I never cease to be amazed at how beautiful these are.
I also think it’s crazy how I got different colors off different buckets. They are the same strain. The only difference is the lighter pink ones were grown in straw that was cold pasteurized with lime water, and the others are grown in straw that was boiling water pasteurized.
These pinks are growing amazingly in buckets!
Photo by North Spore customer Ruth L.
Getting crazy good flushes from buckets in my Mycosphere! So delicious and so easy with the automation of the Mycosphere.
Black King mushrooms are a hybrid variety that crosses blue oysters with king trumpets, resulting in a mushroom with notably dense, meaty flesh and a rich, savory flavor.
They're well suited to outdoor cultivation, preferring cool, shaded spots with consistent humidity - conditions that are easy to create in many home gardens, particularly under tree cover or along north-facing beds. Our Plant & Grow Mushroom Starter Blocks are designed to be buried directly in the ground, where the surrounding soil helps regulate moisture and temperature during early fruiting stages. Compared to other oyster varieties, Black Kings require a bit more attention and patience but they compensate with larger, more substantial fruiting bodies and a texture that holds up well to roasting, sautéing, and grilling.
I’m planning experiments for growing different species than oysters in BucketTek. As a first step test, I have made blocks of what I’m planning to use as substrate. 50:50 hardwood sawdust and straw. For the buckets I’m planning to cold pasteurize the straw in lime water, and then boiling water pasteurize the hardwood pellets before mixing them together and then mix in grain spawn before packing in buckets to colonize.
These blocks are the same planned substrate but I bagged it and pressure sterilized it as a test of concept. It will give me information on speed of colonization for the different species.
I’m planning to try this method with lion’s mane, pioppino, chestnut and golden enoki.
Two of these blocks were inoculated with grain spawn a week ahead the other two (which is why they are at diff stages.)
I am going to put them in my mycosphere to fruit when they are ready, so they will have similar fruiting environment as the buckets will have.
I’ll keep posting updates, in look forward to hearing from you all if you have tried anything like this.
Used wine cap mushroom spawn from North Spore. Such a cool way to get a little more out of the otherwise unused space in my garden, and help break down the mulch at the same time!
Haven’t tried them yet, waiting for the other small ones coming up to get a little bigger.
Have a tulip tree that needs to come down in my backyard, and apparently those are great for oyster mushrooms, so I see that in my future now.
Anybody else using mushrooms in their gardens?
In much of the US right now, it's super common to find Mica Caps (Coprinellis micaceus) growing off of stumps, buried or damaged/diseased wood in urban settings all over the place. I literally saw it in 3-4 spots just yesterday. Although it's edible, I wouldn't call it choice. Especially in these urban spots on possibly contaminated soils right next to roads, I think I'd only grab some from a spot I know is clean and even then, just to be able to add another species to my list.
These are part of a group called Inky Caps that don't last long. They melt into inky spores, sometimes in a matter of hours.
So the towers looked really cool, but I noticed they were starting to have issues. The mycelium stroma ended up, blocking the drainage holes on the bottom of each section and they ended up accumulating water from the mister system that is in the mycosphere. I became worried that this water accumulation was going to cause issues so I aborted the towers and I am trying an experiment. I decided to pull all the colonized straw out and stuffed it all into a bucket and will try and fruit it via buckettek I will keep everyone posted how this goes.