Producing Spawn From Stem Butts
Technique 2: Producing spawn from stem
butts
An alternative to starting with spores is to start with stem
butts. This technique works well for morels and oyster mushrooms
and allows you to clone a mushroom strain. (Using spores allows
"cross-pollination" (not really, but close enough) similar to how
gathering seeds from butternut squash grown near a pumpkin would result
in a new variety.)
First, gather your mushroom carefully, being sure to pull up the
bulbous base and a bit of the root/hair-like growth branching out from
the base of the mushroom --- this area is called the stem butt.
Cut the stem where it beings to narrow above the butt and discard the
top (aka, eat it). The stem butt can then be used to make spawn
in several ways, the ones I'm most interested in being:
The Cardboard option --- soak the
corrugated cardboard for an hour in hot water, then place it in a
container (an old sink or cardboard box works well) with drainage holes
in the bottom and a loose lid. Place stem butts on top of the
soaked cardboard, four inches apart, and cover them with more soaked
cardboard. Put the container on the ground in a shady place and
incubate for 4 to 8 months, adding new soaked cardboard as necessary to
expand the spawn.
The Dowel option --- Soak
furniture dowels (from the hardware store, I'm assuming) in water for a
few days, then drain off the excess water. Fill a cardboard box
with the soaked plugs and push mushroom butts in, stem side down, so
that the plugs are about 4 inches apart. Put an inch or two of
soaked dowels over top of the butts and leave the box outside on the
ground to incubate for six months. By then, the spawn should have
colonized clumps of plugs --- remove and use those clumps, mix the
remaining plugs up, and wait another month until they're colonized and
can be used.
The Natural option --- For
ground-dwelling mushrooms, just plant the stem butts in the ground in a
new area to start a patch. This is definitely something I plan to
try with the morels I find this spring!
| This post is part of our How to Cultivate Mushrooms for Free
lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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