It turns out most oyster mushrooms prefer growing sideways outside of
a tree, bag, bucket, whatever. King oysters are the exception and
grow upright like many other mushrooms. This increases chances at
having a good yield on a flat surface. Another attractive
characteristic is that they're the largest of their family and have a
more neutral taste.
## Preparation
I've pondered between ready-made spawn and liquid cultures, but went
with wood spawn and mixed it with pasteurized coco coir. This turned
out to be less than ideal, the vendor's info material sent along with
the spawn told me wood spawn is intended for non-sterile substrates
and grain spawn works better for the sterile kind. In the worst case
it will not start developing mycelium at all and I'll have to retry
with grain spawn.
## Growth
It's been four days, nothing so far. I keep misting them twice a day
and will mist a bit more often as there's three hot days coming up.
Think I'll keep doing that for two weeks in total and if there's still
nothing, retry with grain spawn.
# 2020-10-28
## Supplementation
I've read up a bit more and the weak rhizomorphic growth of the
mycelium towards water suggests, that the wood spawn didn't provide
nearly enough nutritients for this species. For this reason I bought
plenty of wheat/oat bran and mixed it under. This helped with growth,
but it after a week it turned into what appears to be pin mold: Thin
and whispy mold with black dots on the ends. There's an intensive sour
smell, too.
It seems there are no shortcuts to take for oysters: Prepare sterile
bags of spawn, supplemented if it's king oysters. Contamination is the
enemy. If I retry, then it will be any other oyster kind as they don't
need sub-room temperatures to fruit.
