Here I am in my SAB getup:

I used to wear a full Tyvek suit, but that made me look silly.

A “SAB” is a Still Air Box . . . yep, it’s a plastic tote box, with holes cut in the sides for one’s arms. In combination with copious amounts of bleach, rubbing alcohol, and slightly soapy water, it’s a cheap-ass way to get some amount of sterility, which you need for some mushroom work, like agar plates, grain jars, and sawdust growout. I’m getting about 10-20% contamination level, which is pretty good for basically no money.

As one (and probably the only) mushroom wag put it, “It’s easy to grow fungi, but it might not be the fungus you want.” Luckily, contamination is usually green and quick-growing and easy to detect.

With all that balling going on, the pic isn’t good, but here’s the difference between lovely fluffy huggable white mycelium (left) and ugly horrible obnoxious most likely racialist bacterial contamination (right):

Everything gets an alcohol rubdown before it goes into the SAB. The paper towel is sprayed with slightly soapy water . . . the “slight soap” breaks the surface tension of the water, so more airborne contaminants stick to it.

There’s a definite correlation between contamination levels and the number of languages your paper towel says “Hello” in:

Here are my latest pink oysters, with a “spawn run” (the amount of time between when you mix the grain jars that the mycelium has colonized, with the straw, then pack the mixture into bags, then see mushrooms) of less than 10 days:

Once the mycelium has had enough to eat, it starts to produce the fruiting bodies wherever there’s less carbon dioxide and more oxygen, which is why the mushrooms grow through the Xs cut in the bags. This one was very eager and started to grow through the bag’s filter patch. This is its growth over three days:

Pink oyster omelet for breakfast tomorrow!

Here’s some Black Oysters (a different species), just now fruiting:

My pinkies started with a mycelium syringe, but the blackies started out from a grocery store mushroom I bought back in October . . . so I’ve done a full cycle, mycologically speaking. Pretty exciting (to me!)

Happy Impeachment Day 3!

-R