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Comment by pluteoid | Hacker News Reader

>All the techniques that I learned can be applied to cultivate any kind of mushroom...

If only this were true. Sterile culture techniques only work for the subset of species that aren't obligately mycorrhizal (forming mutualisms with plants), parasitic, or that have other complex ecological requirements. Thus there are all kinds of delicious and interesting species we can't grow so easily, or at all.

But I have a lot of respect for home cultivators like this guy, who go beyond the grow kit stage. It's straightforward to culture and fruit many mushroom species in a properly equipped microbiology lab. But when you're in your kitchen, making do with "gloveboxes"[1] instead of HEPA laminar flow hoods, stovetop pressure cookers instead of autoclaves, and fridges and terrariums instead of programmable incubator units, things can get really challenging.

[1] http://www.instructables.com/id/Glove-bag-for-Mushroom-Growi...

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You actually don't need especially sterile conditions to grow oyster mushrooms. I've done this tek, it works pretty well:

https://courses.biology.washington.edu/biol440-spr16/folders...

Also the mycelium has a pleasant almond smell, so that's a nice whenever you go downstairs to check on them. The hardest part is figuring out what to tell the Petco employees when they ask what kind of cat you have.

The tek you link starts from grain spawn. You don't need sterile conditions at all to propagate loads of mushroom species if you're already starting with a robust dikaryotic culture, especially those of wood-decay (lignicolous) species. That's one principle of "spawn". And there are some dirtier methods that can work, e.g. just dumping spore water onto suitable unsterilized outdoor mass substrates.

But I've seen home cultivators who manage to do things like culture single spore isolates, breed and select dikaryons, clone wild specimens, and fruit very fussy species, all indoors with basic and improvised equipment. That deserves respect.

Yeah I've seen the instructions online for building your own flow hood, that whole subculture is pretty nuts. If you haven't read Hamilton Morris's story about the guy who created the Penis Envy psilocybe strain, it's pretty interesting both because of the content but also because it involves a lot of folks you probably know or at least know of if you're into the amateur mycology thing.

http://harpers.org/archive/2013/07/blood-spore/

That is a wonderfully written article.

How much could I expect to harvest using this method. Does this translate to a signification reduction in cost?

You might see a cost reduction if you learn to grow some of the more expensive varieties. The yield is tricky because there are other variables that factor in like ambient temperature/moisture and the prescribed ranges are rather large. I'm working on my first grow kit, and so far the yield is zero :(

I got a pre-packaged kit for oyster mushrooms (1). I followed the instructions carefully, but it's been two weeks and I'm starting to think this project is a failure.

(1): http://www.amazon.com/Back-Roots-Organic-Mushroom-Mini/dp/B0...

I learned that the hard way, after going to trouble of collecting spores from a wide variety of mushrooms during autumn, and realisong after classification that they were in fact mycorrhizal.

However, I've learned, you can buy pre inoculated trees with some mycorrhizal fungi, or infect trees with parasitic fungi like the chaga mushroom [1] that has gained popularity in the biohacking community lately due the amazing concentration of anti-oxidants.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inonotus_obliquus

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