Hi Cornelia,

firstly, my apologies that we missed your previous post – there seems to have been a problem where we haven’t been receiving notifications from the forum for a while.

In response to your first post – the best thing to do in order to prevent the mushrooms growing all under the plastic and at the top of the bag is to fold over the top of the bag and tape it down when you put it in to fruit. This stops the mushrooms being able to develop in the space inside the top of the bag and forces them to grow out of the hole(s) you cut.

Also, it is best to cut the hole(s) as soon a you put the bags in to the fruiting space to encourage pins to form just in the area of the cut. If you wait a couple of days before cutting holes, the mycelium will already be starting to develop pins across the whole substrate in response to the light, which makes it more likely that you’ll have mushrooms trying to grow under the plastic.

Regarding the weird shaped mushrooms developing I think this could be caused by either:

1. Co2 level too high where the mushrooms are developing (you said you’re sure of enough air exchange, so may be it’s not this, but Oyster are really sensitive to even slightly elevated levels of CO2, so unless you have a CO2 monitor it can be hard to know for sure).  You could try taking a bag out of the green house and just leave out in the garage. Unless the air is particularly dry where you live it will probably contain enough humidity to fruit, especially with the odd spray of water from you, and this will allow you to test whether it is high CO2 inside the greenhouse causing the problem.
2. This strain may not like growing on coffee. We have tested 12 different Oyster strains with coffee and only found one that didn’t like growing on coffee, but that one strain did grow in a similar way to the picture of yours, so this is definitely a possibility. If you’re able to try a different strain with your next batch it would be worth testing this theory.

Finally, well done on persevering with it all! I know how disheartening it can be when a batch goes mouldy or doesn’t fruit properly, but if you keep going with it you’ll learn loads along the way and it will lead to good crops in the future 🙂

Best wishes, Adam

Hi Cornelia,

I’ll post links to the pics here so others can see as well:

<blockquote class=”imgur-embed-pub” lang=”en” data-id=”a/hAppO”><a href=”//imgur.com/hAppO”></a></blockquote><script async src=”//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

The mycelium in your bags looks very healthy so I think a crop will come, although I can totally understand that you’re starting to wonder why they’re taking so long!

I have a couple of questions to try and work out the cause:

1. just wondering where you have cut the holes for the mushrooms to fruit from (couldn’t see any in the photos)?
2. do you know what strain of oyster mushroom it is?

The yellow liquid looks mostly like the substrate mix was a little wet and is now pooling at the bottom of the bag. You could poke a tiny hole near theses areas to drain out the excess liquid, then tape it up again afterwards. Sometimes this brown/yellow liquid can occur when a bag has been incubated for too long as well, but it is not normally a problem – it should still fruit.

The brown round structures could be the beginning of pins starting to form without enough fresh air to develop properly, so you could try cutting a small 2-3cm slit over the top of this area to see if they develop out of the hole.

best wishes, Adam

Hi Jose,

yes, remove all these clusters that have started growing because their shape and form will not recover.

Then cut one or two holes (2-5cm) in each of the bags and place in your fruiting chamber.

They should recover fine and start to fruit properly within a few days.

Exciting! Enjoy 🙂

Adam

Hi Cornelia,

Great to hear you’re getting ready to start your growing 🙂 To answer your questions:

1. It’s best for the bags to stand up a sit reduces contact with any surface. Contact with a surface against the bag can increase  chance of contamination in that area.
2. Related to this, it’s best to have at least 2-3cm between bags to prevent contact and overheating
3. With filter patch bags, it’s best to fill them no more than 50% full to allow for air exchange in the top of the bag
4. The temperature can fluctuate a little, but should ideally stay in the range of 20-24C. We found that a heat mat on a low setting did this fine for us.
5. If you are placing the bags in a small insulate d space, you generally only need a little bit of additional heat because the bags create heat themselves whilst incubating (especially during the 1st week or so). It can take a little bit of trial and error to get the temperaure in the 20-24C range, but if you’r ehouse is 18C, and you place the bags in a insulated space, I don;t think you will nee dmuch additional heating at all. It may be worth trying it without to begin with even.
6. You can add more straw if you wish yes – straw is a good substrate to grow Oyster mushrooms on, so no problem with adding a higher % to the mix

Hope this helps, and best of luck with your first grow. Let us know how it goes!

best wishes, Adam

Hi Jose,

thanks for sharing your photos and film of your first bags, which look really healthy.

No need to be too concerned about the bottom of the bag, it’s justa sign that the substrate was slightly too wet and so hasn’t colonised at the bottom where the excess water collected.  Just make slightly less wet mix next time, but it shouldn’t cause a problem in this bag which looks very strong and healthy and is now ready to fruit.

With the 2nd bag, the fluffy white is Oyster mycelium, and I htin overall that the bag is on it’s way to colonisation and will probably become a stonger white over the next few days. If any of the grey/white growth turns blue or green then that would be a problem with green mould, but I think it looks more like Oyster mycelium.

Nice work! Let us know how the fruiting stage goes 🙂

Hi Eduardo,

my apologies for the slow reply, I have only just seen your post.

Hmm…hard to sy awhat may have caused the satlled growth as it sound like you have created the right conditions in the bag, and it was growing well before.

Did he mycelium stop growing at a certain point within the bag? We’ve had it before where the mycelium stopped growing at the bottom of the bag and it was because of a lack of air exchange there. I know you said you have poked holes in so maybe it’s not this, but just wondering if there was any pattern to where the stalled growth is in the bag?

best wishes, Adam

Hi Zoran,

Beautiful photos! Thanks alot for sharing, lovely to see 🙂

I would guess that the strain is either Pleurotus ostreatus (often called winter Oyster, tree Oyster or grey Oyster), or pleurotus pulmonarius (often called Phoenix Oyster, Italian Oyster or Indian Oyster).

It can be hard to tell as the temperature and light levels they’re grown under can have a big influence too. Cooler temperaures and more light produce blue/grey caps, and warmer temps and less light produce lighter caps.

Looks like this strain is happiest in your garage – a parfect crop the basket produced!

Nice growing 😉

Best wishes Adam

Hi Zoran,

thanks a lot for your grow log and info about your trials – it’s great to see you having success and experimenting with different methods…and also great to see your first proper mushrooms now growing.

I’d say from the 1st photo that you may have slightly too much CO2, causing the stems to grow quite long and thin – worth increasing the amount of fresh air they’re getting in order to get better quality caps.

The laundry basket looks really healthy and is surely about to produce a huge bumber crop. Nice growing method!

Let us know how it looks when fruiting, I imagine it will make quite a photo 😉

best wishes, Adam