Wrapping Up the MPS

A substrate rack inside the MPS with the walls attached.

Today we wrapped up our first Sierra Leonian MPS-- both literally and figuratively. We finally attached the walls of the structure, as well as all three doors. We purchased additional tarps and added in the dividing walls within the structure to create the three room design. The only thing left to do is add roll up bars to the tarps; these will be utilized between flushes to air out the structure.

We spent a lot of time in the market today, scouring Makeni for mushrooms for sale. None of the food market vendors had any mushrooms, as they are not currently in season, but a supermarket about a kilometer away had some. The walk over was long but not for nothing, as we found canned mushrooms in stock. The can sells for 18,000 Le, or about $2, which is our first insight into the currently existing market for mushrooms.

Canned mushrooms for sale at supermarket.

We also inoculated the grain that we pressure cooked yesterday with oyster mushroom plug spawn. This jar is now incubating and will hopefully be fully grown in a week. We started soaking more grain to rinse, boil, and dry tomorrow. When taking a look at the grain spawn we brought from the US, the culture is still fully white and healthy looking, but has additional growth that seems similar to the pins of mushrooms. If these growths are mushrooms forming, this gives us an idea of how long our spawn is viable as seeds.