My Work for the day

So I did a few more grain to grain transfers today. I am testing out popcorn as a grain to culture the mycellium on. It has been recommended to me by some real top notch growers and I genuinely believe their recommendations are certainly not to be sniffed at. The transfer is from red sorghum to the new grain and I am very happy with the results that I have seen in the past two days. Recovery like that is certainly a very good sign that all is running smoothly so far. It better, I have basically 33 500ml jars, or 5 kg pop corn invested in this little project.

This is GT Lc on boiled and Pc-ed popcorn

This was pc-ed then jars and again pc-ed. It is a g2g transfer of ksss  from red sorghum to popcorn.

This first jars is a liquid culture innoculum that I hacked together at home here wish some honey I nicked from a house mate. I am now trying popcorn water instead because I think she is getting suspicious, and anyway, the honey seems to leave a sediment every time I use it. So popcorn water has again been shown to me, it's not my genius idea. Basically a third strained and settled popcorn water in solution and pressure cooked for 60 min at 15 psi. For more info on this teq please go to Shroomtopia.

Thanks for reading and go well.

My most recent mycological adventures.

So, as it stands now I have a few jars of spawn and a few mushrooms that have popped out. It must be, for me, the most rewarding and enriching experience that I have had the pleasure of experiencing.

These are just a few examples of my grow. I am new to this and I have found this process to be easy but complicated enough to constitute a challenge worth taking. And a challenge it is, I have encountered moulds and bacteria that cause entire jars to rotten and smelly. I have learnt about trichoderma, green forest mould that is normally just about never seen in nature. But seen in my grow in my grow environment on a bloody large scale. I have had to toss a great many mushroom mycellium cakes out because of this nasty little species of mould. I now know what it looks like when it starts and what to do when it does, get rid of it, quickly, bury it in the park. Clean your cloths, shower and dis-infect the entire area that that fruiting chamber was in. This has led to many hours of back breaking labour in the form of scrubbing walls and ceiling with dis-infectant, spraying areas with bleach untill it felt as though my eyes were crying blood. 

I hate trichoderma mould!

I am getting on nicely with my agricus blazei, or murill mushroom now. I had a very nasty scare a few weeks back when I thought that I was going to loose my culture to a mould infection. Lucky for me I had two jars that did not get affected and I have now begun expanding these so that I can get a quantity of spawn that will warrant a expansion to fruiting conditions. This is a very powerful mushroom for fighting cancer, I am very happy to be blessed with this culture and the gift of being able to grow it. I believe that this mushroom on it's own could alleviate a great amount of pain and suffering, never  mind what the entire fungal family could do for mankind if we just took the time and effort to figure out what species are good for what ailments. It is an area that has not been studied enough as many professionals are afraid to risk their good name by making a taxonomic mistake and it being published. This kind of error is unfortunately very easy to make in the world of mycology and a young professional will tend to shy away from the area for this reason. In other words they just plain wussy and generally all they want to do is to make a good name for themselves. 

My family and friends think I have gone totally mad, this too is fine by me. Maybe I have. I have dropped everything  work, relationship and family to pursue my passion in mycology. I have lost weight as I do not get enough food to eat on a daily basis as I have not yet reached that critical point of generating a sustainable income for myself. Luckily for me I have a landlord who is a genuine person and can see that what I am doing is very important to those suffering with cancer and essential to my psychological well being. This in it's self it a blessing that I do not over look. I am truly grateful to this human being and indebted to him on a spiritual level as well as a financial one.

I only I could sell more bottles of the Reishi extract!

This I was hoping would carry me through until I managed to find a way to achieve both my financial and emotional needs in the path I have so rabidly chosen to pursue. This, sadly, has not been the case as is in so many things I try to plan in my life. I have a deep sympathy for those people that struggle to be spontaneous and have to follow a pre ordained idea or plan or they become nervous and frazzled. I always plan but rarely do I follow that plan to it's exactitude. I will bend and reform the plan as the project progresses so as to try and reach the optimum of results like this. Sometime is works fantastically well and sometime I think to myself 

"Why could you not have followed the bloody plan!"

Life has become an adventure that I am genuinely excited to pursue when I wake every morning. For this I thank the powers that be. 

To you I say thank you for reading my little blog entry and if you would like any information on  anything I have mentioned here feel free to contact me and ask. I consider myself to be a nice person (most times) and very approachable at that. My web site is also a gold mine of information I it would be fantastic to see you registered there and posting in the forums.

FungiMoon

I must stop blogging late at night when I am tired and lazy to check my spelling properly, my apologies for the mistakes in the previous post

A general update

Ok, so I have neglected to post for a few days. Little interesting has happened. I am starting agar work in my new grow set up and am feeling very happy about it.

To have not been growing mushrooms for sao long caused a great deal of less than obvious discord in my like and those around me. I can thus conclude that growing mushrooms is for the wider community, a responsible thing to do. I am not a pleasant person when in states of discord.

These, the mushrooms I am holding are the aminita phalloides, death cap also know as the destroying angel. A particularly bad one, in fact, the worst. By the time you realize you are poisoned it is too late. You initially feel aweful, then seem to be going into recovery as the illness subsides, the you die when your liver give in from the poisoning. There is no antidote or cure, you will die. Even small amounts are exceptionally toxic. It has a rich history of it's use (or abuse) through out history, in the murder of many people. No great surpize there.

Mono tub day 1

Mono tub day3

I have also cleaned out, and painted, a unused room under the house as a fruiting room. I anticipate it to be the coolest, have the most stable tempreture with the smallest fluctuation range thereby making (I hope) the easiest room for me to control the tempreture in.

Another interesting development is that I have been asked to write a feature article on medicinal mushrooms for a mycological magazine.. It is, at this stage, a labour of love as I refused the small pay on the grounds that accepting it would only make me bitter and twisted towards the entire project and the obvious result of that would be a horrible quality of writing and the potential loss of huge amounts of future revenue. Just kidding, after getting the small amount through all the red tape to me I would have most likely have had to pay in as the charge accumulated along the way would exceed that of the amount. 

They have already an article I wrote on reishi and I am busy with one on blazei. Should the magazine consent, I will post them if there is an interest for me to do so.

Murill Mushroom

This is an example of the blazei that I am growing

My Mushrooms

I have just started a grow on some medicinal mushrooms, agricus blazei and king oyster. I want to try reishi and a few others. I am pretty excited about how fast this stuff takes....

If there is anybody else out there who is into growing I would love to get in contact. I am particulary interested in the fungi that are effective in the support and treatment of cancer....