So I'm assuming everyone here knows what a gourd is. Anyways I was drinking mate, the mate went flat but I had to get to work so I left the gourd sitting at my table. I have many gourds so I didn't think to clean the one I left. Fast forward to now, about a week later. I check the contents and I see small white mushrooms growing from a well colonized clump of leaves.

How'd this happen? Is straining hot water through the leaves with the bombilla enough to sterilize the leaves or something? Or was this a completely one off thing? All I know is I just drank out another gourd and am letting it sit in the same place. Maybe spent yerba could be used for cubes and the whole pressure cooking the rice could be cut out of the equation?

That would be the greatest thing ever! Although I suspect it was more of a chance occurrence - mushrooms do grow on their own, obviously. The pressure cooking and everything is so that you can guarantee it'll grow here and now.

It probably was just a luck thing, still really exciting to me though. I snapped a pic of a mushroom i plucked from the tea, really tiny thin white one... I'll post it up later. I might consider trying to inoculate the tea with certain spores intentionally once I get some free time.

As far as tea as a substrate, I guess China does this alot for the growing of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. They use green tea as opposed to yerba though. Still both are high in nitrogen content so thats not the far off part.

I hope someone has something to add.

Mushrooms grow naturally, as has already been pointed out. The reason for sterility techniques for indoor cultivation is because you are creating an environment that is perfect for fungus and mold to grow in. Because you do not want any old fungus or mold, but only a specific fungus, you sterilize your materials and then inoculate with spores/mycelium of the particular fungus you desire to grow. In nature, the myc just have to out compete the other fungi and molds, this is why colonized cakes are more resistant to contaminants than uncolonized cakes and why, imo, people get too worried about contamination when casing. As long as you don't do anything too crazy, the crumbled cakes should be relatively hardy and able to fight off potential contams.

I used to worry about sterility hardcore, would innoculate in a closet with gloves and a mask and a can of lysol, every time I tried to grow them my jars became contaminated. Finally, after reading an interesting post on the shroomery, I changed my setup to a simple glovebox for innoculation and don't even worry about sterility other than lysoling the room for birthing and casing the cakes.

Here's the interesting thread I mentioned, I wouldn't follow all of his advice, but he makes a couple of good points.

Sorry, didnt mean to hijack the thread with rants about sterility...the gourd mushrooms sound awesome, it'd be cool if you could post a picture so maybe someone could identify it, or at least suggest a species...

peace
SB

1992
I would like to see a pic of that for sure!! you -could- have a semi-permanent pet fungus if you wanted simply keep your gord damp and fewd with more tea leaves...it's prolly some fungus from the rainforest where the leaves were picked..thats so cool!!

god I love them soo vry much (fungi of all kinds) hehehehe

I heard once that Mate' contains everything needed to support human life. All nutrients ans whatnot.
You really think that mushroom came from the same place as the leaves? Please do post a picture!

Why not try a bulk Mate' substrate!

XTECHRE I am just guessing that the spores cme from the mate' leaves..seems most likely as fast as they grew..
and I was totaly thinking the same thing!! grow a terrarium bulk substrate of mate leaf tea mushrooms! even if they aren't medicinal or otherwise..it would be a cool project..mabey in a fish bowl or something iike that..hwhheeh
and I'd be curious to find out a link to the info you speak of regarding the mate' having all the nutrients for the human body..never heard that before

Heres a picture of the little mushroom that came from the gourd... there were three of them. Sorry about the picture quality but thats my pointer finger tip for reference.

I don't know where the spores came from, could've came up with the tea or could've floated in through my window

how cute!! heheheh

Interesting, I was considering that exact idea after leaving my mate sitting on the counter for too long without cleaning it. Thinking about all of the nutrients in the mate and the kick that I get from it, I think it would be an excellent substrate and am going to test this theory in the coming weeks, I'll let you know how everything rolls. I may even use one of my old gourds to grow in

Colonizing quite nicely, beautiful rhizomorphic threads, about 60%. Ground the mate very fine in coffee grinder and mixed with wet verm, couldn't find my gourd so used tinfoil baking dish, a little slower to colonize but it definitely likes the yerba mate. Just like me!