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Pre-Boxed growing kits?

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HumbleTraveler

HumbleTraveler

Rising Star
Is this literally as simple as buy the kit, add spores, and follow the instructions? Cause as a first timer, this is appealing. This site has gotten GREAT reviews and feedback.

Myco.ca Free Spore Network - Free spore syringe give away


It seems...too easy, no?? It doesnt mention anything about "liquid culture" like Ive read about though. Does that grow kit really come with everything needed?

From the site link above****
"Description
This is the lowest priced beginner kit available that includes everything you need (except spores/culture) to grow almost any kind of mushroom. Just because its cheaper in price than the other kits does not mean it is lacking in performance or quality.

Proven to be a reliable and effective growing system.

The Mushbox Myco101 mushroom growing kit is a good starting kit for beginners wanting to experiment with the PF style substrate jars. The fruiting chamber is a little bit smaller so it can't hold a larger grow like the Mushbox Casing Kit. However you can still use smaller casing trays as well as regular mycelium cakes to fruit mushrooms.

This mushroom growing kit comes complete with:

1 incubation system.
1 fruiting chamber w/ filter.
1 submersible heater.
1 case of 12 substrate jars.
1 analog thermometer.
1 bag of perlite.

Each container measures approx. 16.5" L X 11.5" W X 9.6" H. And you can fit around 28 of the Mushbox PF style substrate jars, or 6 half gallon rye grain jars in the incubator. The fruiting chamber can fruit approx. 6 cakes at one time or 2 small casing trays. People have yeilded 12-16 ounces of fresh edible oyster mushrooms using this growing kit in less than 45 days."
 
Grow kits= waste of money IMO.

As a beginner, you can learn a lot more by the DIY approach.

This stuff isn't rocket science...
 
So, whats really the difference between PF/DIY and one of the preboxed kits? They seem like they come with everything in a package, no? Instead of buying everything from 10 vendors, it all comes from one. Or am I missing something?

Im not concerned so much about the level of difficulty so much as Im concerned about keeping costs budget friendly. I want something simple thats going to work because I dont want to be a month in and all the sudden stuff starts to go wrong and I just wasted X dollars and a whole month.
 
The kits have the advantage of being convenient (as you said, everything from one vendor). DIY methods have the advantage of being less expensive. Granted, buying everything from scratch to start the PF tek isn't going to be that much cheaper than one of the kits. But doing the PF tek from scratch can produce a much higher yield than the kits, if done right. Not to mention the fact that most of the required materials for DIY teks are reusable, so one's second grow would require a much smaller investment than their first.

All that being said, I am not opposed to the grow-kits. My first grow was with a grow-kit, and I could not have been happier with the results. Money well spent, IMO. I think the kits could be a good option for people who do not have the time or energy to invest in DIY methods, and don't mind shelling out a little extra dough in the name of convenience.

I do agree that one is likely to learn a lot more from the DIY methods than from a grow-kit.
 
Great answer, thanks Entheo! What kind of difference in yield are we talking from PF DIY to the boxed kit?

Also, what really are the biggest differences between DIY and prebox'd kits. What steps exactly are missing from the prebox kits that one would otherwise become more immersed and learn more from the DIY?

Does the preboxed kit require pressure cooking? Or is it truly as simple as add spores and grow?
 
Each 230ml cake produces 2-4g dried cubensis over 1-3 flushes. If your incubator is of a good size, you can fit 12 cakes in. That's around 30g or an ounce dried. You have to fan and mist twice daily at least .

PF tek is:

- Make substrate (vermiculite + brown rice flour)
- Fill Jars and pressurecook them
- Innoculate with spore syringe
- Wait until white
- Put them in Incubator
- Fan & Mist
- Harvest

The Grow Kit you posted is an unusual one, as it seems to follow PF tek. Nothing wrong with it...the pros are presterilized substrate and that its all packaged together. If you got more money and less time, this might not be a bad option as you can reuse most of the parts. Just know, that buying a couple of jam jars and plastic boxes will come cheaper than 99$. Not including your manual labor sterilizing the substrate of course.
 
or buying the pressure cooker - which can be quite expensive^^... But a pressure cooker really is a must, if you're going to get into growing mushrooms, so you might as well invest in one...

IMO the DIY variant is so much more fun than pre-packaged stuff - you get to plan and set up everything according to your design, and watch how stuff grows from there.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with a kit just to kind of see how it goes, if you don't mind spending the extra money once you decide to keep growing...
 
Enoon said:
or buying the pressure cooker - which can be quite expensive^^... But a pressure cooker really is a must, if you're going to get into growing mushrooms, so you might as well invest in one...
Click to expand...

you can get a PC cheap on craigslist, ebay or a second hand shop. I spent $20 on my gigantic one... and you don't even really NEED a PC for PF, you can fractional sterilize the jars, you just have to be more on your game about it.

Early on I tried a couple of kits and found that the genetics in the spores that they provided to be very poor. I ate a TON of fungus and got barely a body load. I did my own PF and grew Golden Teachers and had a much better experience.

Just my $0.02...
 
I have golden teacher spores coming 😁 And thank you to every one for chiming in.

I dont mind spending the money now just to get everything from one source.

So I think obiguhl hit it saying this pretty much follows the PF tek, and based off of having just read the PF tek, it seems like everythings ready to go and waiting for spores yes?

It comes with substrate already packaged, so I dont need a PC right now. All I need to do is innoculate, incubate, fruit, fan and mist, harvest/flush, and even possibly try adding a Dunk in? Which seems to really increase the magic of the following flushes, yes?

Also, does the fruiting bin need to be disinfected as well, or is the super meticulous cleanly stage only necessary for the jars/inoculation stage?
 
I have a question about reusing those grow kits. Would it be possible after cleaning them in a pressure cooker and using new substrate?
I don't like the grow kits but I like the material they come in.
 
You don't need a PC for PF tek. Any big metal pot will do. Anything with a lid which you can boil water in. PC is only needed for grain or seed. Y'all are trippin.
 
I used a PC for everything. If I could have, I would have put myself in there, just to make sure I don't contaminate stuff, lol. I was super meticulous about sterilizing. A PC is also great for sterilizing your tools. But yeah, I moved away from PF tek pretty quickly since tubs just gave a lot more yield for just a little more effort.

However, in general, once the mycelium has a hold over the substrate and is ready to fruit, it's not terribly prone to contamination anymore - remember, fungi actually produce antibiotics in order to defend themselves against possible adversaries who would steal their foodsources. Just being reasonably clean is usually enough, though whiping the fruiting chamber down with a bit of ethanol, chlorine or H3O solution isn't a lot of trouble and for sure won't hurt either. In general, the less contact your cakes have with potential contaminants, the less likely they are to become contaminated... Try to keep anything moldy as far away as possible from your cakes - trichoderma is a very fast growing and strong organism - clean your working area for transfers from incubation to fruiting and if you see any contamination quaranteen right away.

good luck.
 
In the past i have seen a lot of sloly colonizing cakes. I used them as spawn for mini mono tubs with coir and vermiculite. Often, these tubs would not colonize even though they had just a tiny hole with medical tape on them. Either they got contaminated while mixing in the spawn, or it was in the cakes all along. I now considering getting back to pf tek.
 
paulsage said:
PF is super easy...
Click to expand...
So are all cube teks I reckon. Go bulk, it’s not that hard.

Rye and poo make a lot of sense. My first go with growing (I will ignore the ice cream tub kit that never went anywhere) I ended up with 300g dry, still had some flushes left in it but hildays got in the way. Just spend a good amount of time reading and collecting up materials.
 
Orion said:
You don't need a PC for PF tek. Any big metal pot will do. Anything with a lid which you can boil water in. PC is only needed for grain or seed. Y'all are trippin.
Click to expand...

Now thats what im talkin about! Macgyver stuff! haha, so you took a big pot, filled it with an inch of water aaaand...? Did you place the jars on anything so they didnt sit in the water directly? Did you fully seal the lid?



d*l*b said:
paulsage said:
PF is super easy...
Click to expand...
So are all cube teks I reckon. Go bulk, it’s not that hard.

Rye and poo make a lot of sense. My first go with growing (I will ignore the ice cream tub kit that never went anywhere) I ended up with 300g dry, still had some flushes left in it but hildays got in the way. Just spend a good amount of time reading and collecting up materials.
Click to expand...

What the hell tek did you use to get 300g DRIED?! hahah thats unreal. How many ml of spores did you use?
 
HumbleTraveler said:
d*l*b said:
paulsage said:
PF is super easy...
Click to expand...
So are all cube teks I reckon. Go bulk, it’s not that hard.

Rye and poo make a lot of sense. My first go with growing (I will ignore the ice cream tub kit that never went anywhere) I ended up with 300g dry, still had some flushes left in it but hildays got in the way. Just spend a good amount of time reading and collecting up materials.
Click to expand...

What the hell tek did you use to get 300g DRIED?! hahah thats unreal. How many ml of spores did you use?
Click to expand...
I spent around a year reading everything I could on here, the Shroomery, Mycotopia, collected equipment and materials slowly and mixed all the parts I learnt together. Unfortunately I am not great at documentation so I will probably have to do a lot of reading again next time!

This was all from a part of a syringe (self-made from a spore print), just a few mL used. You don’t need much at all to create far more grain liquid culture than you will need.

Key parts I think were: using rye (pre-soaked with water/gypsum) grain liquid culture to start off (initially worked with 2 or 3 small jars [in case of issues], chose one for GLC, chuck the rest), then I innoculated rye (pre-soaked with water/gypsum again). Then went to a mix of cow poo, coco-coir, vermiculite, coffee grounds (magnesium sulphate too maybe if I remember right?). I don’t think anything else was in there off the top of my head. I don’t think I would work with large amounts unless I was using liquid culture, it gives you a good head start.

I used a 70x40x30cm box to fruit in. I was working at home all the time I was growing so I imagine the near-constant attention may have been useful.

Other things that helped: making a good still air box, good general sterile practice – masks, gloves, bleach-based spray, IPA, self-sealing ports on jars etc.

I think it was very easy really, just a lot of reading and paying attention to keeping things clean. I think I could have got quite a bit more than I did, there still seemed to be a lot of life in at 3 flushes.
 
Can you elaborate a bit on the use of liquid culture, as in, what was yours comprised of and what role does it play, if any, in the pf tek?

Could I work LC into the preboxed kit?

The preboxed kit comes with 12 jars of rye substrate pre sterilized, and I have one 10ml spore syringe coming.
 
I don't know, i think it plays a major role how clean your home is to begin with. If there are a lot of spores in the air, it possibly gets exponentially harder. The löast 3 or 4 grows (tubs) failed miserably, producing only a handfull of mushrooms. This translates into years without a mushroom supply.
 
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