The results are in!  Of the three bags we previously set to colonize, only one successfully produced fruits.  One of them was extremely slow to colonize, but in fact, after breaking up some of the large chunks of what had colonized, I can say that it is on the road to colonization once again – almost four months later!  Mycelium, and especially Oyster mycelium, is incredibly resiliant stuff.

First flush

Second flush

I was a bit disappointed that only one bag of three actually produced fruit, but no doubt there’s a learning curve here in knowing and providing an environment which is conducive to mycelial growth, and this takes practice and experience.  So more experiments are coming!  If you have questions about the process or the research, please feel free to message me: dax@zerowastelabs.com

I’d also very highly recommend the community at /r/mushroomgrowers – there are lots of experienced and friendly mushroom cultivators there who are very willing to pass on some advice as well as a wealth of information which already exists in the form of past threads.

Here are some numbers for the bag which produced fruits:

Substrate (spent coffee)	1350 grams
Oyster mycelium (Pleurotus ostreatus)	164 grams
Total substrate	1514 grams
First flush	94 grams
Second flush	85 grams
Final flush (not pictured)	72 grams
Total harvest	251 grams
Biological efficiency (total harvest / total substrate)	17%