. This is reproductive growth. Mushroom cultivation can be said the practice of obtaining fruitbodies by artificially repeating these two growing stages.

Mushroom cultivation requires enough understanding on the optimal growing conditions of each mushroomspecies and how to make favorable environment for both vegetative and reproductive growth of mushrooms.

- from "Mushroom Growers Handbook, Oyster Mushroom Cultivation"

There are numerous ways to successfully grow oyster and shiitake mushrooms, all of which share the same basic steps and principles. This section aims to describe what one needs to set it all up and get started learning and producing - first with a quick rundown followed by more details on each point.

• Creating a growing environment; humidity is key, temperature seems important as well. It also needs to reduce the risk of contamination from alien bacteria.
• Getting spores (several methods: )
• Preparing the growing medium (several methods: ). Needs to be sterilized/pasteraurized.
• Inoculation of spores/spawn into the growing medium.
• Letting the substrate be populated by mycelia, while maintaining the right conditions.
• "Shocking" the vigorous mycelia into fruiting, basically by changing temperature and humidity for a shorter period of time, as to fool the mycelia into thinking that spring is here! Common method is called "cold flushing" (If not shocked, it is possible to store the populated substrate in "hibernation", as a kit).
• Maintaining conditions for growth in the growing environment (several methods: )

Growing environment

• Aquarium
• Empty milk-gallon container
• Rack with plastic

The last important factor for mushroom growing is providing an appropriate environment both for vegetative andreproductive growth. Not being protected by a skin layer, fungi are easily affected by their growing conditions. Soit can be said that the success or failure of mushroom cultivation depends on the control of growing conditions.Environmental factors affecting mushroom cultivation include temperature, humidity, light and ventilation.Optimal levels of them at vegetative stage differ from those at reproductive stage. - Mushworld, Oyster Mushroom Cultivation

Getting spores

• Alufoil method
• ?

Growing mediums

Coffee grounds

Morten contacted Rikke from Tastebridge about coffeegrounds preparation. Here's what she said:

From the few images I posted to Google+ at the time, it looks as though the pressured cooked, non-supplemented batch did best, i.e. colonized the medium fastest (which is good, because faster colonization means lower risk of contamination by bacterial and other fungal competitors).

Maintaining the conditions for growth

• Misting
• Arduino-controlled

Mushroom Grow Kits

• Oyster mushroom grow kit locally produced in Oakland and sold at Whole Foods: Back to the Roots
• Lion's Mane is a particularly awesome mushroom known to stimulate nerve growth factor and increase cognitive ability: Kit available to order online. And Reishi mushrooms can grow on the same substrate.

Ideas for Future Experiments

• Plastic-eating fungi! We'll keep 'em a safe distance from the 3D printer...
  • Plastic-eating fungi found in Amazon may solve landfill problems
  • Scholarly articles available upon request; contact Tunabananas
• Learn how to make growing kits ala back to the roots.
• Ecosystems for water-treatment.

List of people who want to set up an oyster mushroom growing operation at sudoroom

• Tunabananas
• Juul (talk)
• Factotum
• ERA_Manu
• Holmachine
• mk30
• User:kinetical

ElectricJack has some mushroom grow stuff that he wants to donate to sudoroom. We don't know what it is yet though.

• User:Julio

sudoroom has been saving coffee grounds in the freezer as a growth medium. See recycling and re-use for more info.