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Well everything gets exposed to lots of different molds eventually, so whether it's a regular cleaning or a cleanup after a known contamination, you can use the same thing -- regular dish soap and hydrogen peroxide. If you're having problems with contaminated fruiting blocks though, it's probably not coming from your grow chamber. Nine time out of ten it's a problem with your spawn. It could also be from not adequately pasteurizing your substrate, but that's less common

@thefungalnetworkvideo ok thank you !!!!

Thanks Jim, glad it's useful!

That's a good question. It's really up to you, but what I do is exclude it from figuring into the flush averages by not recording any numbers. I highlight the row of cells for that block red and make a note in the comments of what happened, specifically (i.e. green or black or lipstick mold, or bacteria, etc.). As long as you don't enter anything into the weight cells, they won't be included into the averages, which is what I want because I don't want to think that a culture is performing poorly when the real problem is my sterile technique. You definitely want to track what your contamination percentage is, though, and if you can figure out where it came from each time. If it's all throughout your fruiting block evenly, it's either a problem with your substrate preparation or your spawn. If it's a single spot on the fruiting block, it's likely either a faulty bag some "dirty" thing that happened during inoculation. Hope this helps, friend!

That's fantastic! We just had some in a cream sauce last night! We get them starting in June (this was June), and usually lasting through September

Still faster than a garden, though!

I love that name! It certainly fits, visually.

Nice find! What state is this?

North Carolina 🙂

Picking a mushroom is not killing it. It's no different than picking an apple off an apple tree. The mushroom you see is just a fruit of the mycelium in the ground

Friend, your warnings are right on. Although some Amanitas are edible, I'm an advocate for folks to make a personal rule to just exclude Amanitas from their diet. This particular one appears to be a destroying angel. I myself am not an adventurous eater, in that I have my list of mushrooms that I will eat, and I don't play at the edges. I recommend that others also not play at the edges. But definitely get out there, find, and appreciate the awesome diversity of things in the woods. There are plenty of things in life that you should enjoy and appreciate without sticking it in your mouth, and this is one of them!

@@thefungalnetworkvideo I would very much agree that this "egg" is a destroying angel mushroom. Very common here and easily mistaken for the common and choice field agaric mushroom that is very edible. The field agaric is white but has pink to brown gills where as the destroying angel is completely white. Another similar choice mushroom is the horse agaric which tends to be white with pink to brown gills, however, they get massive. I picked one several years ago that weighed 1.5 pounds. Regardless, I didn't eat it despite being able to identify. The agarics are a species that have no sympathy or mercy if you make a mistake. However, I find mycology and learning HOW to differentiate the species fascinating!

Good question, and good comment! So I don't worry about filtering incoming air because it's not going to be a "clean" environment in there regardless. But I like to filter the outgoing air to keep it from sending spores out into the home. It also keeps things like flies from getting in (hopefully the fan would kill them on the intake side). And I like your idea about running the saw backwards to score the circle before going all the way through. I'll try that next time. I had thought about melting a hole as well, but test holes had worked pretty well with the hole saw, so I just went with that. Of course it waits until the camera's running to catch wrong. Still worked fine though:)

If you got into production, send me a pair and I'll try them out:) I really wanted them to work!

No, I was the original. I still have mine, because they didn't work either 😢

We never found morels in fields until we happened to see them. Now we look there. Never found them in a stand of white pines until we happened to see them, so now we look there. Basically, we now look everywhere we go in late March and early April, because they seem to defy expectations.

​@@thefungalnetworkvideowe tramped all around the deep woods in Tennessee and found only a few. Then we found two awesome patches in this scrub brush and briars off of a pipeline. They do grow where you would not expect them to!

That's a good question. I expect it depends on the paper waste. I haven't seen studies on it, but mushrooms will take up heavy metals, so certainly it's possible that they have toxins in them if the paper was exposed to any. I would love to see a food chemistry lab actually test some samples. In the meantime, we don't eat anything we're not sure of!

@@thefungalnetworkvideo So what do you do with those if you don't eat them?

Thanks for the kind words, friend!

Small-scale growing for your own food is pretty easy -- if you've got about a square foot of counter space you can definitely have good success with a home fruiting kit!

Ciertamente!

That's very kind of you. Thanks!

Looks sort of like it, but it was an emetic russula🙂

This is in the foothills of North Carolina. I'm not too familiar with what mushrooms are common in OK, but my relatives in KS definitely get lots of morels every spring🙂

It is! Kids are so fun with mushrooms (and other things that stimulate the sense of wonder that is always just under the surface with them)!

ขอบคุณ🙂

Keep hope alive, friend! Before you go out looking, spend a little time looking at photos to get your search image set, then just keep putting in your time. Eventually it will pay off. For maitake particularly, it really helps to get off the path and just wander through the woods from tree to tree. They look so much like leaves piled up at the base of the tree that you sometimes don't see them unless you're right there with them. Good luck!

I have the best luck off trail in oak or maple stands look for lumps of leaves from a distance at the base of the trees when you get up close you will realize it’s hen of the woods. I also have found big fruitings that I didn’t see till I almost stepped on them so keep your eyes peeled it’s in season right now I’m seeing many fruitings in every patch of woods near me.

They are!

Life is great that way. We've never found one anywhere near an apple tree or a recent burn. But we have found them in cracks in rocks, in a bag of mulch, and in blackberry brambles.

No, no slurry. We take them where we find them. That particular spot used to be covered in blackberry brambles. If slurries work for you, that's great, though!