A weekend of Mushrooms with Paul Stammet (part 2)

A large Morrel.

Saturday and off to Fungi Perfecti about 25 km's West of Olympia. The course was a gruelling two days of info about how to grow mushrooms from tissue clones, spores derived directly from mushroom gills and also from mycelial cultures on agar medium. We also learned how to innoculate logs with plug spawn, make up pasteurized straw growing bags and make sterilized hard wood media to grow mushrooms in. The mushrooms we concentrated on were Oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus), Shitake (Lentinula edodes), Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) and Lion's Mane/Yamabushitake (Hericium erinaceus). During the two days we were not allowed to take photos in the propagation lab where we did agar plate cultures since it was a highly sterile environment

Lab with the blue roof and lecture theater with the green roof.

Some of the class about to check out the growing rooms.

Paul Stammet and an attentive group.

Two of the growing rooms.

A large area used for preparing media to be sterilized

A barrel of rice straw being prepared for Oyster Mushroom inoculation.

The entrance to the lab....you can see the two ante rooms for changing into sterile gear. Also the very large autoclave that extends into the lab.

Lion's Mane

Shitake

Pink Oyster grows in the warmer season.

Hen of the Woods.

White oyster.

Reishi.

Reishi

Blue oyster likes to grow in the cooler season.

Pino Pino.

some agar culture plates I did

Having fun with mycelium cultures.

A straw bag full of embryonic Oyster mushrooms and a bag full of future Shitake on hardwood chips.

My spawn log of Shitake.

The Americans certainly do the Nationalism thing well. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend.

In my rear view mirror in the ferry line up out of Port Angeles. This sort of view is yet another reason I'm happy to get back to Canada....