Hi there, I recently bought a 100% mycelium starter kit and have started to try my hand at it 😀.
As soon as the starter kit arrived I worked according to the instructions and after about 14-16 days the first mushrooms appeared and I was delighted 🙂
But since I had no idea what I was doing, I thought I'd let them grow - what could possibly go wrong 😀
So I let the mushrooms continue to grow because I had no idea when I would have to harvest them. So I waited until the mushrooms didn't look good any more - the heads and the stalks had contracted and the heads had turned very dark to black. Then I had the thought that I had messed up and waited too long. After I did some research I was sure that the mushrooms were rotten because the stalk had also become very soft, almost mushy ☹️.
I then removed all the mushrooms and dark spots from the mycelium cake. And "activated" it again according to the instructions.
Now I have harvested the new mushrooms in the last two days, even though some of them are very small. But the mycelium cake has got dark spots again.
Now I ask myself is that bad? Does it keep coming back?
I am attaching a photo of the current mycelium cake.
Thank you in advance 😊
Hello!
There are instructions on how to do this, there is also something on the product page and you can always write to contact@provithor.com or contact support.provithor.com.
If the heads were black, it was because they were all sporulated, which is not good but not a problem, why didn't you harvest and dry them?
The dark spots are spores that have fallen from the overripe mushrooms.
Harvest normally BEFORE the caps open and let the spores out, then there are no dark spots.
So, harvest when the mushroom caps start to open and everything is fine!
Kind regards
How often can such a mycelium actually be harvested, or what limits the number of harvests?
If you take care that the mycelium does not become contaminated at some point, mushrooms should grow as often as the mycelium has food to generate mushrooms, right?
So put a little nutrient solution on it and off you go ...
@david Found the instructions 🙂
The mushrooms looked so unappetizing that I thought they had gone mouldy because I didn't let them out in the fresh air enough.
And I was just a complete beginner who is slowly getting to grips with the subject. 😀
In the meantime, the new mushrooms are growing well, are now even larger than the last ones and have not yet opened or discolored.
Nutrient solution on top. How is that supposed to work, it attracts contamination straight away. If you make liquid cultures, then in principle you can keep on propagating them, injecting a bit of mycelium into a new nutrient solution and so on. But this doesn't work for long, after a few months the culture "degenerates" so that you have to start again and again from spores during production.
And the mushrooms look fine, but I would advise having only one mycelium block in a "growing chamber" at a time. For once it is safer, if one cake gets sick and becomes contaminated, the other will also be stressed.
Secondly, there is such a thing as a "microclimate" - the mycelium is not only in the cake and fungus, but tiny particles (which can be perceived as an odor) float through the air and filter out contamination and create the "right climate" for the cake. If there are two genetically different cakes in one container, the climate is not quite right for the weaker one and it becomes even weaker - even though it would become stronger with its correct microclimate.
This does not necessarily apply to all fungi - some also need symbiotic situations.
A complete philosophy of life could probably be derived from mushrooms. In nature it is also the case that they regularly reseed themselves. There are types of mushrooms that can be influenced by different types of light - right up to increased vitamin D production when UV light is added. Or influenced by the co2 content of the ambient air. There are mushrooms that go in this direction - but none of this applies to the Cubensis according to what I have read so far - somehow sympathetic. The fact that different cakes of the same mushroom genus need their own microclimate to feel comfortable is a very helpful hint.
1) In practice, this means that a new crop is regularly planted after 2-3 harvests anyway, and the old cake is then disposed of - right?
2) The critical phases where really meticulous sterile work is required are the phases before the mycelium has become a finished cake. So spore impression, inoculation, mycelium growth etc
3) Are mycelia that come from the same mycelial spore offshoots genetically identical enough to get along in a growth chamber?