Hi George,

you’re welcome – glad the webinar was useful for you and I look forward to seeing some photos of your set up soon.

best wishes,

Adam

Hi Justin,

It was nearly 3 years ago that we went through the process, but from what I remember we didn’t have to go through anything like what you are experiencing. We literally just filled out the standard form (saying that is was coffee grounds we were collecting and that we would compost them at the end of our process), and received the license back in the post. There were no additional questions and no additional guidance or papers that we came across.

Sorry I can’t be of any more help, but it’s not something we’ve had to deal with ourselves. Hope you manage to navigate your way through things there – you may find if you just jump through the hoops presented and tell them what you are doing that it will be ok. In theory I would think it’s no different to a community composting operation in how they should view it.

best wishes,

Adam

Hi Kristian,

although this course is not designed to help you set up a mushroom kit business, there are clearly a lot of useful tips in the modules which relate to making growbags that could in theory then become mushroom kits for sale.

You’ve rightly highlighted a couple of issues which differ when making kits for sale as opposed to just growing on a small scale at home. Without going into lots of depth (we’ll cover this sort of thing in a more detailed follow-up course next year), you can prevent fruiting for an extra few weeks by refridgerating the grow bags and covering up the filters to slow down the mycelium respiration.

In our experience, they always tend to fruit anyway eventually and we don’t sell via shops because of this.

With regards the BTTR guys, the process they show in that video is not very clean and not advisable (I believe they used coffee which was a number of days old). Allthough they don’t make a big thing of it, they don’t actually make their kits from coffee anymore. They switched in 2013 to having a big company make them from waste rice husks & sawdust because, in their own words, they ‘kind of suck at growing mushrooms’. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUF4wUEUKCI  They were investment bankers after all!

Hope this helps.

best wishes,

Adam

Hi Kristian,

Normally, wheat, barley or oat straw are used – mainly because they are most common types of straw available, but also because they are good sources of lignin and cellulose. I’ve not come accross straw with clover in before – are you sure it’s not Hay (cutt grasses) instead of Straw (stems from cereal crops)?

Yes, you can definitely add sawdust instead if it is sterile – you can buy it in pelletised format and it will be sterile from the heat pressure it undergoes in the pelletising machine. You would just add enough water to bring it to ‘field capacity’ – the point at which when you squeeze it, a couple drops of water come out. No more than this, or it will be too wet.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

best wishes,

Adam

Hi Judit,

Good question and sorry if it wasn’t clear in the course.

It just means that we get a 2nd crop from the same bag without needing to do anything to it. Depending on strain, it will tend to rest for 1-2 weeks after you harvest the first crop whilst it gathers more nutrients from the coffee, before starting to grow again with a 2nd crop.

The only thing you really need to do during this time is to make sure it doesn’t dry out too much. If you continue to spray daily, this should be sufficient, but if no crop begins after 2 weeks you can dunk the whole bag in water overnight and this can help to kickstart fruiting again.

Hope this helps,

Adam

Hi Judit,

I think that as long as the grow bags are sealed and have a filter patch on them, they should be fine to incubate in the same space as your brewing. Would make good use of the warm temperatures as you say!

Probably worth doing the inoculating in a separate space if possible, where you can wipe down the worktops just before mixing.

Best wishes,

Adam

Hi Ted,

Great question, and I’m sure one that alot of other people may have as well!

Oyster mushrooms are an incredibly versatile species that has been shown to grow on more than 100 different ‘waste’ materials, including, straw, sawdust, cardboard, cottonseed hulls, chopped corncobs and many more.They are particularly good at utilising the nutrients they need from a wide range of materials, including coffee grounds.

They are also very fast to colonise the substrate – important when dealing with ‘semi sterile’ coffee grounds, which are almost always going to harbour some competitor mould spores. These mould spores will take over the coffee if the mushroom species grown on it doesn’t colonise the grounds quickly within 7-10 days.

Oyster are probably the easiest mushrooms to grow overall, which is another reason why they have received most attention in relation to growing on coffee, where the emphasis has often been on finding a simple technique which anyone can do with limited equipment.

However, almost certainly there are other species which will grow on them to varying degrees. We have done limited trials with Shiitake, Shimeji and Maiitake with poor results and so have focussed on Oysters ever since, but there is still much to explore.

Button or chestnut mushrooms normally grow on a mix of manure and straw, and it’s possible that at least some of this mix could include coffee grounds, but really the field is open for further exploration.

Hope this helps and do let us know if you have any luck with other varieties.

Best wishes,

Adam

Hi Angela,

Apologies for the slow response – for some reason we haven’t been receiving notifications of new forum posts.

Although we have never tried growing with grounds from cold pressed coffee, my initial thoughts are that they would not be so good for growing mushrooms on. During the soaking time, any resident mould spores will become hydrated and may begin to germinate – actually increasing the speed at which they then grow on the coffee once bagged up alongside the spawn.

The pastuerisation by heat is really important as it is the point at which most mould spores will be killed off.

Having said that, you never really know until you give it a go, so don’t be put off just yet! Maybe just try a few bags like this and see how they get on. Let us know how it goes!

best wishes,

Adam