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Growing Guide

Hi and Welcome. Ever wondered: “How to grow mushrooms”? After completing, you can grow most decomposting mushrooms such as Pleurotus, Hericium and Psylocybe species. Start by setting up your work environment cheap, go to the phases of cultivating step-by-step and find all the necessary materials in a shopping list. This is my Hometek.

All arround Mushroom cultivation. Here you find our Step by Step packs & way more than you need to grow your own fungi.

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Start – Work environment

The SAB (Still Air Box)A SAB is just a clear box with 2 holes for your hands in it. You wipe everything down and put it inside the box. Then you spray it out with soap water, so the box and the air inside are free from contamination. Work slow inside and never hold your hand above anything, you and your skin are bacterial breeding grounds. Experienced cultivators who use hepa filters also are in need to have a SAB nearby. Laminar flow hoods would spread contaminations through the air, so only useable on clean cultures. SAB is best.

How To Set Up Work Environment

How To Work in a SAB

Charts for growing:

S
P

A

W

N

P
R

I


M


O


R


D


I


A

F

R


U


I


T


I


N


G

Temp °C
21-27 10-16 13-18
Relative Humidity %
90-95 95-100 90-95
Duration d
20-28 7-14 4-6
CO2 ppm
>20000 <2000 <2000
FAE per h
0-1 4-8 4-8
Light lux
500-1000 500-1000

You will need this:

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Step 1: Agar

Normally you receive a culture on agar, as spores or as liquid culture. Back them up on agar or clean them out. LMEA (light malt extract agar) can be use for a huge variety of species and it is available nearly anywhere.

Recipe:

-500mL cold water
-10g agar-agar powder
-10g light malt extract powder

Mix together and pour into a container. Liquid needs less time in the pressure cooker, because the water acts at itself as sterilizer:

-with a 15 psi model, which are typical in the US 30-60 min
-EU pressure cookers are working standard 0,8 bar (11,6 psi), i sterilize arround 90 min

How to make a nopour for storeing and multiplying cultures

How to make Agar to Agar transfers.

How to use spores on agar

Liquid culture on agar

You will need this:

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Step 2: Breed

You could just pasteurize the substrate and create clean grain spawn. You could also use your waste to grow them on. They are decomposers, but we wanna have the lowest effort. So let’s use proven substrates and throw everything together in grow bags.

Different species, favor different substrates. But most of them like rye berries. Use any grain to breed your fungi.

Setup before makeing fruiting blocks

Favorable substrates:

Coco Coir


SuB+strate of Coice for dunglovers, pure or mixed. This substrate will teach you golden times.

Vermiculite


Great agent for retaining water. It absorbs like a sponge but allows less aeriation, contains 19 different types of mica minerals.

Manure


They like it but its no pleasure

Brown Rice Flour


Mix 50/50 with vermiculite, pressure sterilize in container or jar & inoculate a species

Woodchips


Yes you can add wood chips up to 50%

 
 
 
Dung loving species

Favorable substrates:

Soja Haul:

 
High nutitious 34% Protein; 11,20 MJ ME/kg

Hardwood pellets:

 
Some species love Hardwood: Shiitake, Reishi, Lions Mane, Almond Mushroom, Trametes

Softwood pellets:

 
Grow Oyster Mushrooms, bitter Oyster, Piopinno

Meadow Hay:

 
Hay from the grassland with herbs.
Wood loving species

Pressure cooking times:

-in the US for 90-120 min @ 15 psi
-EU pressure cookers are working standard 0,8 bar (11,6 psi) that means 200-240 min

You will need this:

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Step 3: Fruit

If you followed my guide, you successfully made a sterile fruitingblock, with only the mushroom culture inside of it.
Let it bee some time and do not mix the top layer of the grain untill its fully colonized.

In the meantime we can do the fruiting chamber.

In an unmodded tub you can grow the most dungloving species, also reishi, shiitake & others. Take a look at the CO2 level in the fruiting phase, it must be higher. Besides that i spray the walls of my tubs when they are dry, nothing more.

The principle of set and forget (modded)

Automation makes sense

Some species like more oxygen, mostly woodlovers, then you need to add FAE & humidity

You will need this:

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On the World

The world’s an inn; and I her guest.

I eat; I drink; I take my rest.

My hostess, nature, does deny me

Nothing, wherewith she can supply me;

Where, having stayed a while, I pay

Her lavish bills, and go my way.

-Francis Quarles (1592–1644)