I saw that on TV is it a real thing that works?
Yep, some of the one's I've seen are 'shroom in a bag' kind of things. Basically you have the stuff that the mushrooms are growing in bagged up and you cut slits in it, and they grow from that. Which works, they're sterilized 'fertilizer' and grow really well.
If you go with dowels/plugs that you put into a tree trunk, it's unlikely you'll get 100% growth. Trees aren't normally sterile environments and the mycelium needs a solid footing to take off. Plus, the tree could have other infection vectors on it (random other fungi/bacteria/etc). All in all, hard to sterilize a log, which is why the starter kits are more expensive.
If you've never grown mushrooms of any kind, the bag starters are the way to go. I prefer lions mane & shitake, but I hear they have lots of starters.
I've grown them for about half my life. You couldn't have worded this better. You can grown them off of pretty much any plant material, so long as it's prepared right. I've even seen them grown on old books. Sterilization is key.
Thanks. What I didn't mention is the rabbit hole. You start with a bag starter and eventually wind up with weird cloudy syringes in your fridge. And then the 'why didn't I label this when I put it in here' scenario, wondering is that shitake/oyster/lions mane/etc. Then just inoculating a strata just to find out.
One thing I always ran into was bad water. I had grown indoors (it gets ridiculously hot here) and the water is apparently just chock full of nastiness. Currently have a 4/55gal barrel water filter on the bench to be made. That should sort out most of the issue there and provide suitable drinking water.
My yard grows a shitload of mushrooms, none edible as far as I can tell, I do have lots of downed trees available. Thanks for the info, I'll check into it.
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