u/FishTankTek

More Pioppino mushroom (Cyclocybe aegerita) growing this time out of a tall and clear shot glass.

Not as glamorous as the Chia Pet grow, but despite being from the same spawn this grow produced much smaller mushrooms. I also fruited the same spawn from a number of other containers and there appears to be a loose correlation between the size of the fruiting block and the size of the fruits,

This is the second flush for this container. The first flush fell victim to the humidifier going dry in one of my automated grow setups, right as it was fruiting. that particular setup gets a lot of airflow and it is very dry here so the mushrooms dried out

I’m declaring the Chia Pet grow a resounding success. The mushroom species used is Pippino (Agrocybe aegerita), and the plants shown are from the Chia plant (Salvia hispanica) or similar. The right side of the female figure’s head does have a bald spot where the chia seeds didn’t sprout, but otherwise, it turned out exactly as I had hoped it would.

The design of the planter is based on a 1930's painting by Grant Wood called American Gothic (Wiki Link). I like the animal Chia Pets better, but I haven't found a used one for cheap yet and I do too many of these weird grows to be paying full price.

How this grow happened:

I happened upon this Chia Pet at a garage sale, and as I often do, I thought to myself, “Hey… I bet I could grow mushrooms out of this!”

The plan:

The plan was to spawn to the planters, filling them all the way up with mushroom spawn, then add the chia seeds 5-10 days before the mushrooms would be done fruiting.

I suspected that the chia seeds would be able to handle or benefit from the high humidity of the fruiting conditions for the mushrooms. I did end up moving the grow into the automated fruiting chamber since it has a lot more airflow. I also ended up adding some grow lights when the chia seeds on the planter were under-performing my control grow of chia that lived by the window. 

I haven't posted this grow to my Instagram yet because I don't like how washed out the photos are and am going to try to photograph it again with better lighting. 

I don't know what else to say about this grow, so hit up the comments if I missed anything or for questions.  

A couple of you have reached out lately to ask what I’ve been working on and when I’ll start posting my grows again, so I thought I’d share a bit about what I’ve been working over the next couple days as i wait for my latest grows to fruit

So this chia pet grow is one I’m really excited about. I filled a chia pet brand chia planter with pioppino (Cyclocybe aegerita) mushroom spawn and now that it is fully colonized I have added the chia seeds. The hope is that I timed it right and I can get the mushrooms to fruit at the same time that the chia is sprouting.

The photos are before/after adding the chia seeds.