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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 04 2020, @05:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the for-science dept.

https://uproxx.com/life/diy-magic-mushrooms-uncle-ben/

There's a subreddit for just about everything, but if you're a legit Uncle Ben's fan who is also a serious Redditor (that's a lonely island), you might be disappointed to find that the subreddit r/UncleBens isn't so much a gathering of hardcore pre-cooked rice fans, as it is an online sub-community of DIY psilocybin cultivators who are using Uncle Ben's and other supermarket staples to grow magic mushrooms.

[...] What makes Uncle Bens the perfect vessel for psilocybin, according to the r/UncleBens crew, is that mushroom cultivation "requires a sterile, nutrient-rich environment in which their spores can grow," and since Uncle Ben's rice is pre-cooked, sterilized and vacuum-sealed, it provides the necessary environment for cultivation.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by richtopia on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:03PM (12 children)

    by richtopia (3160) on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:03PM (#1016179) Homepage Journal

    I enjoy gardening and have wanted to get into mushroom cultivation (for cooking, I've never tried the recreational ones). There are kits of pre-inoculated grow bags for oyster or shitake, but they feel overpriced. I might see if the Uncle Ben's formula works for culinary mushrooms.

    Does anyone here have experience growing mushrooms and any beginner's advice?

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:17PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:17PM (#1016180)

    any beginner's advice

    Keep 'em in the dark and feed them bullshit?

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @08:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @08:59PM (#1016242)

      No, no, no...that is the MBA advice.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @06:28PM (#1016182)

    If this [reddit.com] is any indication, shiitake mycelium could start on brown rice. But you would want to transfer it to sawdust bags or something for fruiting.

  • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:17PM (2 children)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:17PM (#1016193) Journal

    Beginner's advice was implied in the summary: keep every thing sterile. That includes worrying about the air circulating around your project, there are a lot of particles in the air including dust and various spores. Afterall, that's how sourdough and many cheeses gets started.

    As the AC mentioned you can probably get the expensive bags and use them to innoculate the whole grain rice or rye bags before transferring the mycellium to bags of sawdust or grain.

    I wouldn't touch Reddit with a barge pole, though. There have to be higher quality sources. I'd expec the recent decades have brought at least a few to quality books on farming mushrooms, since it has become a commercial activity.

    --
    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:32PM (#1016201)

      Not expensive bags. A spore syringe. You can poke right into the Uncle Ben's with the syringe, inject a tiny amount of spores, and cover it up with Nexcare micropore tape. Shake it up mid-way to colonize faster.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/comments/el1d8q/part_2_inoculating_uncle_bens_for_colonization/ [reddit.com]

      Everything that happens after the rice bag is colonized is specific to your type of mushroom and should be researched somewhere else.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 04 2020, @10:15PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 04 2020, @10:15PM (#1016274) Journal

      Afterall, that's how sourdough and many cheeses gets started.

      Those won't eat cellulose (but will gobble starches).
      It's the molds that you need to keep away for the entire lifecycle - from mycellium development stage all the way to fruiting - after all, those are fungi themselves [wikipedia.org]

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:29PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:29PM (#1016198)

    If you're feeling bold, and live in a swampy area, you can get plugs inoculated with shitake and other varieties which you can put into fallen tree trunks... I had limited success the year I tried it, but so did the "professional" growers that year too - a lot depends on rain, temperature and humidity.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:07AM (2 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:07AM (#1016452) Journal

      The shiitake farmers I read about when the farming process was developed used particularly arranged stacks of cut logs and sprinkled them periodically to maintain the right moisture level. They kept everything under net canopies to let in some light but keep in a lot of the moisture.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 05 2020, @12:43PM (1 child)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday July 05 2020, @12:43PM (#1016486)

        I only played casual mushroom farmer the one time, a couple of years later I ran into another mushroom farmer who took it seriously - as you describe with the stacks and nets and sprinklers. When I described my pitiful crop results he asked "what year" - when I told him he said: "oh, yeah, everybody's crop was pitiful that year." So, apparently something happened that went beyond moisture and sunlight, probably a lot to do with temperature profiles, but maybe other things too. When I described my "setup" which basically consisted of fallen trees under a canopy in a swampy area the farmer said: "Oh, yeah, if you've got that naturally you probably won't get much better with the stacking and all - maybe just water them in a drought, but chlorinated city water isn't what you want to use..."

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:29PM

          by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:29PM (#1016532) Journal

          Some municipalities will run a fungicide through the drinking water lines once a year, unannounced. So anyone serious has an alternative source year round.

          --
          Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2020, @07:48PM (#1016211)

    For culinary mushrooms, start with oyster mushrooms. Pretty easy to grow on woody garden waste like old bean, pea, etc. plants. Straw is commonly used by commercial growers. Lots of info online about them. Note that there are a ton of mushroom varieties that are sold as oyster mushrooms, but the above will work as a substrate for all of them. Oyster mushrooms will also grow on waste oil, cardboard, all kinds of stuff that you probably do not want being incorporated into your food-- one of the foods that buying organic is probably a good idea.

    All mushrooms I've dealt with require light to grow properly. The dark cave for mushrooms seems to be a myth. This includes psilocybe cubensis (magic mushrooms), button, oyster, etc.

    Cleanliness is the number one thing with all of these. Everything needs to be pretty close to sterile. You will flame your tools, work under a makeshift hood (a clear-ish storage box upside down is good for a start; add long sleeve gloves to holes in it for v2), sterilize growing media/containers in a pressure cooker. But, it is not difficult to grow most mushrooms if your conditions are suited.

    Typical if growing from spores:
    1) start spores in agar based growing media in a petri dish / shallow glass container with a lid. Inoculate with spores in a few locations around the outer edge.
    2) cut out area that has mycelium growing into it from at least two of the original innoculation points. This mycelium will be the product of two of the inoculations you did growing together, and joining to create a dikaryotic mycelium. Dikaryotic is required for fruiting (making mushrooms).
    3) drop these agar mycelium cubes into a growing media made of sterilized grain. Allow mycelium to fill the grain.
    4) use the grain to inoculate compost, straw, sawdust, etc. depending upon mushroom type.
    5 never let the grain mycelium mix die, so you don't have to go through these steps again.

    Or, sanitize the outside of a mushroom, cut out a cube from within the mushroom without any of the surface bits and use that as starter in either grain or agar.

    From here, things are different depending on where the mushroom lives in the wild. E.g., in the ground, in decaying wood, etc. For the in-ground ones, you wait for the mycelium to grow through the compost growning media, then case them by putting some fresh compost on top-- this triggers the fruiting. For the decaying wood ones, you seal the growing media (straw, woody garden waste, sawdust, etc.) in a bag / container until the mycelium has grown through it, then you expose it to air and light to get it to fruit (slash the bag, open the container, etc.

    For collecting wild mushrooms, if present in your area, start with chanterelles (in Cali, these mostly grow on living oak tree roots usually in the middle of poison oak). Unless you are half blind, they don't look like anything else that grows in the same conditions, and the closest thing they look like (they don't really look like them), will taste bad / maybe make you a little ill-- not seriously so. But, if you cannot tell a chanterelle from a jack 'o lantern, you should not even consider collecting wild mushrooms. You probably shouldn't be driving either. First rain is the time to go out and look.

    Hope this helps with your journey (mainly keywords for you to google for more info).

  • (Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Sunday July 05 2020, @08:45PM

    by SlimmPickens (1056) on Sunday July 05 2020, @08:45PM (#1016642)

    I would buy at least one or two of those ready-to-go grow kits first, just to see if you enjoy it and get an idea for how much you will need to spend creating an environment for them in your area. A proper environment is required to get good yields.

    Culinary mushrooms (I've only ever grown shiitake) will grow on a pretty wide variety of substrates. People tend to pick what's available cheaply in their area and then adjust the nutrient profile/water retention/PH etc with things like lime and perlite from a supermarket or garden store. For you it might be sawdust, brown rice, barley, coffee grounds, kitchen scraps etc. Stumps and logs can be a good option if you have the space. You can buy spawn or cultures online from companies that sell grow kits.

    I would suggest getting as much as possible done in a system of wide-mouth mason jars is a pretty hassle-free way to go about it. They're available, cheap, re-usable and useful in many other ways. You can use the S/S mesh lids for mushroom growing, sprouting and making vinegar. If you use the vacuum adapter with a canning lid you can make lacto-pickles, suck the air out to prevent mold and then have it transform itself into a self-burping lid as it begins to create CO2. Ball has the largest ecosystem of accessories.

    I've seen the mushroom luminary Paul Stamets say in TED talk that he eventually learned it's better to brine the substrate rather than sterilize it because you end up with a controlled culture of beneficial microorganisms which is more healthy for the mushrooms but the cultivation community doesn't seem to have embraced this. Knowledge I have from my fermentation hobby and studying food science suggests to me that Stamets is probably right however I haven't tried this yet or read any of his books.

    Good luck!