Ulrich Krüger is involved in the cultivation and breeding of various species of mushrooms, particularly the exchange and cultivation of rare species. He has developed expertise in cultivation techniques and working with agar and liquid cultures, which has led him to found a company based on this knowledge and driven by his passion for mycology.

https://www.steintaler-edelpilz.de/

My Name is Ulrich Krüger. I’m the owne of a small mycelium company called Steintaler Edelpilz, closely south of Hamburg. I live in the forest. I startet to grow mushrooms ten years ago. We have been a small community of biologists and medicinals which decided not to go the usual way. Many people startet growing mushrooms with unsterile substrates, like coffee grounds, some woodsticks, or whatever. We decided the other way round, we start top sterile from the very beginning. That was a good decision, we buld up our first flowhood an as a first attempt bought some super market mushrooms. Poured our first agar in front of that flowhood, inoculated those petri dishes. Like forty to fifty plates. One week later we said “Wow!”. We did not have one single contamination, which for the beginner is sensational. Our decision to make it sterile from the beginning was the right choice, because I see rarely contaminations if I’m working in the proper sterile way.

We started to grow different mushrooms. First of all easy to grow oysters and pink oysters, and pio pino which we found quite easey then. We had a grow tent in the outside which was quite well clavetized. We had enough humidity and fresh air. The next mushrooms had been lions mane and then we started with reishy. I found out this my favorit mushroom for many reasons. I took it as a medicine.

I started to work on genetics. I bought genetics from all over the world. I mad contact to growers from america, thayland, russia, and all over europe. I collected strains. I baught some industrial strains which I payed a lot for and this was my bank. I put those mushrooms on petri dishes an interchanged them with other species which I got from all over the world. So if you go to canada and by a king oyster in the supermarket there the possibility is good that this mushroom went over my table.

They didn’t have that good king oyster there. They had only old species or not really good fruiting species now they have a good one. So that was my approach to get the cultures back. So I got for this sensational king oyster I received the Sparracis crispa in return which is hard to fruit. If you have Sparracis crispa, Krause Glucke in Germany, if you find it the chance to get it to fruit is below 2%. The chance even to get mycelium from that mushroom is hard. So now I’m in the position to have more than 200 species and different strains.

I started the idea to start a business with it finally because I made the I was giving a lot of time into that knowledge about breeding and agar works and liquid cultures and I was not working at the time so my pockets were empty. So I started my business, my shop Steintaler Edelpilz where you can buy more than 80 species of.

You can buy the overrated in the sense of etability pink oyster. The main breeder for it in belgium just sell the mushroom for decoration, not as a food mushroom.

[points to some picture of mushrooms] It is still shiny if I polish it. It’s standing in a case in my living room. This culture is seven years old. This is ganoderma lucidum also.

[points to some picture of reishy mushrooms] This is a sample grown by the expert world wide Ryan Paul Gates. He is the owner of the Terrestrial Fungi. He is a real pioneer. He would fit in here very perfectly. Because he was and is a person who shared his knowledge. He brought the cordiceps to the western world. You could only buy cordiceps in Thayland for a lot of money and you had to sign that you are not giving away the culture to anybody. Cordiceps cultures remain in fruitability only for a short period, only 4 to 6 months. If you tranfer it to other cultures in petri dishes it looses the abiltity to fruit very fast.

He learned to hybridize some wild american cordiceps. Nowadays he is offering guaranteed fruiting strains every week. Cordiceps is becoming a topic in the western world now.

This [points to some picture of ganoderma mushrooms] is his work. I send him some culture and he made this out of that. This was just engineering good fruiting room with the ability to switch CO2 content to higher levels. He also found an important point: all Ganodermae a very light sensitive. You can easily grow sculptures out of it by working on the light source. I show you some more samples.

[points to some picture of big mushrooms] This is stolen from a chinese website. They bury the logs an let them come out on only on place instead of many places. I guess they work with some lie whatsoever.

[points to some picture of mushrooms coming out of a fake scull] This foto is from a friend in singapur. This is […] just a fruiting culture and he carved it so that it looks like a real scull.

[points to some picture of Ganoderma lingzhi mushrooms] I started later in 2019 with Ganoderma lingzhi, which is the original reishy.Ganoderma lucidum is only calles reishy by accident because reishy is a japanese word. Ganoderma lucidum is definitly not growing more east than Beijing. Not in Japan. If you check older pictures drawn by artists 2000 years ago which yu can find in the traditional chinese medicine, you will find out that the original reishy described there is not looking like the Ganoderma lucidum. The mycological world decided in 2012 this mushroom which is formerly called Ganoderma sichuanense to call it from now on Ganoderma lingzhi to have a reference which is the original reishi species. It is the mushroom of immortality. 1500 years ago in china if you find a fruiting body in the field you had to bring it to the local policeman. He was then in charge to bring it to the emperors palace because only the emperor was allowed to drink a tea of the mushroom - nobody else.

Now we come to the king of the shwo, Ganoderma multipileum. It grows into antler formation without any help from men. Other species of Galoderma don’t do this alone, you have to cut them, split them, serveral technique possible. But this [points at the picture of an antlered mushroom] is only possible with Ganoderma m. I have the strain with me, I have [hahaha]. The others also, I have some liquid cultures for everybody.

Ganoderma preferably grows on hard wood. But someone found out that a combination of wheat straw and sawdust from hardwood gives higher results in some wanted substances like poly saccharide, beta glucan and also ganodermic acid. The last is significally higher if you use wheat straw as cosubstrate.Very good substrate supplement is also sweet beet pellets or luzerne, alfalfa pellets. But the prime is timothy hay (dt. Wiesenlieschgras).

I have birch porly spores. I found some infected birch and broke it down completely. I placed it somewhere. Half a year later I have this giant birch porly pores. I have it in the lab to prepare a tea.

I also have to give away a box of petry dishes which I use for controls. They have no high value for cultures but they will work. I can give this away for anybody for free.

Thank you very much! [applause and cheering]

If anybody is interested I also braught some grainspawn from organic week/weak(???). And some yellow oysters, grey oysters and shitake.

You can buy Sparassis crispa strains from china meanwhile. People who were successful with fruiting it just put the petri dishes directly on the substrate. But it is slow.

[Some more detailed q and a follow.]