Can I grow shitake from shop bought mushroom?

Can I grow shitake from shop bought mushroom?
Can I use cardboared hot water and the plastic container method which is all over the internet?
Can I use imported mushroom?
What do I do when I have enough mycellium?
Can I do all that in summer?

Edit: I read a bit more: what substrate would I use for shitake
I want to grow outdoors and the technique should not be sterile, hot water method. But I don't want to dabble in a lab.

It is very unlikely that you would be able to successfully create spawn from a shiitake mushroom bought in a store using pasteurization methods.

If you enjoy experiments, you could try anyway and it is possible.  It wouldn't be a regular mushroom cultivation activity, but rather an experiment.

If you have the skills to do sterilized cultivation, it is highly likely that you would be successful in trying to create more spawn from such a mushroom.

John S
PDX OR

that means I have to buy these plugs? Is that a one off investment and you can grow from your homegrown or do you have to keep buying?
It is summer now is it too late?

John Saltveit wrote:It is very unlikely that you would be able to successfully create spawn from a shiitake mushroom bought in a store using pasteurization methods.

John, do note that the OP is not American, and store bought mushrooms may not have undergone the sterilization that Americans are so fond of.  She can always take a spore print from a mushroom cap, and then see if any growth can be induced in a petri dish on a suitable medium.  Once you have hyphae started, then it is only your mycological technique that keeps you from growing any fungi anywhere.

Angelika Maier wrote:that means I have to buy these plugs? Is that a one off investment and you can grow from your homegrown or do you have to keep buying?
It is summer now is it too late?

spawn plugs are already growing mycelium that you implant into a substrate (plugs usually go into logs) and once the log is fully inoculated you get your first mushroom bloom.
In your original question you sounded like you wanted to just buy some mushroom caps and go from there. That would be spores that you then "sprout" in a sterile substrate to get the spawn growing, (like planting a seed from a packet vrs. buying an already growing plant to transplant into your garden bed).

For the first time mushroom grower it is far easier to get good results by using spawn plugs or another spawn containing substrate.

Fungi Perfecti  and  field and forest  are two great companies who have all the information you should have on hand in their catalogs.

If you have a spare room that you can use for growing mushrooms, the season really doesn't matter since you will be controlling the conditions.

Do an online search for mushroom grower companies in Australia so you don't have to worry about customs hang ups. But those two I gave you links to will mail you their catalogs with all that great information.

Good luck and happy mushroom growing

Redhawk

I've used shiitake, oyster and portabella bought from the store right here in California U.S.A. to generate cultures with success.

I've messed around with card board a little bit but I'm not sure what you're referring to, but the card board method works best with the mushroom stem butts.

As far as what I did it was just a traditional live tissue culture on agar using sterile technique. Its helpful when using store bought shrooms to first wipe the outside of the fruit with peroxide before cutting it open. When you make the incision and cut out a piece for the agar, dip the piece that you are going to use, dip it in peroxide before placing it on agar. Let the peroxide drip or dry off a bit before setting it on agar.

The portabella culture (which would have yielded the common white agaricus mushroom) did not fruit, because I used the spawn to colonize sterilized grain. Ports wont fruit on a sterilized substrate because they require the presence of actinomycetes which are found in compost and pete moss among other materials which I didnt use. Pasteurization is the only way to grow ports.

One shiitake that I tried to clone from a store did not grow at all because it was one of the strains bred so that they cant be cultured by another grower.

Once I grew oyster mycelium on cardboard, but it wasn't moving along fast enough for me, so I took a piece of cb that had mycelium growing and transferred that to agar. Once I'd generated spawn with that (via the agar wedges), I nocc'ed up some meadow type grass from an empty lot in a small northern cal town, that had been brushed with a weed eater. It contained wild oats and other common grasses, wild radish and brown leaves. Didn't yield well but it was fun.

John Elliott wrote:

John Saltveit wrote:It is very unlikely that you would be able to successfully create spawn from a shiitake mushroom bought in a store using pasteurization methods.

John, do note that the OP is not American, and store bought mushrooms may not have undergone the sterilization that Americans are so fond of.  She can always take a spore print from a mushroom cap, and then see if any growth can be induced in a petri dish on a suitable medium.  Once you have hyphae started, then it is only your mycological technique that keeps you from growing any fungi anywhere.

Yes, that's why I said it's possible in a pasteurized situation, but more of an experiment than a cultivation production model.  Pasteurizing wouldn't use sterilizing anyway.  Shiitake are tougher than oysters for these experimental, non-sterilized methods.
John S
PDX OR