Its allready three month since the missing link project has started.
A lot has happened and some articles will follow to bring the readers of this side up to date.
Oyster Mushrooms fruiting on basswood chips and olive leaves
Two major steps were realized:
Building a dark/shady storage room where the mushrooms can inoculate.
Organising a cooperation with the local primary school, so that the children of the village could join the process of developing a mushroom production and learn a lot about mushrooms, biology and ecology along the way.
students preparing bag culture of Oyster Mushroom on pasteurized straw
all classes and cultivation-steps took part in the garden area of FamiliaFeliz
Since then the first Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) where harvested and cooked by the children of cervera:
early stadium of Oyster mushrooms
curious students right before harvesting their own mushrooms
The Shiitake Mushroom culture is just about to fruit:
Shiitake bag culture in the “popcorn” stadium, a few days before fruiting begins
And even more substrate was inoculated with mycelium of The Golden Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus citrinopileatus):
Straw and Golden Oyster Mushroom mycelium, four days after inoculation. Note the radial-expanding hyphae, searching for food!
The Golden Oyster Mushroom is a perfect mushroom for the summertime, as it thrives with temperatures around 30°C.
Nevertheless it is a difficult task to create the shady and humid conditions, that the mushrooms need to grow fruitbodys. Also a lot of insects and other animals are more than happy about a fresh mushroom growing next to them, so we have to create an environment where we can exclude insects and other animals.
So far we have created a more improvised solution:
IBC tank on pallet, filled up with 5cm of water and surrounded with plastic foil to keep humidity inside
But we are working on a better solution and the result will be posted here.
(all Photos by Julien Rivera)