following up with the results of this experiment:
the lion’s mane jars in the shotgun fruiting chamber did produce fruits, but these fruits got some dark contamination. first one jar, then soon after, all the jars. we chose not to eat any of the fruits. we also saw a fly flying around the chamber and wonder if this might have been a contamination vector.
*images of lion’s mane fruits with contamination
the reishi jars in the monotub looked good, but we never saw any fruits appear. in the same time period, the bags of reishi we also made began producing many fruits. eventually, due to having limited space growing in the bedroom, and seeing quicker results from the reishi bags, we composted the reishi jars. possible it still could have eventually worked, or that the fruiting conditions in the monotub could have been improved in some way.
*image of reishi jars in the monotub
*image of fully colonized reishi and lions mane bags
*images of some early reishi fruits
the reishi made beautiful antlers inside the bag, and eventually we cut the bags open and put the open bags into a fruiting chamber we made using an old martha green house with a humidifier and fan on a timer
*image of reishi in the fruiting chamber
eventually we harvested the two reishi bags, after they had released brown spores (perhaps it would have been better to harvest them earlier, but we dried the reishi, and are still planning to make reishi tea from the harvest, today)
the lion’s mane bag also contaminated before it produced fruits
we now have another round of reishi and and lions mane bags fully myceliated, will see how the next batch goes
