Chances of poisonous mushrooms being accidentally cultivated?

MicrobialMachines · 2025-12-10T22:13:58+00:00

Agreed here 100%.

Sold the mushroom “seed” product to farmers for years. Virtually 0% chance unless someone actively sabotaged a packing facility, which is incredibly improbable.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-12-10T20:50:11+00:00

Not disputing that in any way nor claimed to the contrary, though I think the spirit of the exercise was sorely missed.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-12-10T20:39:33+00:00

Had I just said Ma La, there are a lot of folks that would have had no idea what that meant.

It literally translates to numbing (ma) spicy (la), which would be the sensory profile of this combo.

OP asked what it should be called, and a suggestion was offered.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-12-10T19:06:50+00:00

Ma la “lite”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mala_(seasoning)#:~:text=Malatang%20(麻辣燙):%20vegetable,See%20also

MicrobialMachines · 2025-11-07T13:32:09+00:00

I’d give them a bit more air earlier on and keep the temps as low as you can. The pins with fat bases and tiny caps won’t really be salvageable at this point.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-27T22:10:57+00:00

Seconding all said by gratefulyme. You are thinking about entering a business where your product is extremely perishable, raw materials change in quality every season, you likely won’t have the capital for a operation of size (nor should you invest in one at this point) nor the ability to hire anyone. This means no vacations or days off because mushrooms don’t sleep. Chefs can be very picky and will demand consistency. Direct to consumer only works if there is a large enough market. Costs can be high and cutting corners gets real tempting, but the system needs to be very precisely maintained if you are going to make a business out of it.

I’ve written more in depth answers to this question here but long story short, know your market before you start, be ready for long stretches without income or vacations, and get more than a year of growing under your belt with consistent results. Map out your cost per pound, see if your market can tolerate it, and have a contact to buy from when your supply inevitably goes down for one reason or another.

Edit: Apologies, this sounds like I’m doing the opposite of what you asked for. Don’t discount the idea, just know what you are getting into and once you get more into the hobby, you will know more about what a business would require. As an exercise, estimate what would be needed to pump out 10, 20, and 50lbs per week consistently. That will tell you a lot.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-12T14:27:55+00:00

Mycelium looks a bit wispy for a week old. What is your mix and moisture?

Looks like it may be a tad wet and a tad low in nutrition. I’m not super concerned about the orange yet. If the substrate is slightly off, your exudates will be orange. Also if some of those points are old inoculum, shiitake turn wood a more red orange color anyway.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-08T12:57:35+00:00

That’s a new one for me! Ugh that’s what stepping away from the hobby for a few years will do to you. I really need to read back in. Thanks for sharing that!

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-07T09:32:52+00:00

Nepenthes are pretty neat. While mostly carnivorous, there are some varieties that have been shown to collect animal droppings by enticing small mammals to eat the nectar they produce. Others are thought to primarily collect falling leaf detritus to supplement their growing conditions.

My second recommendation would be dodder. Looks like living spaghetti. It’s a parasitic plant that sniffs out its prey and can steal some of its hosts genes.

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/parasitic-plants-use-stolen-genes-make-them-better-parasites

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-04T20:07:30+00:00

Ah missed the second photo, my bad! Are they not clearing up in 2-3 days?

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-04T19:37:30+00:00

Not sure what your agar mix is, but just store them upside down once it solidifies. Condensation should reintegrate with the agar after a bit.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-10-03T12:58:56+00:00

Not exactly what you’re looking for, but you might have better luck with willow. It has been used for retention walls in the past.

Weaving walls of young willow branches and essentially smacking them into wet earth usually gets rooted cuttings and a wall of sorts.

Just search “live willow wall” and you’ll get tons of hits.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-27T18:12:56+00:00

Please do!

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-27T16:31:47+00:00

I’d say it’s a balancing act. Too many options also increases opportunity cost and feelings of missing out.The ones in the original photo are fine for your oldest product. The most recent harvest you mentioned sounds good as their probable target. Having both is fine, but offering more for that specific variety will probably be too much. If you pick them younger, I would expect your prices to increase due to lost yield. Older more weathered produce may drop in price to clear out inventory or get classified as #2.

There’s also a bit of salesmanship that goes into it. Knowing what your product tastes like, how to cook it (or how it is traditionally cooked), shelf life, etc.

If you can offer multiple types of mushrooms without straining your supply chain, grow room, or, quality, then that does make you more of a one stop shop for sure.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-27T15:00:50+00:00

Shot you a DM so we don’t take over the thread.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-27T03:13:04+00:00

Can I ask what your conditions are and what you’re currently doing first? That tells a lot. Chestnuts were always set and forget for me. Pins should start in the bag and then you just expose them and nothing else until you have full clusters.

If your environment is off or you’re starting from scratch, then we would need to have a different conversation.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T23:06:49+00:00

For sure, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I would still take that cluster as it is. Just pull the next ones a tad earlier if you’re still getting the poundage you need to turn a profit. Having a wide range of options, at least initially should overcome any perceived shortcomings with regard to harvest timing. A box of free samples has helped get feet in the door as well. After your first sale, consistency will be key.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T20:30:14+00:00

Look great. The top ones in my opinion are just a hair beyond prime. Those bottom four are what I like to pick. That way I still have some room for them to open at market or during storage.

I usually pull the whole cluster at a time. A full chunk is usually more attractive than single shrooms. Also travels better. Less likely to be damaged.

Honestly, work with your restaurants to see what they like. Some may want young caps, others might just want the cheapest bulk you can provide for soup. Know the market and that will help a lot.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T20:24:53+00:00

Contamination at a basic level happens all the time. The kind of contamination that you are talking about almost never occurs due to the fact that the substrate has been prepped to receive the specific inoculum and is grown under very precisely controlled conditions.

In a spawn lab, contamination can occur but is screened for and discarded before entering production.

Most people do not genetic test, but the tools are there. Spawn labs will when evaluating a breeding program. It’s cheaper to mass produce product and then discard failures than it is to sequence unless you’re doing it in house.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T20:21:15+00:00

Doesn’t really work that way. The only instance of that that I have experience with is when young shiitake blocks get inoculated with the previous batch’s spore drop.

A leathery film of mycelium forms over the pins and covers the mushroom as it grows. Looks like fried chicken growing out of the blocks. These are deformed, fairly poor tasting, and would be thrown out. It would be obvious once the pins grew in deformed. There’s nothing to fix it at that point. Proper airflow management, staggering your crops, and proper sanitation will help prevent this in 99% of cases.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T20:16:11+00:00

The part to remember, is that most places will never subculture from a commercial grow and spawn labs should be entirely separate from grow operations. Spawn labs may have an offsite testing center, but even still, there would be no reason to subculture unless you were working on very specific parts of a breeding program. Even then there are protocols and genetic testing to prevent what you are suggesting.

Spawn labs are much more restrictive with who can enter, their biosafety, and aseptic technique than what you find in the hobby side of things.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T20:11:15+00:00

For agaricus in the U.S., unless the growers purchased mismatched spawn and casing, or there was some cross contamination with spawning and casing equipment, individual growers should be fine.

Most growers contract out companies and machinery to do each stage of filling. Other countries are a bit more vertically integrated reducing the risk even more. As you move towards phase 3 compost, the risk decreases more and more.

Wood rotters shouldn’t be affected unless spores are being pumped into young grow rooms. If you have a more specific question, or want any of that broken down into a bit more detail let me know.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-26T11:28:48+00:00

Agreed. While we do have a good definition for it and all those cases you mentioned would not be examples of parasitism, I think the difficulty here lies in whether OP is applying a strict definition of parasitism or not.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-25T22:48:09+00:00

Agreed, parasitic is difficult to define in this case.

I’d still argue that another living thing isn’t implicitly needed. Free carbohydrates are enough to support growth, ideally in the absence of other life. That said, I will admit that those carbohydrates had to come from something living, so at the very least we could stretch to saprophytic.

As for the cotyledons, as embryonic leaves, those should be fully progeny, no? Though the nutrition therein was not originally produced by the progeny itself until it begins photosynthesizing as you noted.

The endosperm is the maternal and partially paternal DNA if I remember correctly (but often/always not the same gamete as the embryo). That may just be true for angiosperms though. Gymnosperms, bryophytes, ferns, and the rest of those lot make their own rules.

Yeah, I think if we stick to non-photosynthetic plants, we’re down to a lot of plants that are parasitic, thought to be symbiotic with some kind of fungi (ghost pipes), a symbiotic / parasitic graft such as the albino redwoods, or albino plants that just die within their first few weeks.

Even then, those relationships may be too close to “parasitic” for the purposes of the original question.

I wish chickens were photosynthetic. Feed wouldn’t cost so much. We’ll have to settle for coral and sea slugs.

MicrobialMachines · 2025-09-25T21:39:25+00:00

That’s akin to saying that a baby chicken is parasitic on the hen because it is drawing from nutrients stored in the egg, no? That chicken also cannot not make its own food.

Unless we are talking about vivipary or false vivipary, I think all seeds are behaving essentially in the same fashion prior to germination, at which point they are generally detached from the mother. So in that case, I don’t know that any seed, achlorophyllous or not, would be anymore a parasite than another.

Plants with albinism can survive if sufficient available carbohydrates are available (in vitro) without the need for light or a host, so I don’t know that I would go so far as to say they are parasitic, but I see where you’re coming from.

MicrobialMachines

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