The Differences Between Wild Reishi and Cultivated Reishi, and a Detailed Guide to Cultivation Techniques

Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is a precious traditional Chinese medicinal herb, and the price of wild reishi is far apart from that of artificially cultivated reishi. So how do you tell wild reishi and artificially cultivated reishi apart? What are the techniques for artificially cultivating reishi?

1. How do you tell wild reishi and artificially cultivated reishi apart?

Method 1: Look at the color and shape of the reishi. Wild reishi mostly grows deep in old mountain forests, beside weeds and scattered rocks, and because its growing environment varies, the forms and colors it produces also differ. Artificially cultivated reishi, on the other hand, is mostly fairly uniform, and its color is more or less the same.

Method 2: Look at wormholes. Because wild reishi grows in the wild with no human intervention, it inevitably suffers attacks from insects, so some irregular wormholes are left on the underside of the reishi. Artificially cultivated reishi generally uses pesticides to control insect problems, so it almost never has wormholes.

Method 3: Look at grass stems. Wild reishi often carries natural elements from the wild. The growing environments of wild reishi are all overgrown with weeds, so grass stems inevitably become entangled with the reishi.

Method 4: The mud on the reishi base. When wild reishi is picked it will certainly carry soil, and the soil is very compact and hard to break apart. And wild reishi is certainly not all collected from one place, so the soil it carries will certainly not be soil from one place.

2. Techniques for artificially cultivating reishi

1. Site selection

Reishi can be cultivated indoors or outdoors; generally, substitute-material cultivation is done indoors, and short-log cultivation is done outdoors. Because the optimal temperature for reishi cultivation is 25°C-28°C, the site should be chosen to have sufficient light in spring and autumn and to be cool in summer. A semi-basement is even better suited to reishi's requirements for temperature and humidity. Outdoors is best under tree shade, or artificial shade sheds can be set up.

2. Seasonal scheduling

Short logs can be inoculated from March to April; substitute material can begin inoculation and cultivation in late April to early May, with inoculation finishing in late July to early August, and harvesting finishing in early October.

3. Making logs and running mycelium

(1) Cultivation material formulas:

Formula 1: hardwood sawdust 78%, wheat bran (or rice bran) 20%, sugar 1%, gypsum 1%;

Formula 2: cottonseed hulls (or sweet potato vine residue) 78%, wheat bran 15-20%, gypsum 1-2%, sugar 1%, urea 0.4%, superphosphate 0.6%.

The water content of the above cultivation materials should be kept at 60%, with a pH value of 5.5-6.

(2) Bagging and sterilization

Use low-pressure polyethylene plastic bags, size 60 cm × 15 cm, thickness 4-5 silk, each bag holding 1 kg of dry material; when bagging, it must be packed firmly. For small-scale cultivation, you can bag by hand while pressing the material down with a wooden stick; for large-scale cultivation, a bagging machine can be used. After bagging, tie the bag opening tightly and seal it by melting. Bag on the same day, sterilize on the same day. For sterilization, raise the temperature to 100°C and hold for 10-12 hours.

(3) Inoculation and mycelium running

After the bag temperature drops to 30°C, inoculate under aseptic operation in an inoculation box or inoculation room. Inoculation method: use a sterilized punch to make 5 holes on the bag surface, arranged at equal distances in a straight line, with a hole diameter of 1.2-1.5 cm; then use tweezers to pick up a small piece of spawn and quickly insert it into the hole, and stick a 12 sq cm piece of adhesive tape over the hole opening. Each bottle of spawn can inoculate 80-100 holes. The inoculated logs are immediately placed in the cultivation room for incubation (the cultivation room is first disinfected with formaldehyde, and the temperature is controlled at 22-25°C). After 5 days of cultivation, arrange the logs in a “well” shape or a triangle, with 8-12 layers per row, 3-4 bags per layer, and turn them once every 5-6 days. When the inoculated mycelium has grown to a diameter of more than 2 cm, uncover one corner of the adhesive tape to add oxygen. Uncover only 1-2 holes per log each time. After 45-60 days of cultivation, when white or yellow raised lumpy masses appear on the surface of the mycelium substrate, it indicates that physiological maturity has been reached and the logs can be moved to the field to produce mushrooms.

4. Outdoor layout

Choose an open area with good ventilation and sufficient water, or a paddy field after harvest, as the mushroom yard. The mushroom yard should be disinfected and sterilized, and insects killed, in advance. The paddy field should be drained early to dry the field, then ditches dug and beds made, with soil pits 5-6 cm deep dug on the bed surface for burying the logs. Set up a simple frame over the bed, about 2 m high, and spread thatch, reeds, etc. over the top and around the sides, to make it a mushroom yard with three parts sun and seven parts shade. Remove a 3 cm × 20 cm piece of plastic bag from the back of the inoculation opening, then place the logs into the soil pits on the bed surface with the inoculation openings facing up, with 4-5 cm between bags. After arranging the bags, cover with 2-3 cm of sandy loam, then arch long bamboo strips over the bed and cover with plastic film.

5. Field management

Within 3-5 days after burying the bags, there is no need to disturb the plastic film; when the surface soil temperature exceeds 28°C, uncover the film for ventilation. After 5 days, gradually increase ventilation, lifting the film 2-3 times a day for 20-30 minutes each time, and gradually increase this afterward. If the covering soil turns white, spray water together with uncovering the film for ventilation; the amount of water sprayed should bring the covering soil's water content to 25%, that is, the soil particles have no white cores. After small mushroom buds form, spray water 1-2 times daily inside the frame to maintain a relative air humidity of 85-95%. After the cap differentiates, take care when spraying water to keep it from falling on the caps as much as possible. When the fruiting body's cap stops growing, it has reached the maturity standard, and the first batch is harvested for processing. After harvesting the first batch of mushrooms, increase ventilation to promote recovery of mycelial growth, and spray heavy water to promote the formation of mushroom buds. Management afterward is the same as before, and a total of 3 batches of reishi can be harvested over the whole cycle.