I’ve seen a mushroom grow kit from Back to the Roots. It says that the vacuum sealed bag is mycelium and you can follow instructions to get it to fruit once, maybe even a second time on the other side of the bag. Why does it imply that it stops there? I thought mycelium continues to spread and fruit periodically?
Thank you in advance for the insight!
Edit: Awesome explanations guys, thank you again
In: 1036
The kit has a limited supply of resources and all of the various toxic biproducts of metabolism are building up inside the kit. So it cannot last forever unless you constantly replaced everything, effectively making a new kit all the time.
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Google ‘ mushroom fairy ring ‘ for in-the-wild examples of resource depletion. When mushrooms are growing it isn’t always evident where they used to be and where they’ll be next but when they’re in a clearing or on a lawn the propagation patterns become easier to see.
We used to get a mushroom “sack” and it was awesome!
The sack was large, more than a foot across and several feet high.
It would grow LARGE white mushrooms, some might be more than six inches across the cap.
And we counted…we might get as many as nine crops!
That was when I learned to love fried mushrooms…
i personally have gotten a ‘one shot’ bag to go for months. twice.
those were both bags from the now defunct *Homestead Book Company*. the first time i grew 4ish pounds (wet weight) over ten flushes with a strain they called Kong. i am not exaggerating when i say the caps were 4-5inches across and they were all 12inches tall of more. this was in Colorado.
the second batch was just a Golden Teacher but i started it a month before we moved from CO back to MI and i (again, you do not have to believe me) drove the growing pile of shit and mycelium all across the country (CO-MI-NY-NH-MI and all the states in between) and was able to harvest almost two pounds (wet weight) over a month. any time i wanted a handful i just opened the box.
and that is the key. i do not leave mine in the bag. i make a tupperware bin for them. one time i used a small trash can. i leave the lid on the bottom so the shit sits on a wire frame on the lid and so i can lift the box/can off quickly to remove any built up gasses and i can just tilt it to harvest fruits.
i miss *Homestead Books*. i had a long working relationship with them. i could just call and say it was me and they just filled the same order as always and amended the strain based on where i was at and had my billing on file so no numbers or addresses traded over the phone.
if you really want to have a consistent and long growing crop, it is possible. you do not even have to be very sterile once the shit is covered. i just use a small amount of bleach water and some spray Lysol around the area before i open the box. i can try to explain more if you want.
Closed ecosystem. No new nutrients are being introduced and waste and by-products aren’t being removed like it happens in nature.
resource depletion. In a cowfeild cows make new shit piles for the mushrooms to eat. But in a kit, you are given a certain limited amount of food for your fun guys and eventually that food runs out, then they starve.
For oyster mushroom grow kits my friend brought some with her to college so she could have fresh mushrooms, they fruited multiple times over the full 2.5 years before she left for her clinicals, and when she left they were still viable so she passed them on to an incoming student who wanted them. She did add new growth media as needed in order to maintain nutrients, but if you care for it, you can fruit them as long as you like.
Theres only so many spores in the kit. Thats what they mean by only one or two grows.
The new shrooms that grow will release new spores maybe that might get more growths out of.
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