How to grow mushrooms from spores, part two: Spawn Colonisation!

Hello! This is the second part of my guide on growing mushrooms from spores – hopefully you’ve already read Part One: Inoculation, and you’re in a nice legal country and everything is cool. Here’s the next bit, what I like to call the “leave it the fuck alone zone”. Basically, leave it the fuck alone. Easier said than done, especially if you’re new to the hobby, where you will inevitably want to check on it every single day, because you’re all excited.

Anyway, I can say “don’t do it”, but you will anyway at first, so whatever – on to the guide!

Spawn Colonisation

Things you will need:
· Dark, warm cupboard
· Patience
· A bin

You’ve (hopefully successfully) inoculated your grain spawn bags. These bags now need to go somewhere warmish, darkish, and fairly still in terms of air currents. Not the floor either (that’s where all the dust and contaminants settle). Ideally the temperature should be around 25c, if it’s colder it’ll just take a bit longer (which can allow contaminants to outrace the mycelium), if it’s warmer it’s just a better temperature for contaminants in the first place. It’s not super critical but if you put them in a 10c room it’s probably going to go wrong, slowly. Buy a cheap thermometer, don’t try to guess the temperature. Lots of people have issues with this in the winter because who the fuck can actually afford, or would want, their house to be at 25c?! Maybe your holiday home in Brazil has an airing cupboard, that would probably be a good place.

Timeframes! This is “how long is a piece of string” but as a rough guide, if you use spore syringes, it usually takes about six weeks/two months to be completely ready, if you use any other method it can take around a month. This does vary a bit as there are a lot of factors (temperature, hydration, how packed the spawn bag is, how much you spread the spores around, the genetic lottery etc). After a couple of weeks (but maybe longer) you should be able to see some nice white mycelium in the bag. It can take longer – I’ve had to wait six weeks to see healthy mycelium sometimes, at the end of the day it’s nature, and it goes at it’s own speed. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, mycology is a game for the patient.

Some people swear by doing a “break and shake” – they wait till the bag is around 70% colonised, then they break it all up, and shake it all up, the mycelium now is better distributed, and the last 30% is super quick. I could never be bothered with this (I like to set things going and then leave it all alone because I try to do as close to zero-effort mycology as possible) but if you fancy it then go for it, champ.

Skip forward a month or so, and fingers crossed, your entire bag now looks all white, and feels dense but springy.

Bad signs: Does your bag stink (vinegar, cabbage, alcohol etc)? Congratulations, you’ve grown something (probably a nice bit of trich or some yeast): it’s fucked, throw it away. Does your bag have green mould in it? It’s fucked, throw it away. Does your bag have red mould in it? It’s fucked, throw it away. It should smell slightly mushroomy, and have white growth in it, and that’s it. Maaaaaaybe a little bit of orange looking liquid (often called “myc piss”). Any deviation from this and it’s fucked, throw it away, in an outside bin (you don’t want to have loads more bad mould spores in your environment because it’ll make it harder to keep clean in the future). When it’s fucked, you can maybe rescue it 5% of the time with loads of effort and risk of contaminating areas of your house. It’s just not worth it so throw bad stuff away, take the loss, and try again. You should be doing multiple bags at a time so losing one is no big deal.

You will have losses at times. It’s fucking annoying, because you’ve spent a couple of months getting to this point and then you find out it’s gone wrong. You’re trying to trick nature, and grow things in an inside environment that every possible other spore that’s floating around your house also want to grow on. There isn’t a single one of us with a 100% success rate and unless you’ve been living in Paul Stamet’s underpants since you were born you ain’t gonna be the one that breaks that chain – when it goes wrong though, try and isolate what could’ve been the failure point. Most of the time it’ll be your inoculation stage somewhere. Tighten your technique, and try again!

Coming soon: Part Three: Super Cool Good Times Stage, or How to Get Real Bulky, Baby!