Mushroom cultivation isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s an intricate process, and there’s nothing like seeing your colony sprout for the first or even 100th time! You can do some special things during the growth process that will dramatically increase your mushroom yield. One of those things is shaking your mushroom spawn bags. We’ll dive intowhy and when to shake your mushroom spawn bagsbelow.
Why You Should Shake the Spawn Bag
Shake and massage your mushroom spawn bag to give the mycelium a fair chance at colonizing your substrate. This allows the fungus to access nutrients and new parts of the grain. Then, the entire colony is grown with mycelium and has a fighting chance against rival fungi like mold, which can easily take over your spawn grain if you’re not careful.
You can shake up yourmushroom spawn bagwhen the mycelium has colonized about 40–50 percent of the spawn grain. As mentioned previously, this gives access to non-colonized patches of mycelium. You’ll be surprised by how much this simple 30-second action can help your yield.
Don’t shake the spawn bag too often; otherwise, you’ll throw off the mycelium colonization process. One 30-second massage and a quick shake should do the trick.
How To Do It and What Happens if You Don’t
How do you adequately shake your bag? Lay the bag on a table and gently massage the top like you would knead bread dough for about 10 seconds. Don’t massage too rough, or you’ll disrupt the colonization process. Flip the bag and repeat this action. Finally, take your bag by the top edges and shake it back and forth and up and down, ensuring the grain spawn is mixed thoroughly.
You won’t throw off your mushroom colonization if you don’t shake the grow bag. The fungi can still effectively colonize the substrate without a massage, but they’ll have a much easier time navigating the substrate if you perform this action. It certainly improves the yield, so it's well worth doing! Shop at Midwest Grow Kits if you’re interested in growing your own mushrooms.
You can shake up your mushroom spawn bag when the mycelium has colonized about 40–50 percent of the spawn grain. As mentioned previously, this gives access to non-colonized patches of mycelium. You'll be surprised by how much this simple 30-second action can help your yield.
Generally, it's advisable to shake the jars after you initially see mycelial growth, which usually happens a few days to a week after inoculation. The main objective is to distribute the mycelium throughout the jar, thereby accelerating the colonization process.
Keep your spawn bags in a warm, dark spot (75-77 degrees optimally) and try to leave it alone! Spawn bags colonize from the inside out so you will most likely won't see any mycelium growth for 7-14 days.
Grain spawn will store for three months in a refrigerator. The fresher the better, but mycelium is pretty resilient. If you don't get around to inoculating right away, tuck it away in your refrigerator until you're ready.
When the mycelium has grown three to four inches, without opening the bag, carefully break up the colonized substrate and mix it into the uncolonized substrate. This will dramatically speed up the colonization process. 3. Your spawn is ready to use when the bag is completely white with mycelium.
Breaking and shaking the grain jar at this point would actually slow down the colonization process as the mycelium would have to re-form its connections.
Make preparations for taking oyster mushroom crop following standard procedure – bags to be kept for spawn run at 25±2ºC. Open the bags after 15-20 days of spawn run. Maintain a temperature range of 22-28°C with 85-90% RH for fruiting.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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