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[spractral]

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience cultivating Lions Mane (Hericium erinaceus) ?

I will be trying starting from Liquid Culture and do not have a pressure cooker as of yet. If I get a call back from someone on craigslist that may change but, as of now, I cannot afford one . I have looked into "fractional sterilization " a bit and it sounds like it should work.

Any suggestions or advice are welcome and appreciated.

I plan on keeping some sort of log of the process I use and that will be shared here.  Hopefully it  end with more Liquid Culture. If so it will be up for grabs if anyone wants some.

The end goal here is to find the most efficient method for producing the chemicals in Lions Mane and extracting them . Some of these chemicals can be exploited for there effects on the nervous system and brain, I have been taking Lions Mane extract the last 2 weeks and find it to be effective but the price is high and I prefer to produce things on my own if possible.


Ok, hope everyone is well.

1 Like weplantsarehappyplants likes this.

[ONandONandON]

Hey inspiring topic! id love to grow some medicinal mushrooms..
Good luck, hopefully we figure this out.. liquid culture you say??
i got some liquid culture of the glowing bitter oyster mushroom.
That has been sitting around at least a year under the sink.. idk
..how to get them growing.. Once i tried but it took forever then,
another type of mushroom grew instead, so i was discouraged.
Sorry not much help, just looking forward to future experiments!

"Take the inner-stem pieces from a grocery store mushroom,
and that can be grown out on agar, and then onto substrate."

[nugninja]

Im sitting around waiting for my lions mane to produce.  They've been in fruiting conditions for only a week tho so I must be patient.  I use quart jars filled with sawdust (fuel pellets) and wheat bran with injected liquid culture.  You can make injection ports with RTV high temp gasket maker (its red)..


OnandOnandOn  is that a glowing strain you say???   I'd love to get a small sample of that.  I have other cultures available if you like.

[spractral]

Ayye,

Thanks for the interest

So , I haven't officially started but have just about collected everything I need... Pressure cooker, tyvek, mason jars, saw dust  etc..

I'm trying to decide what to use with the sawdust; it sounds like you can use pretty much anything but I am going to read around a bit about it tonight and then go to the store tomorrow...

I want to have them growing outdoors or in the shed or greenhouse if I can so I can get as much as possible... I want to be able to produce enough, and then keep producing enough, to be able to eat some everyday... They really seem to help with cognition and mood and the extracts are crazy expensive and kinda sketchy in my opinion... I always prefer to grow things myself...

Cheers!

1 Like Da-1 likes this.

[nugninja]

awesome! The sawdust is mixed with wheat bran or rice bran so its 1:4 ( bran:sawdust). maybe a tsp of gypsum later (don't know if its necessary).

1 Like ONandONandON likes this.

[ONandONandON]

i have most supplies together also: i.e. pressure sterilizer, jars, bags, glove-box with UV and ozone, agar, just need some time.
i work at a sawmill part-time so hopefully get some good sawdust, but it's mostly pine trees, but sometimes oaks and poplars.

nugninja: i think it's 2+year old karo+honey+h20 liquid culture.. i was planning on attempting agar jars or slants with it soon..
there is only a little bit, and it's probably not 100%sterile, but if you think you can get them growing, i could send you a sample.

[spractral]

Nice!

I just finished sterilizing 3 pf tek style pint size jars today and I will inoculate one or 2 of those with the lions mane culture...

3 out of 3 of the first jars that I did (were a different kind of mushroom) are colonizing fine it seems like and I did those with no pressure cooker and just tinfoil  covering the top. Also didn't use a glove box. Seems to be no contamination though..   So judging from the success (so far) with those , I'm guessing this should go fine..

It sounds like alot of people start lions mane on grains but I've heard it should be fine to start on brown rice flour and vermiculite ..

I have a good bit of space on the second floor of the shed outside and also in the basement so I am going to start doing research on what the best way to turn one or both of those into a fruiting area would be... Apparently the greenhouse will be too hot..

As soon as they are done I will send out spores/culture (depending on what I am able to make ) to whoever needs them..

Now I want to get some reishi culture and also look into cordyceps and also ecible mushrooms... I never really liked the regular (portabella?) mushrooms at the grocery store but am interested in trying other types and apparently some of them ,such as shitake,  have health benefits...

Cheers

[Ian Morris]

Do logs count?

I put 100 plugs into a 10" thick by 28" long log, waxed the whole thing good, keep in the shade. Even then the log is 80% colonized as my frequency meant i ran out, one of the issues with assembly line drilling.

Right now, I have done all the work, fingers crossed on the rewards. 

[spractral]

Very nice!

Keep us updated

I just inoculated the jars I had pressure cooked but for some reason it seems water got into the jars... Not sure how that happened as they were covered in tyvek. I'm actually just googling it now and it appears tyvek might actually not be water proof... I thought it was. Oh well; hopefully they will colonize. I'll give em four or five days and if I don't see any growth I'll do new ones..

Also going to start a bag. Someone on a different forum uses one of those thin plastic bags you have at grocery stores for produce and fills it with half sawdust and half grain I believe. Then they use a bit of foam from a pillow and an elastic to make an injection port. I may not have that a hundred percent correct but it's something along those lines... Anyways, I also talked to the main gourmet/specialty mushroom supplier in my region and they said they use the same substrate I plan on using... Sawdust and wheat bran. The wheat bran is dirt cheap at .99$ a pound and the sawdust is free.

So I will be trying the bag method and then hopefully if the brown rice flour and vermiculite jars I inoculated that were inadvertently water saturated I will take those and use them as spawn for pasteurized sawdust/wheat bran... Then the plan is to fruit them outside in the shed or greenhouse or in the basement.. Haven't got around to figuring out the logistics on fruiting but I'll get around to that as these are colonizing (hopefully).

Cheers!   

[Solipsis]

Yeah I have experience with Hericium sp.

I recommend covering jars on top with 2 layers of aluminum foil when PCing, and wrap it well cause there will be pressurized steam of course, not just dripping water. Anyway you wanna keep filters as dry as possible cause when wet it may be permeable in different ways.

Sawdust bags with cheap plastic?.. not sure if I would do that.. would the sawdust be sterilized before or after? You want proper filterbags if you are going to sterilize.
I have done something very similar to what you describe but i did that with sawdust I pasteurized before I put it in that bag, so it's not really as contam sensitive. Other than that I would really just get filterbags if I were you..

Also if you don't have the means to sterilize properly you probably want to stay away from very nutritious substrates like grains and bran as much as possible cause it will contam very easily. Wood on its own can easily be pasteurized but don't try pasteurizing it with added bran. 
Yeah supplemented sawdust is superior but you also need to be much cleaner. If you have limited equipment then maybe that is not recommended for you.. (edit: oh i see you do have a PC and other equipment now, also a glovebox?)
 
Jars of spawn can be made with LC, grains are good, but you'd want self-healing injection ports in your jar lids.

What jars do you have that are actually waterlogged and colonized?

No, people normally don't use BRF and verm as spawn like that.. it's not ideal.

Are you planning to keep using liquid culture long-term? Are you planning to use it to make spawn or to inoculate wood immediately?

I have access to sawdust in similar ways, also I have recently discovered how great pasteurizing wood can be (for active woodlovers but i wanna use it for gourmet / medicinals too now). It's also smart to  buffer your substrate to keep contam away, by the way.

Another thing I am wondering about is colonizing unsupplemented sawdust first, and then when it is done, adding micronutritional supplement like bran in a more concentrated form and mixing it through without really having to worry about it contamming before it gets colonized?

You're not quite there yet but when you are fruiting, keeping CO2 down enough to get compact fruits may be one of your bigger challenges. I don't think you should underestimate the value of setting up a proper fruiting chamber, one that has really high humidity, low CO2 and is at least a bit clean and protected from filth.

GL