so, while some people have been known to fruit directly from the grain it's not really an optimal method of production. grain has incredibly limited nutrition for the mycelium so by starting these jars, i'll be able to do a couple things.
One is creating more spawn. Some of the genetics I'll be running are wood lovers and I'm starting the process of propagating a shit ton of spawn for various outdoor beds in the spring. These varieties include psilocybe cyanescens, lion's mane, and reishi. I could do the oysters on wood too but they're so aggressive I'll have a better return by using straw as the substrate instead. The wood lovers take ages to colonize fully but can fruit very prolifically in the right conditions.
The other is to go directly into fruiting substrate. I'll be using a mix of coco coir, vermiculite, and manure for some, and straw for others. Lion's mane and oysters both perform well on straw those prepping the straw is quite the PITA so i likely won't use that for indoor activities too extensively this winter.
The idea behind all of this now is just to get various things kicked off that were a predominant deciding factor in the location of the land I bought earlier this year. Stamets has discussed at length how beneficial fungi is to a permaculture system, and while i don't buy into a ton of the crap permaculture evangelicals spout, I firmly believe introducing name mushroom cultures en masse to a microclimate can have profound positive impacts in the long term.
Plus, weird looking mushrooms sell for a hell of a lot more than boring brown or white mushrooms that everyone is familiar with.
A future endeavor I want to get into as well is making extracts and tinctures. Pound for pound, tinctures and extracts can yield significantly more revenue than selling the mushrooms raw or dry, and they have much better shelf life. That's a whole other discussion though.
