Philosophical Vegan Forum

PrincessPeach wrote: Yes I have cultivated my own mushrooms at home before I am still trying to find a good site to buy spore sprints/syringes on, I have been searching for organic but I am coming up pretty empty... Any thoughts are you a home cultivator as well?

I wouldn't worry too much about where your original spores come from, so much as just establishing a sustainable colony of the kind of mushrooms you want so you can keep it going on your own after.

I hope to cultivate in the future, but I don't have a waste stream large enough to cultivate with now, or a good location.
I don't want to use a kit/log, since those aren't very sustainable in the long run if I can't seed them onto a new medium.

Getting something running on Okara and juice pulp waste would be great

I have never tried these straw mushrooms you speak of (unless they come in the chefs sampler pack at whole foods)

My favorite mushrooms are shiitake, oyster and morel! I like enokii too those little long white ones!

Enokii always get stuck in my teeth, I want to like them, but I haven't been able to figure out how to eat them safely yet

I want to try morel, I haven't had the chance to yet. Weird looking little guys, but I hear they taste amazing.

You can probably only easily find Straw Mushrooms canned or frozen, maybe in an Asian market. They don't lose much in the process of canning or freezing. I first had them in a frozen Asian stir fry mix of veggies- and I think they were the first mushrooms I really liked. They have a really interesting taste.

Morels taste amazing they are more pricey though!

Also they have easy in home grow kits you can get at whole foods or health food stores !

I want to grow my own mushrooms now. Anyone care to make a guide on how to do it, or give me a relaibe source on how to?

Shroomery.org is the most active community I know of, and where most internet searches tend to take me when I'm researching mushrooms. Mostly for growing "magic" mushrooms, but they have threads on growing other kinds as well. The same kind of knowledge is mostly equally applicable.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/postlist.php/Board/13

They can grow in anything pretty much and they're a bit difficult because they're a fungus and can easily get contaminated and moldy ...

PrincessPeach wrote:because they're a fungus and can easily get contaminated and moldy ...

That's my biggest fear, I think.

I'd want to set up a room with a good purifier to keep mold spore count down. But otherwise, I'm not sure how to handle mold.

The rest seems pretty easy for the most part. Just keeping it humid, and in the right temperature range.

I'd like to get some kind of CEB press to make organic bricks from so I could stack them.

Do you know about CEB? http://www.cebpress.com/index.html
A "lego" type would be ideal.

Put your juicing waste and Okara in something like that, along with minerals, and it should be possible to press it into a stackable brick (same kind of process in which those logs are made, I think).
I'd bake it in the oven first to kill any mold spores or anything, to keep the room sterile.

Although I'd wonder about good interactions with good microbes- would it be a good idea to add some live pro-biotics to bring the bricks "back to life" after sterilizing them?

I'm not sure how much research there is into the nutritional value of mushrooms based on the specific growth media.

I saw a youtube video of someone growing oysters out of a brick I have been wondering what that was, and that would be a great idea to use my juice wasting's because I am not composting them I have no idea how.. I would think if one grew mushrooms in poop they would have a higher b-12 content than if you grew them in sawdust or rye seed berries for example. The guy who owns the forum website you linked I believe also runs another site where you can see videos of his teaching's ... Check it out.

I generally tend to keep mushrooms exposed to sunlight for hours prior to cooking as it is known to increase vitamin d levels and its one of the few vegan sources.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21736377

I thought this was about Magic Mushrooms. <3