Mushrooms Day 12: Almost Edible

Yesterday, the primordia had grown enough that the individual mushrooms were becoming obvious:

Holy mycelia, Batman! There must be 15-20 mushrooms in that one big primordium, and it looks like there are around 20 primordia all over the kit, which translates to 300-400 mushrooms total! Anybody want to buy some mushrooms when they're ready? I'm not convinced we're going to be able to eat them all while their at their peak. I know, we can dry them, but what's the fun in that?

By yesterday evening, they had grown significantly:

Today, the mushrooms are noticeably bigger, more distinct, and more mushroom-like in shape:

 

I noticed some shrooms sprouting under the label, so I peeled it off to let them grow:

Next time, I'll remove the label immediately. There are new primordia showing up everywhere on the bag where there is no mold. It's quite impressive, and also sort of nice that we'll get the mushrooms in stages, so they won't all peak at the same time. We're probably two or three days away from edible shrooms!

Mushrooms Day 10: Primordia Galore

Okay, dark patches in the straw are NOT primordia. On day 8, I turned the kit around to check for primordia on the back and found an enormous green splotch:

That's mold, not primordia, which means we've been keeping the humidity too high. I had just sprayed the kit (oops), so I resolved not to spray on day 9.

However, there were clear signs of primordia developing on day 8. You can see one poking out a bit on the far left of the moldy photo. Here's a clearer shot, showing popcorn-like growth:

 

 On day 9, these had grown noticably:

 

There were similar primordia all over the front of the kit.

Today, day 10, the primordia do not appear to have progressed much:

So I misted the kit again. While the primordia don't appear larger, they do appear more bifurcated (split into lots of little knobs). We'll see what they do with a little more moisture.

Update: More Shiitakes on the Way

I received an email response asking me to call Fungi Perfecti (pronounced Funj-eye Perfect-eye, apparently). The customer service rep I spoke to there was very helpful and immediately offered me a replacement, which will arrive here in about a week. Meanwhile, she instructed me to put the failed kit in the compost. Hmmm... will we have shiitakes growing out of the compost come spring?

Well, this way, we won't be inundated by mushrooms all at once.

Mushrooms Day 7: Primordia and Other Mushroom Vocabulary

Day 7 of our great mushroom experiment, and there's a big dark patch on the side of the pearl oyster mushroom kit:

According to our instruction manual, this is the first sign of the development of primordia - "the youngest stage of mushroom formation, usually appearing as small bumps or clusters."

Here's some more mushroom terminology for you:

• flush - a crop of mushrooms
• fruit - to cause mushrooms to form
• initiate - to stimulate mushroom formation by dropping temperature ("cold shocking"), adding more moisture, or providing air or indirect light
• mycelium - the fungal network of thread-like cells that gives rise to mushrooms
• spores - microscopic "seeds" of mushrooms which appear as a white dust around and below mature Oyster mushrooms

Note that other species of mushroom may have differently-colored spores: black, brown, even red, blue, orange, or purple.

At any rate, I expect that we'll see the small bumps of primordia in the next day or two. A correction to my last post: the instructions say that we should see primordia within 14 days of starting to mist the kit. The photos in the manual show primordia at 7 days, so we're doing just fine. If all continues as expected, we'll have mushrooms ready for harvest in about four days.

The shiitake mushrooms look pretty much the same as last night. I've had no word back yet from Fungi Perfecti on what to do with them, so I misted them as instructed, just to be on the safe side.