Ganoderma lucidum

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@wireme

Have you ever grown reishi?
(Ganoderma lucidum) please don't call it ling chi.

What do you think of this:

http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/the-reishi-mushroom-patch.html

I am seriously considering growing reishi and maitake for their medicinal value.


Yep, have grown them both, reishi is quite easy, maitake is really sensitive to conditions for proper fruiting. Tricky.
I'll elaborate more tomorrow, bedtime.
 

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@wireme

Have you ever grown reishi?
(Ganoderma lucidum) please don't call it ling chi.

What do you think of this:

http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/the-reishi-mushroom-patch.html

I am seriously considering growing reishi and maitake for their medicinal value.

Go for it, you can do it.

As far as the kit you showed, that is a great way to grow your first mushrooms, that's what I did. A few of those fungi perfecti kits got me hooked.
You should realize that you'll be lucky to grow $20 worth of reishi from a $25 kit, plus shipping fees.

For personal use the easiest thing to do would be to order plug spawn and inoculate logs. See these pics. image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg I will tell you more soon, out of time.
 

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I nabbed me a book by Paul Stamets called Growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms.

Looks familiar.
Yeah, good, that's where the pics are from.
Great book with tons of essential info.
The problem with that book is that it's geared towards large scale commercial operations. It can be intimidating, almost seems impossible to set up all the needed infrastructure and equipment. There are lots of DIY, low tech tricks that make it possible to grow on a personal small scale level.
Back to growing for medicinal use. It's useful to know that a lot of medicinal fungi have the same active compounds in the mycelium as they do in the fruiting bodies, more so in some cases.
Look at the Fungi Perfecti supplements, most of them are mycelium derived.
This saves the trouble of fruiting the mushrooms which is a big deal, fruiting chambers with controlled conditions etc are not easy or cheap to build.
You can just grow the mycelium on quality grain, dehydrate and grind into powder.
Reishi has a very fast and aggressive mycelium run, colonizes quickly then is very slow to fruit.
The drawback is that if you don't know what you're doing you may grow and consume unwanted potentially harmful contaminates, mold, bacteria. If you fruit it you know it's Reishi at least!
 

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To save costs to get started you can replace a laminar flow hood with a homemade still air box, ie Rubbermaid with hole in it.
Spawn jars with homemade filter patches, punch holes in lids and cover with tyvek.
If you don't have a pressure cooker to sterilize you can use tynaldization in any large stovetop pot.
Some things require pasteurization only, easy.
Most species have a much wider range of environmental tolerances for spawn run, pinning and even fruiting than the book will lead you to believe.
Cultures, spawn etc can be found from people on Facebook groups nowadays for much cheaper than offered by the big boys. I'll send you a reishi culture on a Petri dish to play with for cost of shipping if you like.
 

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I have some lab equipment. No laminar flow hood but I have a UV air sterilization filter.
Super fine filters.

Canning jars are every bit as good as spawn jars I'm sure. I have water repellent micro filters that easily fit the jars.

Tissue culture lab gubbins also.

The university may have reishi spawn.
If not I'll arrange a delivery address Monday.
 

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What are gubbins?

What are you filtering, an entire room? Clean room type area? You might still need a still air box.
Yep, canning jars, this one is a spaghetti sauce jar reused, tyvek filter over the hole held on with high temp silicone.image.jpg Works fine, tyvek can be effective for about 10 runs, your filters may be better. Wide neck jars are better, easier to shake out the spawn. Especially reishi, it's like rubber when fully colonized, impossible to shake apart if it's left too long.
For making fruiting supplemented sawdust blocks I buy the filter patch bags. image.jpgYou don't really need an incubation chamber, we have these bags colonizing all over the place, cupboards, corners, under beds.....keep the spawn filtered and out of direct sunlight and it will typically work.
 

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Gubbins, in my book are things or parts of things. Stuff.

The filters are for a little box that I use for clean work. The UV generates ozone. Not good for fungi. Hmmm? Thinking..... Thinking...

I have a storage unit that may work for colonization
 

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Gubbins, in my book are things or parts of things. Stuff.

The filters are for a little box that I use for clean work. The UV generates ozone. Not good for fungi. Hmmm? Thinking..... Thinking...

I have a storage unit that may work for colonization

The box should be great, can you turn off the uv while you work and still run the filter?
If you can pour Petri dishes without contaminating them it will be good enough.

Here's a really simple fruiting chamber.
One of these mini greenhouse things or similar home built. image.jpgAnd a humidifier like this. image.jpgMushrooms need fresh air exchange so you set up the humidifier outside the tent so it draws fresh air in. Use tubing to run the mist in. CO2 produced by the mushrooms vents out the bottom. Something like maitake needs more environmental control but reishi do great in that simple setup.
 

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Gubbins, in my book are things or parts of things. Stuff.

The filters are for a little box that I use for clean work. The UV generates ozone. Not good for fungi. Hmmm? Thinking..... Thinking...

I have a storage unit that may work for colonization


Here's another interesting concept for a fruiting chamber, screenshot of a Facebook post I was just looking at, you might have fun playing with this concept, plants providing the O2.
Reishi grow in antler form when CO2 is high/O2 low, this guy has a beautifully formed conk with spirulina providing the O2. FAE is short for fresh air exchange. image.jpg
 
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