Very Easy Spawn-Bag Mushroom TEK W/ Pictures

[damiana]

Mushroom Teks on the Nexus​

A while back SWIM searched the nexus in an attempt to find a really easy and straight forward mushroom growing tek, but only came across ones that were either confusing/complicated or outdated and used unnecessary steps.​

After doing lots of research and about two years of mushroom growing experience and testing, SWIM thinks he found the best tek and is now, finally, ready to share it with others.​

In SWIM's opinion, mushroom cultivation (if done respectfully) can be a very fun hobby that keeps the mind and body in sync. It can be one of the best experiences of one's life, both eye opening and enjoyable. SWIM wants to introduce others into the hobby and help others experience this.​

The First Steps
First, we need to buy all the supplies needed, including the spores.

There are plenty of vendors for spores.

Also, there are plenty of vendors to buy supplies from, both online and at your local garden and hardware stores.

In the past two years, SWIM has bought ready-to-grow mushroom kits that were pretty darn expensive (and didn't work) and some very cheap mushroom supplies [do it yourself grow] (that worked very well).

In the end, the best, most cost effective way is to buy the individual supplies needed or supply kits, not the ready-to-grow-out-of-box kits.​

Besides, growing them step-by-step all by yourself is so much more fun and very rewarding.

Now, SWIM is not one to drive all over town to get what he needs, so SWIM searched for mushroom cultivation supplies online. If you can get everything from one place the shipping shouldn't be that bad.

Two Online Vendors
Myco Supply - SWIM has not tried this vendor but it has a lot of products, which is very good for the more advanced mycologist. It is decently priced for some things, but difficult to navigate in order to find what SWIM needed. This may be good for some people. SWIM's list of supplies for this TEK are below.

MushBox - In SWIM's opinion, this site is decently priced for its non-sterilized supplies but a little over-priced for its pre-sterilized supplies and liquid culture. SWIM never tried this site (firstly because he found a better one and secondly) because the step-by-step kits (do it yourself supplies) were overpriced and included unnecessary equipment. Also, navigating the site, again, was difficult. However, some may like this site, SWIM's list of supplies for this TEK are below.

The following supplies are required to make one spawn bag.​

Supplies
Spores (preferably in a syringe).

Approximately 1oz (~29ml's) of Liquid Culture

1 Sterile syringe with needle

2 Spawn bags. 1 preferably with injector point and 1 without.

3 cups Vermiculite

1 cup Whole Grain Brown Rice Flour

1 cup Water

~2 cups Perlite

Stove-top burner/hotplate and large cooking-pot for sterilization of soil

Scotch tape

Alcohol swabs and hand sanitizer

Lysol disinfectant spray is good to have around

The TEK
Using The Above Supplies​

First and foremost, SWIM would like to note that, if done correctly, this TEK can make one spawn bag starting from spores and ending with a yield of approximately 300 fresh grams in only about 5-7 weeks. This of course is partly due to much faster and stronger mycelium growth (on the substrate) when prepared firstly in liquid culture. Thank you everyone for helping this TEK be born. And enjoy the edible delicious mushrooms.

Step one: Preparing Liquid Culture - Obtain spore syringe and approximately 1-2oz's of sterile liquid culture. Spray room with Lysol. Wipe injector point with alcohol swab. Try best not to breath on work area. Have no air circulation. Inject desired amount of spores into culture, just a few ml's is needed.

Leave liquid culture in a dark warm place (~80 F) for 7-21 days. Shake 1-2 times a day. When 2/3 of liquid has white growth SWIY can move onto step two. This is a key point; the more mycelium growth in the liquid culture the stronger and better the mycelium growth will be in the next stage. Also, it is important to not let the mycelium in the liquid culture exhaust the sugars and grow weak. Use them before two or three weeks of growth in the LC or refrigerate.

Compare with this image to make sure liquid culture isn't contaminated.

Here is an image from the start of SWIM's liquid culture growth.

Step two: Making and sterilizing substrate - Place two cups of vermiculite and one cup brown rice flour in a bowl.

Mix well.

Add 3/4th cup of water. Mix well.

Place in spawn bag with injector point.

Tape up spawn bag.

Place in pot, suspended above water using small glass jars or the like.

Bring water to boil just below substrate and steam covered for 1.5 hours. When finished, set aside for four hours or until cooled, without removing the lid (very important).

Step three: Inoculating substrate with Liquid Culture - Sterilize the room using Lysol. Get un-used sterile syringe and needle as well as alcohol swabs. Sanitize hands with hand sanitizer. Carefully remove spawn bag from pot, avoid air circulation and breathing directly on project. Use alcohol swab on liquid culture injector point and on the spawn bag injector point. Open syringe and pull liquid culture into syringe.

Inject into spawn bag. Use 1oz of the liquid culture. Make sure to turn the substrate over to get the underside. Use 1/2oz of liquid culture on each side.

This is the bottom of SWIM's substrate. SWIM does the bottom first and then turns it over carefully to finish off the top. Note that SWIM forgot to use spawn bag with injector point. opps, oh well. If SWIY isn't using spawn bags with injector point, remember to tape up needle hole afterwards(very important).

And this is the top of SWIM's substrate being injected with liquid culture (aka, inoculation).


Place bag away from light in a warm place for 14 days (~80 F). Let no air exchange happen during this stage.

Step four: Checking Mycelium Growth - After 2-3 weeks, check spawn bag. If white mycelium growth has completely surrounded the soil then it is ready (it is completely colonized). If not, let it sit longer. If any bacteria growth is not white in color, it has been contaminated and is no longer good (not the case with cobweb mold [which is white]). DO NOT OPEN. Throw this away, it is no good. Start over and try again with more awareness to sterility. Check this link to be sure. Shroomery

Here is a fully colonized spawn bag.

Step Five: Prepare To Fruit
Below is a fully colonized substrate from this tek.

When it looks mostly colonized around 2-4 weeks it should be ready for the next stage.

This image is after 4 weeks using this tek. Remember to sterilize the room and stop all air movement before cutting open the bag.

Cut about 2-3 centimeters above the substrate as shown below.

It may not look fully colonized but it certainly is, the mycelium has grown deep within the substrate even though it does not show up on this image.

Next we want to make up some vermiculite and coir coir casing layer. Use 1 to 1 ratio of each and add just enough distilled water before it becomes wet and dripping. Microwave in glass jar for ten minutes. Let cool over night with lid securely tightened.

Lightly spread onto the colonized substrate, make sure it is evenly spread (very important for even pin set).

Mix 2 cups Perlite with .5-1 cup of water and lay evenly into a new spawn bag (without injector port).

Place substrate (with plastic still on it) into the new spawn bag with Perlite in it.

Mist with a very fine water bottle and seal with a paper clip. Let sit for 3 days in darkness without fresh air in order to colonize the casing layer a little.

Step six: Fruiting

Now you need to introduce light, and fresh air.

Mist carefully with a fine mister 3-4 times a day. Rotate between 13 hours of light and 11 hours of dark.

Lastly, make sure the temperature stays in the high 70's *F range. (Check what strain you have and google its fruiting conditions for optimum success)

Be very patient, it may take two weeks before pins show up.
In the mean time, enjoy some pictures from this tek.
Soon your success will yield many mushrooms.

Day 10 (Ten days after being placed in fruiting chamber [it is day 38 altogether])

Day 13

Day 13

Day 13

Day 13

Day 13 Note the hyphal knots circled in red. They will become pins and then mushrooms very soon.

Day 17

Day 17

Day 17 All of these pins are growing off of the side of the plastic. Interesting!

Day 17 Note that SWIM's FOAF did not use a casing layer in a small section of the substrate to see if it would pin well. It did not pin well at all. The pin circled in red on the left is growing very abnormally and the red circle on the right is only perlite, not hyphal knots. Lastly, the two pins at the top of the image are indeed growing from the substrate and not the plastic

Day 19

Day 19

Day 22

Unfortunately, SWIMs FOAF forgot to take images of the whole casing of mushrooms before harvesting.

Below are the mushrooms already picked off the casing and then the final amount air drying.


Step seven: Picking - After veil breaks, twist mushrooms off substrate carefully and repeat step six. This tek usually has 2-3 flushes.

Here is a mushrooms with the veil broken.

Harvest ​

Total weight wet equals 103.3 grams. About ten grams dry for first flush.

Step eight: Air Dry - Take fresh mushrooms and place under fan for 48 hours or until mostly dry.

103 Grams wet.

Step nine: Descant Drying - After Air Drying, place the mushrooms into a descant chamber. Here is an easy way to make one.

First buy this at a hardware store. It's a refillable descant thingy (moisture absorber).

Next you'll want to get a medium to large Tupperware container and cheesecloth.

Tape the cheesecloth into it so it hangs down a little bit for the mushrooms to sit in.

Below is an image to show the height of the Tupperware.

Next, cut a hole in the bottom of the Tupperware so that the descant thingy fits snug into it(Note that the descant thingy needs to go through the top of the Tupperware down through the hole [so you'll need to remove the cheesecloth when necessary]). Because the descant thingy gets wider as you near the top of it, it nicely squeezes into the Tupperware. We want an air tight seal.

And your done. Put the Air Dried(very important: must be air dried first or mushrooms will spoil) mushrooms into the Tupperware on top of the cheese cloth and place the lid tightly on top to seal out other moisture. In 24 hours, the mushrooms will be cracker dry and ready to go.

A few lonely mushrooms drying.

Step ten: Enjoying - Eat and Enjoy.

Thank you Nexus and others.

 

[Madcap]

Nice tek you're working on.

 

[damiana]

Thanks, SWIM wanted to make a really easy tek for everyone at the nexus. One day it will be completed, easy to read and with lots of pictures.

 

[MelCat]

I'm definitely looking forward to the completion of this tek. I really wanna start growing my own fruits here soon.

 

[Enoon]

do you have pics of the casing steps or pics of the final mushrooms? This looks pretty cool, I assume this same tek can be done with rye instead of verm+rice if the sterilization steps for rye are followed appropriately. Do you know what differences one could expect?

Thanks for your tek. Also very nice - the LC comparison. Took me a while to figure out how to detect the obvious contams.

anyway cheers & love
Enoon

 

[obliguhl]

Well, i use bags with rye, but a spore syringe instead of liquid culture. One bag contaminaated, but i wasnt very careful with the holes.

Good to have a good amount of spawn!

 

[DiMiTriX]

swim remember the old days when he grewshrooms that the alien formula casing rocks!

 

[damiana]

do you have pics of the casing steps or pics of the final mushrooms? This looks pretty cool, I assume this same tek can be done with rye instead of verm+rice if the sterilization steps for rye are followed appropriately. Do you know what differences one could expect?

Thanks for your tek. Also very nice - the LC comparison. Took me a while to figure out how to detect the obvious contams.

anyway cheers & love
Enoon

Unfortunately, the casing steps and the final mushrooms will not be updated for about another two weeks because SWIM is waiting for the mycelium to grow over his substrate. Certainly, pictures of the actual process will verify how well this tek really works. So please be patient.

As I have mentioned above, one could easily start this tek and before they would get to the casing steps SWIM will have updated this tek to its completion.

This tek, which is a PF style tek, would work with rye but only if the sterilization process uses a pressure cooker. Here is why in detail. (From The Shroomery)

Colonization Time:
The main difference between whole grain and PF style jars is that whole grain remains loose, and can be shaken, thus spreading the mycelium points and colonizing faster.
PF Jars are solid and cannot be shaken.
Sterilization:
The PF-tek substrate can be sufficiently sterilized even without a pressure cooker while whole grain virtually requires a pressure cooker to sterilize effectively.
Inoculation:
Grain can be inoculated with a syringe, agar wedges of grain to grain transfer, while the PF-jars are limited to a syringe.

Usually, rye grains are used as a starting point to colonize a bulk substrate later on. The tek above is to be used simply as the final substrate. It is easier and faster then moving to a bulk substrate, and honestly can yield just as much if one made enough spawn bags.

But yes, one could use rye grains, it's important to remember, however, that rye grains will not become solid so it may break apart and that could become a problem. Not really sure though.

Glad you like the tek and the LC contamination picture. SWIM thought it would help.

Regards,

Damiana

 

[damiana]

swim remember the old days when he grewshrooms that the alien formula casing rocks!

SWIM just looked that tek up. It does seem that it could produce slightly more potent yields theoretically due to its nutritional content, however, it is much more complicated and time consuming when compared with the simple PF tek, which still works amazingly. One could argue that the extra work and money involved may not actually even equal out to the extra potency produced in return. Real evidence would be required to make this argument of course.

Anyway, thank you very much for showing me the tek, SWIM may end up emulating some of it in his own tek.

Regards,

Damiana

 

[damiana]

Well, i use bags with rye, but a spore syringe instead of liquid culture. One bag contaminaated, but i wasnt very careful with the holes.

Good to have a good amount of spawn!

I guess we have anecdotal evidence now that rye can work in a spawn bag, however a pressure cooker should be utilized for optimum sterilization.

Liquid culture is very useful, SWIM recommends it.

Having more spawn bags is always good, that way if one contaminates there are always others that might not.

 

[Big Inhale]

Where fo you get spawn bags? Can you use oven bags?

 

[Phantastica]

^i remember reading at Topia that turkey Oven bags work just as well

Well, i use bags with rye, but a spore syringe instead of liquid culture. One bag contaminaated, but i wasnt very careful with the holes.

Good to have a good amount of spawn!

I guess we have anecdotal evidence now that rye can work in a spawn bag, however a pressure cooker should be utilized for optimum sterilization.

Liquid culture is very useful, SWIM recommends it.

Having more spawn bags is always good, that way if one contaminates there are always others that might not.

moar spawn ftw!!
yea, this should work with any kind grains that are used as spawn: WBS, rye, popcorn, etc.
you can also directly use the substrate itself like in Waylit's tek: http://forums.mycotopia.net/exotic-...vers-pan-cyans/6488-waylits-pan-cyan-tek.html
its a pan cyan tek, but also works for cubies. so one can just sterilize the substrate (manure+verm+brf, etc) in the bags, and directly innoc with any available medium (lc, spores, agar, spawn, etc).

nice compilation of information and pics btw! thx for sharing:d

 

[damiana]

Almost Complete

Six weeks into the project now. One more week of fruiting and drying and the tek will be completed with pictures of the whole process.

Regards,

Damiana

 

[Enoon]

what were your yields compared to substrate weight?

 

[damiana]

SWIMs FOAF harvested ten grams dry from the first flush (not his best flush ever but not his worst either). The casing for this flush had 1 cup brown rice flour, 3 cups vermiculite and 1 cup of water, thats it. The shrooms are as potent as they should be, very nice indeed .

Thats 5 cups substrate stuff to 10 grams dried mushrooms.

A ratio of 1 to 2

There it is.

Damiana

PS - This tek is complete, but will continue to be updated if need be.

SWIMs FOAF wants to do a Monotub tek next to compare it with this.

That tek will be posted at the end of the summer.

Until then, happy tripping

 

[DMTripper]

Thank's for sharing this

I have spores and I'm always on my way to make something out of them.
It's just easy to postpone it when you have 50gr. of Liberty caps in the closet and your best friend has over 600gr. more hehe
But I want to try cubes. I've only done Lib Caps, and loads of them. Time to try some other strain.

 

[closet-chemist1010]

Hey nexus

thanks damiana for the mushroom tek!

I was just wondering, if the inoculation could be done in spawn bags, and then the process switched to a mono tub for fruiting, by simply making your casing in a rubbermaid bin or transparent storage tub, and sprinkling the colonized mycelium onto the casing when the time is right?

that way you can use multiple colonized mycelium bags in one large mono tub?

I am very new to this and have only been researching for a couple of hours now, so this question may sound ridiculous to the more experienced nexians, although a reply would be great! thanks


***EDIT*** ***EDIT*** ***EDIT*** ***EDIT*** ***EDIT***

after reading over the tek again, I first noticed you did no prepare a bulk substrate, then I saw your post explaining that this method works without preparing a bulk substrate and growing the mushrooms on the same substrate that was inoculated.


so my new questions would be, can I mix all the ingredients from the kit in the last link of your vendors, inoculate all the spawn bags, and once there is good mycelium growth, cut the spawn bags as in the tek and place as many as possible into a large transparent storage bin? or maybe cut the spawn bag at the lowest point and make one big carpet of mycelium in the storage bin, to which the casing would be spread over?

thanks in advance!

 

[damiana]

To answer your new question: I suppose that would work (probably better to go with removing plastic all together before adding casing layer), the only thing I see to worry about is having adequate humidity. If that is something you would want to try go for it. You shouldn't use perlite though if you end up disposing the plastic. If you keep the plastic on you could use perlite underneath. That may work well actually. It would be like a larger version of the above tek.

However,

You may just want to try using bird seed instead of brown rice flour and vermiculite. Inoculate that and when it mylinates go to the monotub tek by breaking up the seed and adding it to susbtrate in a tub. This process creates its own humidity as far as I understand.

SWIM will be trying this process for the first time ever in a month. He can post pictures and results if people would like. This way he can compare both teks together.

One is small and requires misting. The other large, more difficult and does not require misting.

 

[closet-chemist1010]

Thanks damiana, I also had another thought, how about when the substrate is prepared, you prepare a whole bunch extra, once the mycelium growth is sufficient, the mycelium is crumbled up, and sprinkled onto more of the same substrate, just thicker, and then the casing sprinkled on top? Are other people out there using the same substrate for inoculation and fruiting?

 

[MelCat]

Thanks for putting this together damiana, it looks really strait forward.

I'll start getting the supplies together soon hopefully and give it a shot.