Do you just buy spores or do you make the spore media as well? I was looking at it, and it was a lot of sterilization, and needed a sterile hood.
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Its constant work!- I buy in syringes of sterile liquid spores each week, make 16 sawdust blocks each week, sterilise and inoculate them, grow them out for two weeks then transfer to fruiting room, harvest and farmers market.
But so much better than a real job!
Ive faffed about with petri dishes and cultures- but its so easy to contaminate and lose the lot. - I got really good at losing the lot 
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I was wondering if anyone does mushrooms here. Nice. I too am geting my feet wet. Had mixed sucsess, and almost gave up then this monster popped out of a forgoten bag in the cellar. I got interested again 
Almost a full pound
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I tried turkeytail mushrooms by plugs in logs but it took a few years before they completly took over the log but as it turned out we did not like turkeytails 
So we moved on to oyster mushrooms which we already knew we liked plus the fact that they are very suitable to grow indoors as that is in their preferred temperature growth span.
Could not find pictures of how I grew them, only when they were finished
This first pic is the yield of the first harvest of oysters on one three foot (1 m) grow bag. We usually took three harvests of each bag.
We bought already inoculated mycel on wheat from
and we grew them on pelletized lucern for horses as that was the cheapest suitable and sterilized growth media I could find, wetted it down to the right moisture level and layered it in ziptied plastic bag tubing (that you buy in a roll) and made cuts in the bag at the layers and hung them up to grow, first dark and then light for them to fruit.
I don’t know if this is how others do it but it worked very well but it was abandoned as a selling thing we had issues with predicting harvests as we only had markets every other thursday. But I guess we could have stuck with it a bit longer to dial it in properly for predictability.
For house needs it works flawlessly, minimal work and high yield.
Edit: we then looked into selling dried mushrooms but then laws and regulations came in to the picture so that would have taken a chunk of the profit plus the hassle with government.
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Haha - I enjoyed reading that!- So much of what you say is the same here- The council and food regs, getting them to fruit on a Friday and not a Tuesday!- this is why my business is called Sporaddic Mushrooms. What about when you get busy and forget to check them? and the whole bloody lot drop their spores and the fans carry the mess right through everywhere!
I sprinkled some myciliated grain through my bark gardens back at christmas time and the first bunches of winecap (garden giant) popped up today now that the nights are getting chilly. Oh Turkeytail is currently the most studied mushroom in the world! fabulous health benefits being discovered.
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Hahaha, oh yes, been there too
Plus then they are not sellable and don’t look right but that’s ok, I’ll eat them.
I also have dried them and pulverized them to just chuck in a stew or something for fast and easy flavour.
The winecap has been on my list to try as well.
Paul Stamets is someone to check out if you want to know health and other benefits but you probably already knew that.
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Yes here. A “local” operation to me. Within my State.
I tried three times for in-the-wild inoculating for black truffles for a woodland rural property income source. Got to pay the annual taxes.
No go so far.
The Wife will have her nine; 32 inch tall, 2 1/2 foot by 9 foot raised beds for foods now.
With our property change now to some mixed hardwoods I will try again for black truffle income.
But more now for like you are doing, mushrooms for foods.
As I said Stuie, you a are much the interesting addition to the DOW now bringing this to light.
A good Book of Life has many pages.
Steve Unruh
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For people looking for extra income and especially if they are already involved in farmers markets I would recommend worms and worm castings. Simple and cheap enough to get infrastructure set up. Retail for about a dollar and a quarter a pound here. I am just ramping up the size of my bins because at least for now I’m concentrating more on soil based growing rather that hydro or other alt systems i’ve been experimenting with. Even so I can still produce fifty gallons of castings a year from basically a walk in closet sized space. If I wanted to get real involved I could also raise enough worms to sell for a good price.
Fresh casting have living biology that is not available in the bagged shelf stuff in the stores. That still contains all the fertilizer value but not the aerobic microbes available in the fresh stuff. With my small set up I spend less than an hour a week actually maintaining the bins. By the end of the summer I will have doubled my production and could keep doing that every six months if I wanted to. All of us on Social Security or pensions will have to look for other income streams and any kind of food production or ancillary business will be in demand. I don’t believe government regulation will be much of an issue unless the globalists win the war we are in and then none of it will matter.
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Stinging nettles. I think they are common just about everywhere. My woods will be blanketed in some areas. I normally, carefully, put them in the dehydrator and dry them but this guy has other ideas as well. I like his video’s and a lot of good information but I keep looking at his head and thinking he is wearing a porcupine hat. 
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Tasty treats, i like to eat the new growth leaves raw as i pass by them in the mountains. Alway look for morel mushrooms around them too
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They contain up to 25% protein if l remember right. Thats almost twice that of alfalfa, been figuring out how to dry them for livestock. But its a problem since stems dont dry as well and leaves are wery crumbly.
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It is one of those ‘it depends’ answers. Stinging nettles The highest determined values for the protein content in leaves expressed to the dry mass were 26.89% in leaves, 14.54% in stem and 10.89% in root.
Early cut alfalfa (late bud, early bloom stage) may vary from 16 to 20 percent crude protein on an “as fed” basis. Even late cut alfalfa typically contains 12 to 15 percent crude protein.
Double if comparing the best case vs worst case.
They use stinging nettles in pasture mixes to add diversity.
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Stuie : I was looking through your video’s and saw this one.
I am wondering if this worked out for you. I have tried this before by just skinning the strawberry with an exacto-knife, super thin but not separating out the individual seeds. I didn’t know about freezing them either. Mine did nothing. Hopefully you got better results. This year I spent $14 U.S. on 20 bare root plants. They did nothing. Yesterday I bought six plants in cels for a buck seventy five a plant. They look good and will grow well but I’d like to get a lot more plants without that expense. Hoping you have a good report.
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I’ve had lots of luck growing strawberry plants but I just get stems and leaves… no berries. I have heard that berry production can be little to zero in the first year. The second year and years to follow are when the berries come in and after some years of production it will taper off and new plants need to be established.
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Strawberries usually don’t produce the first year. They are also pretty finicky plants.
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Sean I read the very same link. It makes tons of sense. Last season I let the runners run and had lots of baby plants. It turns out that contributed to my lack of berries. This season we will do it differently!
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Since I am looking at soil biology right now, that part caught my eye. 
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I read that there is a difference between stinging nettles, and woods nettles. Anyone know the difference?
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Missouri says they are the same thing. It reminds me the other day, I used a cell phone plant identification app to identify a weed, and it had like 40 common names.
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I have been trying to wade my way through these youtube lectures from the JADAM organic farming people. One reason is that much of it requires no purchased products to make the fertilizers and only some sort of vegetable oil for the wetting solution used before applying the herbal pesticide mix. If you aren’t aware of this method of growing then it’s worth exploring. It seems to have many merits. I have been using aerated compost and worm teas and bubbling them for two days. Jadam uses no air on the premise that 4 inches below the soil surface the microbes are basically anaerobic. That requires more thought for me. Anyway here are links. I think there are 18 half hour to forty five minute you tube videos. I think I’m just going to buy the books.
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