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Our Pearl Oyster is a first-generation Pleurotus ostreatus isolate: soft gray-tan caps in overlapping shelves, a tender bite and the mild, savory flavor most people mean when they say oyster mushroom. If you're growing to eat, this is the oyster we'd hand you.
More tender than Blue Oyster and milder than King Trumpet. It's the restaurant oyster, made for butter and garlic.
It grows on straw and cardboard, but hardwood sawdust gives noticeably heavier flushes and thicker caps.
It fruits at 60–70°F, so it runs well through fall and winter alongside Blue Oyster.
Let the syringe reach room temperature, then shake it gently to break up and spread the mycelium through the broth.
Flame the needle until it glows, let it cool a few seconds, and wipe the injection port with the included alcohol pad.
Use 2–3cc per quart jar or 3–5cc per 3–5 lb grain bag. One 10cc syringe inoculates about 2–4 containers.
Keep it at 70–75°F in the dark. Shake once at about 30% colonization to speed things up.
Give it time: Pearl takes 18–30 days to fruit once conditions start, longer than the summer strains, then produces heavily. Slow pins aren't a problem.
From our lab to your grainRun it into jars with wide-mouth cultivation lids or your own lids with self-healing injection ports. Spare 16G needles and sterile Luer Lock syringes are sold separately.
Use 2–3cc per quart grain jar and 3–5cc per 3–5 lb spawn bag. One 10cc Pearl Oyster syringe inoculates roughly two to four containers. Using more doesn't speed colonization much; it just uses up the syringe.
12–14 days at 70–75°F. Shake once at about 30% colonization to even out the run.
Hardwood sawdust gives the heaviest flushes and thickest caps. It also fruits on straw, wood chips and cardboard, but the yield gap versus supplemented sawdust is large.
Both are Pleurotus ostreatus, but they're different strains. Pearl has softer gray-tan caps and a more tender, milder bite. Blue is darker, colonizes faster, resists contamination better and holds its shape in a hot pan.
Refrigerate it at 35–45°F in the bag it shipped in and never freeze it; freezing ruptures the cells and kills the culture. Bring it to room temperature and shake gently before you inject.
Liquid culture is living mycelium from an isolated culture, so it skips germination, colonizes days faster and gives genetically consistent fruits. Spores have to germinate and pair up first, which is slower and more variable from grow to grow.
Liquid culture is living mycelium, so every syringe leaves our lab in a foil-lined insulated mailer. The insulation buffers it against summer heat in a delivery truck and against sub-freezing winter temperatures, so it arrives viable either way.
When it arrives: refrigerate the syringe at 35–45°F until you're ready to inoculate. Never freeze it. Bring it to room temperature and shake gently before use.
Price: $12.50
Price: $15.00