Agrocybe Aegerita or Black Poplar is said to have antifungal antibiotic compounds in it. It was probably one of the first mushrooms to be cultivated by man. It is a subtropical species, but occasionally grows wild in TN. They are delicious and fruit abundantly, if you are lucky enough to find a tree that has them on it. They fruit in the summers months. Uncommon, but an excellent edible.
Substrate: Hardwood Chips, Sawdust, Hardwood Logs
Colonization/Fruiting Temperatures: 70-80F/50-60FF
This is a good flavored mushroom that fruits readily within a completely sealed growbag. This is good news for budding mycologists that don’t want to worry about contamination and sterility problems. The complete life cycle can be contained and observed in the sealed sterile growbag environment. We ran a few tests and found that this species will fruit weakly within a sealed Grain Based growbag but produces far better results in a wood-based bag. Fruiting was stimulated when the bag was exposed to fairly cool temperatures around 50-60 degrees F.
Advanced growers with good climate controlled fruiting chambers may want to apply a casing layer to increase yields. After two flushes the Wood Based growbag was buried outdoors under some vegetable plants which resulted in a small crop of mushrooms. |
