My experiment is about the best kinds of materials to grow the mycelium on. To begin with experimentations I started off trying different kinds of wood to see if the process I do is correct and without any contamination.
I grew Mycelium on normal oak, frensh oak, american oak and ebony oak.
These resulted in a pretty good 4 month grow.
All of these I also grew in bags and are still growing, so by now it’s been almost two months. The forth one I only grew in a bag so that’s why it’s missing on these pictures.
To try out a form I made a mold which is made out of rubber. It worked out pretty well as well but it’s not so stable as it should be. Therefore I tried to add polyester liquid to it but it didn’t imporved the strenght.
Some months later I’m now starting to grow on Mais flakes, optical glass fiber and a thin long robe. These will be the same forms as the first tryouts and will be tangible. Next to that I also started growing in small cups of which I wont be able to take out the result but just see through how its’s growing. In the smaller cups I’m trying out
These cups contain;
- Loofah, which is the structure of a fruit that is used as a bio sponge.
- Robe (cotton)
- Fern from the woods.
- PLA + Wood filament printed out without being glued together.
- leafes from the trees in the woods
- Ordinary grass from the garden.
So far progress (2weeks)
The first times I tried, so the first pictures, I cooked all the wood types in seperate cookers; the small cups I cooked in a biger one and let the steam kill the baterials.
What I learned so far growing the mushroom is that the longer I leave it to it’s work the better it grows and the more it spreads around the material.
So far I see I can decent grow Mycelium and I’m allready working on a bigger project. This time I’ll need some more materials and Mycelium.
Sneakpeak;
So far Mycelium.
About Kombucha,
The moment I started growing the mycelium I was allready making Kombucha as a drink. I used a bottle that was too sour to grow a little guy on.
In the drying process I kind of burned it by baking to high temperature.
Quite dissapointing, buttt I learned something unexpectedly. As the liquid on which the Kombuch grows contains acids, you can clean with it.
On the picture you can see the spot on which I dried the little guy in the oven. The metal plate is completely back to it’s original color. Cool right!
but ok, cleaning the plate with acid right away instead of cooking a Kombuch piece on it is a bit more efficient:).
At the moment I’m growing a larger piece just to try it out. Results will be uploaded later on.
Cheers!!
