Oyster Mushrooms on Paper Project

Grow Your Own

This post regards my final project for my class "Ecology, Agriculture, and Society."

The basic focus was turning "waste" into something useful. I shall show you how I turned these three bags of shredded paper into mushrooms.

First, I took a tissue sample from a local oyster mushroom that I found. Then I grew out the mycelium on a petri dish. Then I used that to inoculate sterilized rye grains in a filtered air hood.

Other fungi and bacteria in the air can contaminate what you're working with. That's why it's necessary to work with sterile medium and practice aseptic technique.

All the white strands and fuzzy mold-like stuff is mushroom mycelium.


The paper will be my bulk substrate, which will allow me to grow my mushrooms. Paper is dead organic matter.

The paper has to get pasteurized. Pasteurization (about 140°F) kills less microorganisms than sterilization (250°F). This still eliminates contaminants, but leaves some beneficial bacteria.

I put the paper in the trash can and showered it with hot water.





I make it rain on dem paper shreds...

This also hydrates the paper. The water didn't get up to pasteurization temperatures, but I wasn't that concerned since paper rarely contaminates.

This was cooled and drained afterwords.




Paper was then loaded into trash bags. This will keep moisture inside so the mushrooms can use it. Bags are also easy to handle.

I poked a lot of holes all over the bags so the mycelium could breathe. It needs oxygen, but not much.







I used the equivalent of three jars of colonized rye grains for each bag.

Jars get shaken to break up the grains. Sniffed to make sure they are healthy. Poured into the bulk substrate.

Then, I put the bags under my bed and waited. Over the next few weeks, the mycelium grew from the grains and throughout the paper.

Sixteen days later. The mycelium has fully colonized the paper. These fungi are pretty voracious. Some of the mycelium came out of poked holes and started to grow on one of my towels. Cotton is dead organic matter... The bag looks like a big mass of paper and white fuzz. Brown spots are mushroom metabolites.




Yikes... deformed mushrooms. Too cold to put them outside. They're not getting enough fresh air, humidity, or light.

I just pulled off these deformed ones and moved the colonized substrate to a better room.

You can't see it in this picture, but mushrooms were growing on mushrooms.

















Much better. But... it could still improve a lot. Anyways, I can harvest spores from these and start over.



FAQ: Why are you growing mushrooms?

For fun. I started growing mushrooms in the winter of 2008. I tend to develop intense obsessions and mushrooms just happened to be my replacement obsession for Pokemon. Also, this is what started my mushroom education, you ought to watch this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html



I don't really know what happened after that. I was pretty inspired. Also, over the past year, I've been having reoccurring dreams about hunting and finding mushrooms.

FAQ: Are they "magic?"

No. The mushrooms I grew for this project were Pleurotus spp. I actually used a Pleurotus pulmonarius culture that I purchased from Sporeworks too. But, the local species was never really identified fully. It is either P. pulmonarius or P. ostreatus, both of which are safe to eat. In fact, you can go find "Oyster" mushrooms in the grocery store. They lower cholesterol, but are not "magic."