I thought some folks might want to see an update on what I've been growing. For reference, I tried to grown button mushroom spawn on boiled cardboard, only to learn a few days later that this shouldn't be possible. Imagine my surprise when the mycelium started growing anyway!
So it's been about three weeks now and growth has been painfully slow, but then again they didn't really have any decent food. I also realized when I opened the container that there was still way too much moisture in the cardboard. Today I transferred what I could into grain jars to give it a better chance at growth. Basically I went through all the layers and peeled the cardboard apart, then tore off smaller chunks of anything that had decent growth on it. This was divided between a jar of popcorn kernels and a jar of rye berries, so I have a good chance of one or both jars really expanding the small amount of spawn I had available. Considering this was started from chopped stems I got at the grocery store, I'd say I'm doing pretty good so far!
I've started doing some reading on how to make the pasteurized compost for this type of mushroom, hoping to start picking up supplies next weekend to get it ready.
Some bad news this morning... the jar with popcorn kernels has blue mold growing everywhere and is a total loss. Damn that stuff appears fast, yesterday there was no sign of any problem.
On the other hand, the jar with the rye berries looks like it is doing ok? There is suddenly quite a lot of white growth that doesn't look the same as the mold, so I am tentatively hopeful? I guess I'll probably know by tomorrow if it is more blue mold.
What really gets me is there was no mold from the initial growth off of the stems. I wasn't even thinking and chopped up the stems on our cutting board, and everything was done in open air. Yet the transfer to the grain jars was done in a still-air box, wiping everything down with alcohol, and one jar still got contaminated. With results like this a person might get the wrong idea that it was safer to work with your spawn in open air! Ah well, that's only one jar out of seven (with the other five jars going to oyster spawn), taken from varying conditions, so I guess I'm still doing petty good.