What, no mirrored ceiling over the back seat?
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Finished. I’m going to get a better pull and maybe an original clapper if if I can find one. Any project like this that I can finish and walk away with all my fingers and no hospital visit is a good project.
I may braid my own pull if I can find a decent how to. My dad was able to braid and splice rope for anchors and other nautical uses. He’d be handy right now.
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Pink Oyster mushroom spawn arrived today! This weekend will be pasteurizing and sowing. Yay!
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I’m still waiting for my oak shavings from my friend with the lathe. Got my buckets though
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So here is my pasteurization set up
Alternating layers of chips, coffee grounds and grain spawn
Three buckets full!
Put in a shady spot, and in a few weeks, there will be mushrooms.
Need to point out that any real mushroom growers are probably pulling their hair out right now, because i am not using sterile technique and such. For me, in my climate and with these mushrooms, it works. Oysters are incredibly aggressive and will outcompete most unwanteds, and pink oysters love heat, so VA summers are just fine with them. I have tried some others and gotten poor to no results. So i stick with a winner.
Tonight i will pasteurize another batch and do 3 more tomorrow morning. Fun times!
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I worked up a Teenage Fanclub cover if anyone’s into that sort of thing: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/n7GgExpRLNNt387D9
Edited for spelling.
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Clearly you don’t drill holes in your buckets. Do the mushrooms just pop out of the top?
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No, there are 1/4" holes drilled all over the sides. The 'shrooms grow out through those. I didn’t take close-ups, but yes, lots and lots of holes. If you zoom in on the pic, you can see them
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The race is on!
I think I’m a week or two ahead of you, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but fingers crossed.
Do you add water, ever? We’ve been away a bunch since starting them, so I haven’t really been doing anything except to move them to a shadier spot when I saw they were getting more sun exposure than expected in the first spot.
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No, the chips are fully saturated, and will stay moist throughout. Last year, when i emptied the spent chips around my trees they were still damp.
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How much grain spawn did you use for these six buckets? Do you have a favorite variety of oysters?
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I used 4#/3 buckets. Probably (certainly) could get away with less. I have tried several strains, but the pink oysters do the best in my climate with my technique. Mostly due to their aggressive, take no prisoners attitude. They are the mint of the mushroom world. And the pinks do well in heat. I would love to grow yellows or kings, but they just don’t take heat as well and our springs are too short to get anything from them. If I had a more climate controlled grow space, it would probably work, and I might do some this winter in my cheese cave, but for outside cultivation, pinks are the bomb.
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You have a cheese cave?!
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I have an old disused cistern attached to the cellar that sometime in the past had an entrance put into the side. It’s about 8-10 ft underground and holds pretty consistent temps. So, I use it as a cheese cave. One of the advantages to having a 125+ year old house!
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I finally got around to this project: a rack for our 'yaks!
There’s even room for a woodpile underneath.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple years now, just been too lazy. But on our last trip, I found a live mouse in my kayak, which provided the impetus to finally stop storing our boats on the ground.
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This isn’t new, but as long as I’m posting about boats, here’s my dirt-cheap cartop rack for two kayaks.
Basically just two studs, built up with 1x4s to fit the car’s rooftop rack, tied to the car’s rack with short pieces of webbing. I’ve got cam buckle straps permanently attached to the center of each crossbeam, sized so the buckle falls conveniently on the outside for easy tightening.
Ugly, but so easy to use, and rock solid. I don’t even tie down the ends.
I’ve been tying boats on top of cars for 30 years and finally I’ve got a good system.
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I made something similar for carrying sheet materials:
The carrier bolts on over my roof rack crosspieces and helps keep the sheets from sliding around. You can just make out the clamps here:
The strap clamps anchor the stack to the carrier (I’ve tucked the loose end into the door in picture two, but the strap doesn’t go through the car). Threaded endstops at the rear make sure the load stays where it’s supposed to.
As an added bonus, the carrier makes loading plywood easy- just rest the upper end of the sheet against the carrier and slide it forward.
I intended to make a more rigid version out of aluminum extrusion, but as with so many things, once a working solution is in place it’s exponentially harder to find time for improvements
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It’s said that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
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Definitely.
OTOH, those location tabs vibrate like crazy when the carrier is empty and I’d rather not have my imperfect material and construction choices become the enemy of the people behind me on I-95.
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