How to grow mushrooms from spores, part one: Inoculation!

"How do I grow mushrooms", you say? Growing mushrooms from spores is honestly pretty easy. Sure, there are a lot of things that can go wrong (mostly user error leading to contamination), but once you’ve got your technique dialled in, it’s an easily repeatable process. Obviously, I am going to throw in a massive disclaimer here – this information is only really of use to someone living in Brazil, Jamaica, or any other country that cultivating mushrooms is legal. If you’re in the UK and you do this then you’re breaking the law, and if you message me about doing that it means I can no longer provide you with any spores. I learned everything I know from a combination of trial and error, Reddit, and YouTube (seriously, Philly Golden Teacher is amazing), and then I went on holiday and practiced what I’d learnt.

There are, they say, a million ways to skin a cat, which now I’ve just written it down, is a pretty fucked up turn of phrase. A less serial-killer way to say it would be: “I would like some mushrooms please”, so cool – here’s how I would do it. Are there better ways? Depends on your setup! This is a minimum-effort-maximum-reward style of thing, so there’s plenty of room to tweak it. Play around, find out what works for you.

I am a huge fan of what I like to think of as entry-level mycology; minimum spend, 90% of the results. There are plenty of ways to optimise things depending on where you’d like to spend a few quid – the absolute peak of mycology equipment is without a shadow of a doubt a flowhood. This opens up the ability to use agar properly (yes, I know you could use a SAB with agar but it’s still gambling), amongst other things. However, if you can’t/won’t spend that sort of cash on a hobby, that’s cool. Back in Brazil I grew kilos of dried mushrooms and basically spent as little as possible. It’s doable. You can do it in a much cheaper way as long as you accept the fact you’re taking a bit of a gamble with contamination. You can win this gamble a lot of the time but you will lose some, so factor that in!

I’m going to split this guide up into a few parts to make it a bit easier to read, so here’s part one: Inoculation!

Inoculation

Things you will need:
- Alcohol Wipes
- Disinfectant in a spray bottle
- Massive clear plastic box
- Grain bag
- A sharpie

Go to the supermarket and buy a bottle of Dettol, an empty spray bottle, and the biggest clear plastic box you can find (seriously, the bigger the better).

First, the box! I’ve written a guide for this which is here, but here’s the short version: put the box upside down on the table, now cut two holes in the side of it. These are where you’re gonna put your arms in. Don’t get fancy and think about attaching gloves or anything because then it’ll suck air in whenever you pull your hands in or out (I like to refer to this concept as a Trich Bellows). All you’re trying to do is make a dust and air-current proof area. It’s a box with holes in, that’s all it’s supposed to be.

Now wipe the inside of the box with alcohol wipes and give it a quick spray of diluted Dettol (the airborne liquid will "grab" some of the floating particles and drag them down, the Dettol will kick their heads in). This should help to settle some of the airborne spores that are everywhere in your house.

Put your grain bag(s) and some alcohol wipes inside the box, along with whatever material you’re going to use to inoculate with (spore syringe and cigarette lighter, colonised grain, agar wedges, whatever). Personally, I pretty much just use MycoPunks stuff these days because I know they take their craft very seriously, it gets done right, and I’m pretty sure they’d export to Brazil. If you’re doing a lot of bags, do half at a time, remembering to re-sanitise each time. Much like Brad Pitt’s wife’s head, it must all be in the box.

Clean your hands, a lot. Wash them thoroughly, then wipe them with alcohol. Some people will use gloves, I’m not convinced that’s actually cleaner than just cleaning your hands, but heck, use gloves if you must.

Put your hands in the box, and now give everything a wipe with alcohol wipes. Do it like you’ve got actual psychologically debilitating OCD and you’re scared you’ll get run over if you don’t. This is basically the part of the whole operation where it is super important to be zealous with the cleaning (because there are freely available nutrients in the grain), the rest of it is a lot easier.

Get your grain bag, wipe your injection port with one of your alcohol wipes, and let it dry. The “letting it dry” part is the part of the process that makes it clean, so be patient. It’s actually why 90% alcohol isn’t recommended, as it evaporates too quickly to kill stuff. Mycology is a game for the patient.

If you’re using a spore syringe, unscrew the stopper cap, quickly take the needle out of the sterile wrapping, screw it onto the syringe whilst holding the removable needle cap, then once it’s on remove the needle cap. You don’t need to heat the needle up at this point as it’s as clean as it’ll ever be. Work quickly and carefully. Push the needle through the self-healing injection port, and squirt 2-3cc in (for 1kg of grain, if you’re using a 1.5kg maybe add another 1cc), moving the needle about so you have multiple inoculation sites. Don’t use more liquid than you need, it’s a waste of spores – you only need two spores to meet up and there’s loads in 2-3cc. If you’re using agar wedges or colonised grain (you really should be using a flowhood in this case), you’ll need to cut a hole that’s small but workable and just throw some into the hole, try not to let it touch anything else on the way in. Make sure your scissors/knife have been cleaned with alcohol, and then use micropore tape to seal it up.

Cool. Now repeat this, for all of your bags. If you’re using a syringe, use a lighter to heat the needle up till it’s glowing red in between bags, or alcohol wipe it, either’s good. I probably prefer using alcohol wipes because then I don’t have to keep handling a lighter.

Now all of your bags should be inoculated. Take everything out of the Still Air Box, and get your sharpie. Write on all of your bags the variety you’ve used, the date, whatever else you want. If you’re doing a lot of bags you will find this helpful. Clean your box, put it away.

Coming up next week – the Patience stage, or “stop checking the bags every day, it will not help them to go quicker”!