Incubation room

Jonny – yes incubation in the dark is not super important, but it means you can hold your bags off from fruiting a little longer as the light is a trigger to start pinning. However, some strains will still fruit in the dark as soon as the substrate is fully colonised so it’s not a way to prevent fruiting for sure, and certainly not for any length of time.
The fruiting from the holes depends a bit on the strain used, but most strains will fruit from around where you cut the holes as they sense higher oxygen levels there and grow out into the space..it’s similar to how a mushroom would grow out of a crack in the wood of a log in the wild.

Leisha – yes we started spawning in layers like this in ouir bigger column bags and it works really well. We still mix the spawn in evenly when using smaller bags as it’s easier to do in bulk, but the layering is certainly worth it when inoculating larger amounts of substrate.

Hi Mirela and welcome to the course 🙂

The bags we use hold around 12kgs of substrate and yes we do add more straw (30% of coffee weight) to reduce compaction in the larger substrate mix.

The info on when/how to cut holes in the bags was embarrassingly missed out when we first made the course and is due to be fixed in the new course update coming in a few weeks’ time.

The best place to make the holes is directly where the white colonised substrate is. If you are using small bags, you may be best with just one cut approx 5cm x 5cm on one side of the bag. If you are using larger bags you could cut more holes of the same size but space them apart by 10-15 cms around the bag. You can cut an X shaped hole with clean scissors or a sharp knife.

The best time to cut the holes will be slightly different for each Oyster mushroom strain, but in general you should aim to cut the holes just after the bag has fully colonised. It tends to be around 3-4 weeks after inoculation, and will be when the mycelium becomes bright white. If you start to see tiny pins forming inside the bag, you will know it is a couple days later than the ideal time, but still ok to open and fruit if the pins are only small.

Hope this helps.
best wishes, Adam

1- In incubation room, is humity important??
I refer to external moisture the bag(microperfurated or unicorn)

you can talk about the difference in the passage of incubation for fruiting of different types of pleorutus?

Thanks..

Hi Adam, is the reason you use the steal frames for hygiene ? Would timber be inappropriate ?

Thanks K