A Journey Into Mycology : Exploring the Art & Science of Mushrooms
Shrimps off. They're really woody. Can't be sauteed or cooked. It really needs to be boiled down into a tea to get all those goodies out of it. Wasn't growing that much of it at first and then I kind of was just doing it for personal and then I kind of I brought some out to the farmers market and just kind of started sharing with it with people.
All right. Well, here's our lion's mane. This mushroom, also called heresicium marinius, is a wonderful teeth fungi. So instead of having a traditional cap and gills, this mushroom has these little spines that elongate and give it a really unique look, appearance, texture, um, and also just qualities. The mushroom is a medicinal mushroom as well as a culinary delight.
Uh, known for the fact that it can enhance cognitive function, boost your memory, help regenerate old dead brain cells. Uh, so it promotes nerve growth factor. It helps synthesize new uh basically uh NGF through herissones and irony. So we'll just harvest the mushroom. Kind of just pull it right up.
I do something a little different. So for the first flush, I like to top fruit this mushroom. I I'll grow it right out the front and it just produces this lovely mass of lion's mane mushrooms. Once that's harvested, the bag will get rolled up and folded over and then I'll just put a couple of slices on the bag to help for a second flush to pop out. And that second flush will basically be just this nice cluster of lion's mane.
So, I'm getting the most out of this mushroom. And in nature, you would this would be a hardwood loving species that you would just find growing right off the side of a a hardwood tree. And yeah, a lot of people will use it for the for like a crab or lobster replacement. They say that the teeth give it a texture similar to crab or lobster. I personally don't eat seafood, but I do love this mushroom and it has a wonderful flavor.
I can add it into like do a mushroom taco with it or add it into a stir fry with another mushroom and just get this wonderful texture from it. Once the CO2 levels are are really low and the moisture levels are really high, the mushrooms are signaled to to produce. Um high CO2 is something that the mushrooms encounter during colonization phases. And then uh high O2 levels are when the mushroom mcelium is really starting to break through that surface of the tree and be exposed to to conditions uh basically optimum for mushroom fruit body production. Yeah.
And then for the cleaning of the lion's mane, we just have this little little bit of sawdust right on the back and you can just kind of tear that right off or trim it with scissors. And then yeah, we have just a clean nice lion's mane that's ready for the market. See, out of all the lion's mane that I currently grow, this strain produces the longest, most beautiful teeth. By the time I was 16, I was growing mushrooms as a hobby and just became really hooked on the process. I mean, it was in my thoughts almost 24 hours a day just how do I uh, you know, what kind of mushrooms can grow and what kind of substrates would be best and and you know, I just took that and kept going with it.
This is a shiitake petri dish. Um, so gonna do some transfers for that today, too. That's about it for now. All right. We get the good optimum mushrooms that we have.
So, and get the flow vids running. So, we're in our lab. We're going to do some tissue transfers from some of the petri dishes I've selected and transfer them onto these fresh plates that I've poured out. And then we have uh our liquid media mycelium into each of these jars and let the mcelium grow throughout the broth. Back tyinerator or just a tool transfer tool sterilization um unit.
Clean work, transfers, spawn production, uh you name it. So, uh through the years, I've kind of just added an additional flow hood as my uh my workload grows. HEPA filters, basically pushing out 99.99% effective uh sterile air that's been filtered down to 2 microns. This is prepared by mixing uh malt extract agar uh powder into one liter of water and then sterilizing in an autoclave. Media is still hot into these petri dishes and allowed to cool.
Written protocol
Southwest Mushrooms Genetic Library
The strains themselves, the same cultures used in this footage.
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Once it cools, it gellet uh solidifies and it forms a or it kind of gels and it forms this nice two-dimensional surface that our mushroom can grow across and we can select uh the healthiest spots of growth. About 6 to 800 ml of water once it's expanded to a point that I'm satisfied with. Uh these lids are equipped with a self-healing injection port and also a syringe filter to basically give the liquid culture adequate gas exchange as the marcelium grows throughout the liquid. I kind of wrap my uh jars in a paraffilm, make sure that they're clean when I don't have my flows running. And sometimes it can be a pain to to pull off on things.
So yeah, I'm just going to douse my uh tool with some alcohol. This is a scalpel. It has a blade that you can change on and off as it becomes dull. One thing you can do too is just uh what I do is kind of loosen my lids before I start doing my transfers. I'll just take off the just touch it to the middle to cool the school cool the blade.
Just throw that on the ground so we're not trying to reach towards the ground. So, some of this spawn was inoculated about a week ago, and we can kind of see the mcelium starting to really take over the grains. I mean, at this point, it'd be a good idea to shake the bag or break up the mcelium pieces or the colonized pieces to redistribute them. So, I'm just uh getting ready for a lab day. I'm going to go in and do some inoculation of grain spawn.
Then I'm going to do a few different uh few different ways of inoculation. I'll do some inoculation with some liquid culture and some agar dishes as well as some grain to grain transfers throughout the bag. Uh and that way it'll really speed up colonization. We should see full colonization at this point within the next few days. Kind of like this bag right here.
This one was just shaken up the last couple days. Now we've reached full colonization basically. So some of these will be taken and used to expand the mcelium. We have the bags labeled as G1. That means that I've taken uh basically grown out the culture on a petri dish and taken aar wedges and transferred them into this sterilized grain which is soft red winter wheat.
Uh, now that it's fully colonized, we want to expand it further and basically expand it about 10 times. So, we'll turn this into 10 more bags and they'll all be labeled G2. And with those bags, we can utilize them to start inoculating our production or, you know, making uh making grow kits or whatever. So, just taking a look at which bags I'm going to be utilizing. Got some reishi, some oyster mushrooms, actually a white elm oyster.
And then again, we have some bags that are almost full colonized. This one was inoculated um 9:16, so it's been about 8 days. And this is the pink oyster. This was actually inoculated with a liquid culture. As we can see, the mcelium is growing throughout the bag pretty evenly.
So, it's about to finish up. Um, you could shake this, speed it up, or you couldn't. Same with this one. We'll break up this mcelium to speed up the colonization. We have some oyster mushrooms.
So yeah, I'm just going through my spawn, monitoring the growth, and uh basically shaking as needed or kind of redistributing the mcelium. Here we have some fully colonized G2 king trumpet. So we could just see a really nice healthy mcelium. Also going to get some some petri dishes out and utilize these to inoculate some green. So I'm going to just spray down my preacher dishes.
So when I'm conducting my inoculations, I try not to breathe. So um breathe directly through my nose, not through my mouth. And uh also while I'm transferring I try to hold my breath in between transfers. So we got a nice inoculation there growing on soft bread winter clean room or or lab work is necessary when you really want to really want to expand uh the mushroom culture. Show you too.
Here's like the cultures that are grown out and stored in test tubes. So, I just label them and they're stored in cold storage for quite a long time. I can just take a little piece of tissue and drop it on a petri dish and just keep it going. The temperature is between 36 to 40° for cold storage and that kind of just puts the mycelium on pause for for quite a while and uh it's it lasts for a long time. I mean, there's been reports for 5 years or more.
I've had cultures in here for or strains going for at least a few years that are still really strong. Down. Heat. Hey, I'm Oh. Down down down.
Hey, hey. Anybody that really wants to work in mushrooms, cultivating fungi and mushrooms is like a balance between science and art. One, you got to understand the science of it, and two, the art of it is basically being able to execute your your crop the right way. The setup, the just the design of of how how you're going to grow out the mushrooms from the fruing room to placement of your of your blocks to all that. You can really get creative with uh growing mushrooms.
And I think it's just like a marriage between science and art. You're not just stepping into the world of mushrooms. You're stepping into something deeper, more intricate, a living web of science, sustainability, and self-discovery. Fungi aren't just decomposers. They're connectors.
They hold the secrets of ecosystems, economies, even personal wellness. And this book, it's your gateway. It sets the stage for an enlightening voyage. One designed for anyone who stands at the threshold of micology and maybe feels a little intimidated. But here's the truth.
You don't need to be a biologist. You don't need a lab coat. You just need curiosity and a willingness to learn. Mushrooms with their wild diversity and powerful functions aren't just ingredients for your next meal. They're agents of environmental change, teachers, healers, allies.
And yes, the process can feel overwhelming. Cultivation comes with its fair share of science, technique, and timing. But you and I, we're going to break that down. Together, we'll demystify the entire cultivation cycle step by step so it becomes manageable, accessible, whether you're a weekend hobbyist or a future farm founder. And it all begins with the basics, the biological principles behind fungal growth.
Because once you understand how mushrooms live, you'll understand how to help them thrive. From selecting the right strains to dialing in the perfect growing conditions. So, let's dive in not just into mushroom cultivation, but into the quiet, powerful logic of the fungal world. Welcome, friend, to a journey, not just through spores, and science, but through story, soil, and something deeply alive. You've chosen to explore these pages.
And I just want to say thank you. Whether you're a curious beginner, a committed hobbyist, or an aspiring entrepreneur, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. This isn't just a book about mushrooms. It's about what they teach us. Patience, precision, presence, the quiet, powerful interconnectedness of life.
Now, shall we begin this journey into micology? Heat. Heat. Heat.