Growing oyster mushrooms in a bucket

My adventures in mushroom growing are about to produce a yield of delicate, gourmet oyster mushrooms.  I have successfully grown fungi tissue in petri dishes, then jars of grain. In fact I am ready to start the process over again. Just need time to order more petri dishes. I promise myself it will be this week. Its been too busy at work to make the call which of course must be done in business hours.

The last step in the process is to transfer the grain jars full of mycelium into buckets of straw. I did this in January. I have waited to get a yield from these first two buckets before setting up the next lot so I would know I had pasteurised it correctly and didn't just end up wasting a whole lot of time, straw and mycelium.

It would seem I waited a little too long. Nick from Milkwood showed us a two bucket system. The straw/fungi mix goes into buckets with holes drilled in them. A second bucket, without holes, goes on top, and a lid tops it all off.  The fungi grows in the low oxygen environment. When the outer bucket is taken off the mushrooms will grow out the holes.

The buckets are full of fluffy white mycelium. This is good

But I couldn't get the outer buckets off. We pulled and pushed and prised to no avail.  Eventually we had to drill holes int the outer bucket in order to break the seal and prise it off. Still wasn't easy but eventually they came free.

Now I can see what went wrong. I left the buckets too long and mushrooms began to sprout through the holes and in between the two buckets.  I got a real giggle out of this.

In a few days my buckets should sprout properly formed mushrooms and we'll have a feast.