The End of Chuckbert's Mushrooms

In a comment for Izzy's Net's There's a fungus among us!, Mombert asked if we've heard the end of my mushrooms.

I hadn't shared the end of the mushrooms.

They kind of petered out. I tried rejuvenating them. The instructions said that I could try taking some of the material the mushrooms were growing in and put it into fresh coffee grounds. I went to some Starbuckses and got some of their Grounds for Your Garden bags of used coffee grounds. I mixed in some of the old mushroomy grounds, covered them with the plastic bag (the "perforated humidity tent"), and misted them twice a day.

It grew mold. It started out white. I thought that was a good sign since they say the first thing to appear was going to be "whitish mycelial growth." Then it turned green. That's a bad sign. I kept the bucket of grounds misted for a couple of weeks longer, hoping that the fungus would grow and overwhelm the mold. It never happened. The grounds are now in one of the compost bins.

(The white ball near the back corner is a black widow's egg sac.)

When I got the first batch of grounds out of the bucket the middle was rather dry. I guess I didn't mist them enough (but the top of the grounds was always oozing watery stuff...I thought they must be wet enough if the fungus was getting rid of excess water). Maybe the fungus just dried out and died.

I'll have to try again.