preserving mushrooms

I hope you've thrown away the contaminated cake, because if you haven't, it can compromise not only your current grow, but any chances you have of growing in the future if it sporulates inside of your house.

 

Not necessarily for the future if you follow proper sterile procedures, but definitely get it out of the FC to save the ones for now.

OP, I'm glad to hear you got at least some success. Is this your first grow?

 

Actually, it's my second. The first one ended in dismal failure.

 

I've definitely heard of people not keeping up on their contaminated substrate and having utter failure with future grows, but that is probably an overstatement applied to the OP. It's more of an issue with letting contaminated bulk grows unattended for weeks.

 

I just added some cilica gel into a tuppaware container and added the good mushrooms inside (separated from the cilica gel, of course). I didn't know how much to put in so I just put in about a hand full (enough to cover the whole bottom). Then I read this on the shroomery.org site:

The cilica gel is pink with little bits of red in it. Does this mean it needs to be heated first? Will it do nothing to my mushroom sitting in the tuppaware container in this state?

 

never mind, it works

 

Well, I think I'm done with my crop. I got some good shrooms out of it and some bad. Then there were some shrooms that seemed to stop growing. For the past 3 days, they've stayed about 1 to 2 inches long, and their caps remained closed and no bigger than a pea. The cakes don't seem contaminated - they're still white and fluffy (well, getting less fluffy than they used to be), and I picked a few of the mushrooms, openned them up, and found no discoloration (except a slow bluing which occured over a few seconds - clearly bruising. They seem good, but immature, and not getting any more mature. Since the cakes seem to be getting less fluffy, I'm figuring it's time to throw them out - I've got a good bunch. But what I'm wondering is should I harvest all these somewhat developped mushrooms anyway, even though they're not fully grown and their caps aren't openned? Would they be potent enough to be worth saving?

 

They are aborts and more potent by volume than matured mushrooms. It might be worth keeping them.

Also, are you sure that they're ready to be thrown out? How many flushes did you get from them?

 

First, why not just eat those pretty little mushrooms fresh? Share wit your friends, sell a few (if you dare). I grew schrooms in quart jars, with the sterilized medium of brown rice and vermicelli, using a pressure cooker. You must have a sterile culture jar, and introduce a slice of the culture into these sterile jars, If yur careful enough, the white, fluffy, mold takes over the whole jar while it sits in a nice, warm, dark, place. When that happens, take the lid off, put a papertowel on the opening, and keep is slightly moist. Yeah...da mushrooms, man, dey grow!
If you MUST dehydrate, invest in a dehydrator, We also used light bulbs when the schrooms had to travel. The Damp Rid stuff makes me nervous!
Happy Days, boys.

 

Yeah, I'm done with them. What's a flush? Is that like giving them a cold water shock?

 

A "flush" is each cycle of mushrooms. After the first ones grow and are picked, more will keep growing, and more after them, until the substrate lacks nutrients. Each phase of new mushrooms is a referred to as a flush. If you haven't thrown them out yet and want to grow more, then more will almost definitely grow if it has only been through one flush. After each flush, it helps to dunk the substrate underwater overnight.