First pics of my first pins. I cut slits in the bag on Sunday and saw the first pins appear yesterday morning, now they’re growing fast. This clump is already a full inch (25mm) tall, and I have four openings in the bag that are all pinning. I’ve been misting them a couple times a day but now I’ll be working from home until next Monday so I can try to spray them more often.
For anyone who hasn’t seen my previous posts, I started out with a very small sample of spawn from ebay just over two months ago. I expanded that out in jars of rye berries and popcorn kernels, and then on July 4th I split a jar between two fruiting bags with pasteurized straw (I also have two bags of blue oysters and opened one of those on Sunday, but no pins from it yet).
This is my first time trying to grow mushrooms so I’ve been researching and asking questions every step of the way, but so far so good! I also have never tasted oysters before so that will be a new experience too. Now I just have to temper my impatience until it’s time to harvest…
[Update] Adding a second pic this morning. This is about 12 hours later and they’ve grown significantly again. For reference, the bag is about the size of a sheet of paper.
[2nd update] It’s been five days now since I opened the bag for fruiting. Here’s a pic of what the mushrooms currently look like. As far as what I’ve read, I expected them to get MUCH larger than this, but with the upturned caps I really believe these are done growing and should have been harvested yesterday (note this image shows the largest clump of the group). Any thoughts?
Pink oysters are so far my favorite mushrooms to grow. They just look so pretty. The flavor is good, too. I was surprised with how light they taste. I just pan sear them in some butter, and they taste like scrambled eggs.
I’m getting a bit nervous today because the caps are already turning up and most of them are still only about 1.5" across… nowhere nearly the size I thought they were supposed to grow to!
You should check all the variables. Make sure the temps aren’t too hot or cold, that the humidity is staying high enough, and that there is a little fresh air exchange happening. I don’t have enough experience to give you any other advice
Thanks, any little bit helps. I didn’t think the pinks needed much fresh air exchange but I can certainly move them. When nothing happened in my bag of blues I moved them to a spot near a fan earlier this week, and they finally pinned today! Guess I’ll try moving the bag of pinks over there too and see if anything changes.
Based on your 2nd update, those mushrooms look done. You should be able to get a good second flush, though.
Thanks, I did just cut them off and put them in the fridge, we’ll fry them up tomorrow to see how they taste but I’m pretty sure they are past done. I taped up this bag and I’ll give it some time to recover before trying to fruit again, but literally all the ping drained out of the straw over the last few days so I think it just drained the mycelium and thats why this batch didn’t grow very large.
Good news is my blues started pinning this morning so I guess the extra airflow helped them, and that bag is just packed solid with mycelium.