Growing mushrooms at home requires cleanliness above all.
Growing mushrooms at home does not require handling smelly, decaying substances. Vermiculite is a soilless growing medium that is suitable for mushrooms. It is water absorbent and provides the brown rice meal used as a substrate for growing mushrooms an airy structure, allowing for quicker decay and faster growth. Growing the mushrooms in jars with vermiculite also improves sanitation and prevents contamination. The spores the mushrooms grow from are bought in a syringe which holds the spores free of contamination until ready for propagation. They are available from mushroom retailers and some garden centers. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Pour a cup of brown rice flour into a bowl and pour in water until the rice is moist, not soaking wet, mixing it with a spoon.
2. Add 3 1/2 cups vermiculite to the brown rice and mix it all together. The mixture is enough for six half-pint jars.
3. Pour the brown rice flour and vermiculite mixture into six jars, leaving a quarter inch of the jar top empty. Add dry vermiculite to the top quarter inch.
4. Fold a piece of foil in half for each jar you use. Place the foil on top of the jar.
5. Place a rack at the bottom of a pressure cooker. Place the jars on the rack.
6. Bring the pressure cooker to 15 psi slowly over a 15-minute period and continue cooking for 45 minutes. Allow the jars to cool in the pressure cooker for an hour before removing.
7. Shake the spore syringe to break up the spore inside.
8. Heat the tip of the syringe until glowing hot then allow it to cool. This prevents contamination.
9. Pull back on the foil from the top of a jar. Insert the end of the syringe into the jar. Squeeze 1.5 ml of spore into each jar. A 10 ml syringe is enough for six jars. Replace the foil.
10. Allow the jars to rest for 14 to 28 days until white mycelium entirely colonizes each jar.
11. Tip the jar out into a plastic garbage container with the bottom covered in moistened vermiculite. Cover the garbage container with a plastic bag to keep everything moist.
12. Harvest the mushrooms once they have grown to an adequate size.
Tags: brown rice, pressure cooker, Allow jars, brown rice flour, container with, garbage container, garbage container with