FOAF's Oysters On Pine Needles !

[hyphaenation]

I always forget that we have our own little Oyster section here at the topia. I'd encourgae anyone experimenting with Oysters to post some info here. These pics are truely from a FOAF (fo real).

Its a cool story becuase we have been trading edibles back and forth. Some times either one or the other of us loses a culture due to contams etc. So its a good thing that we help each other. My friend was spawn-deficient earlier in the spring and I gave hime some cultures. He does good work with growing Oysters and Shitakes and he put these cultures to good use.

His tek is to mix the spawn with various subs and place them in a garbage bag from the ceiling. These bags have holes in them and later get cuts slashed in for fruiting.

Usually he mixes straw and/or woodchips in the bags. Lately he tried an experiment that went very well. He used white pine needles that he had collected. He soaked these needles and pasturized them and went ahead and spawned them. I believe that at least one of the pics you see is pine needles mixed with straw and the others straight needles.

He has told me that the striaght needle bags fruited faster and heavier than the straight straw or the needle/straw mixture. This is quite exciting because straw is hard to get here in the off season, but the forest floor is literally littered with pine needles.

Here's some pics of how he does it. Most of these pics show fruiting from straight pine needles !

[Mermaidia]

Beautiful pics hypha!

[waylitjim]

Wow, nice job with the Oysters!

[warriorsoul]

nice.
Did he use lime? the bag in the first pic says lime.

[hyphaenation]

Some lime, some none for experimental purposes.

[AKcoast]

Do you know what the temperature is in the shed? How much light do they get in there?

I have Pearl Oysters ready to fruit and Phoenix Oysters not far behind.

I just set up a birthing area in my shed. I added lights after reading they need more that what I had. My temps have been too cool the past week...40-50F. I moved two bags into the house to warm up...68F.

I'm growing them on Alder, cut and chipped from my yard. This is my first grow...

[hyphaenation]

His setup is a shed with windows open. Its been quite cool lately though, but also very humid. Ideally I think 70 degrees would be a good average if you were trying for a temperature.

[Umbo]

Pine needles! thats great, ill have to test that myself, got a ton round here. I did a 'column culture' experiment in february with oysters on wheat straw. I used sawdust spawn which isnt ideal but was cheaper (bought it from Fungi Perfecti) But since then ive set myself up with a sterilizer and made my own rye grain spawn. Its ready to rock and im going to try to spawn some more 'columns' this week, i might as well try some needles too. I had pretty good luck on the first test, I let them colonize at 70F and then fruited them at 65f ish then id bring them back to 70f for a couple weeks to regroup themselves and back down to 60-65f to fruit. I guess i read that somewhere.Oysters are wicked fruiting whores, and they usually will fruit anywhere anytime, but I love to experiment. Anxious to see the flushes i get using grain spawn, want to see how it will supplement the straw where as the sawdust didnt. Ill keep you posted

Also if anyone wants to try their hand with some oyster grain spawn, maybe we can do some trading.. I make it in filterpatch bags 5# or so.
Actually im branching out to others too, shiitake...and when my lab is finished(soon) ill be spawn making galore reishi, lions mane, king oyster, maitake etc... keep you posted