Well, this is awesome! Despite some setbacks this year, I have a success! My chicken of the woods is forming primordia! As expected, it is growing straight through the filter patch. This is WONDERFUL news! We will see if this becomes an entire fruit. In any case, this is going better than I thought for a first attempt. I will have to re-commit myself to mycology! After all, if I expand and bring in others, more will be possible.
A mushroom grow bag with chicken of the woods beginning to fruit through the filter patch. The small patches growing through are the primordia.
Chicken of the woods mycelium growing in a bag of sawdust spawn
In typical fashion, I selected a difficult goal simply because it is interesting and rare. I decided to make chicken of the woods (Laetiporus spp.) my target indoor cultivation species. Chicken of the woods is notoriously difficult to grow, for a few reasons. First of all, it’s a weak competitor. Other species of fungi and microbe easily overtake its growth, so contamination is a major concern. The environment must be perfectly sterile. It is more finnicky about this than many species. Second of all, growers must induce fruiting in order to grow it indoors. This species is most commonly cultivated on outdoor logs with sawdust plug spawn. Growing it indoors poses a real challenge, but growing it outdoors doesn’t generally produce consistent, commercially viable yields throughout the year. Finally, the mycelium is incredibly powdery and has a weak structure. This can often cause the fruiting body to snap off from the bag before it reaches maturity. So far, I have successfully used liquid culture to inoculate corn grain spawn with Laetiporus mycelium and spawned to bulk sawdust substrate in a grow bag. The mycelium is very powdery, and looks like pale orange sugar. I have a couple different genotypes in my library.
Chicken of the woods mycelium growing on corn grain spawn
Closeup of the mycelial growth in the sawdust substrate grow bag. Notice how powdery it is.
