Culturing Wild Mushrooms

During the Autumn of 2014, I harvested and cloned a mushroom on my farm that in my opinion looked much like the Pleurotus ostreatus strain (Oyster Mushroom). Looking at the culture running on PDA (potato dextrose agar) in a petri dish showed all the same characteristics as the other Pleurotus cultures I work with. Some spawn was produced from this culture and I inoculated one block of Black Wood shavings.

The culture ran quite fast through the substrate and consolidated the entire substrate within 2 weeks. I placed the bag in my Grow Room and waited patiently for some pins to form. This however, did not happen. I waited two more months and nothing happened. I was about to give up on this culture, but as luck would have it I had a rather large order of Elm Oysters to grow out and needed to heat up the grow room considerably.

As the temperature in the grow environment increased, I started noticing little pin sets on the wild culture block. I was very excited to see this, and kept a close eye on the rest of development.

Here are some pictures of my Wild Oyster Mushroom culture.