I’ve lost track now of how long since I started on this, but I think it’s been 2-3 weeks since I transferred my original spawn to grain jars? All of the jars have been fully colonized except for one jar of pink oysters, which fought against some kind of contamination but seems to have gotten going again. It had some good looking growth though, so I decided to use that jar plus one jar of blue oysters (but grown on popcorn kernels) for my first attempt at fruiting. If it is too weak and fails, well if was worth a shot and I wouldn’t have gotten anything else from it anyway.
I’m using some 8" fruiting bags from ebay, and pasteurized chopped straw in a lime water bath overnight then let it drain today for about 2.5 hours. Each quart jar of spawn was split between two fruiting bags.
Now here comes the scary part… I didn’t have room inside to work on this, and knew working with the straw was going to be very messy, so I set up a table in the yard. I wiped everything down with 91% ISO as I went, but being outside has me worried about the chances of contam. Guess we’ll see?
So now I have four stuffed fruiting bags hanging out in the garage where it will be a little warmer than the basement. I had considered putting the bags in my garden but I’m worried about squirrels and such getting into them (especially when they start to fruit) so I figured the garage was safer. I’m expecting another 2-3 weeks of expansion before they’re ready to fruit, but it’s just a game of wait&see now. And assuming I get some mushrooms from this batch, I can bring it back full-circle and start a new batch of spawn (this time directly in the grain jars) from what grows.
One question I have for everyone… I have three more jars of spawn that are pretty well completely grown in (one popcorn and two rye berries). Should I put these in the refrigerator until I’m ready to transfer them to fruiting bags? I’m not sure how long they can survive at room temperature but I seem to recall they can hang out in the fridge for 3-4 months without any problem?
Part 3: breathing holes
100% correct. I didn’t know how your bags looked like and if they had a filter patch on them. Then everything is fine. Mushrooms don’t need a lot of oxygen before fruiting. Oysters only need a lot of FAE (fresh air exchange) when pinning and fruiting. If you would grow in a tent, which you don’t, then improper FAE would make them long and stemmy. Beware to keep an eye out for humidity. Anything under 70-80% will make them abort or go crispy.
OK cool so I’m still on the right track is seems. Yeah I’m aware of the humidity issue, which may be a problem here since the natural air humidity is always so low. I assumed I would have to spray more than a couple times a day, but think I can get my wife to spray them once day for me when I have to go to the office, so it’s sounding more and more like I really need to keep the bags in the house.
I tried growing outside, on my balcony, just a few days ago. I sprayed multiple times daily, and it was cool + rainy, and still they got crispy. Maybe it was the wind.
Imo, growing outdoors is only viable in spring and autumn, but not now. A garage is also pretty dry.
Maybe put a plastic bag onto them if they fruit, that might help in the meantime.
Alternatively, building a DIY grow tent is super easy and cheap. Here is mine at the end of the answer. It only costed 50 bucks or so max.
And optional/ optimally:
Picture of my tent
Nice setup. Unfortunately money isn’t the problem for me to set up something like this, I simply don’t have any good space to put it. My wife has 20 aquariums throughout the house, everything from 10 to 120 gallons, so you would think we would have incredibly high humidity, but nooooo.