Hi Josue,
welcome to the course and to the forum!

We just clean our bucket containers first with a cloth to get rid of any obvious dirt/coffee remains, and then with a weak bleach solution (10% bleach; 90% water) or sometimes with isoproanyl alcohol to keep them clean. We then put biodegradable bags inside the buckets as this reduces the amount of cleaning afterwards, but adding bags inside is certainly not essential. We used to just use buckets and clean them well each time + a light spray with bleach solution or alcohol.

best wishes, Adam

Hi Gabriel,

humudity levels are not so important in the space where you incubate your bags as the bag seals in the moisture in your substrate and prevents it from drying out.
best wishes,
Adam

Hi Kevin,

as we are based in an inner city building, our options for making use of the lime-bath water are a bit limited so it just goes in with the rest of the building’s grey and waste water. I have read that lime is often used in the early stages of water treatment works, probably for the same reason that the high pH prevents most biological organisms from growing.

The bags go into a plastics recycling scheme and the other main waste product is the spent growing substrate, which goes to the building’s waste collection company who run a commercial composting system.

Best of luck with your first bags – just get in touch if you have any questions along the way and let us know how they go… it’s always nice to see other people’s growing adventures 🙂

Hi Mirela,

was it the larger micro perforated bags that you were looking for? Here’s a link for those which we source from the Netherlands: http://www.eblaak.com/eng/materialen-en.asp

We mainly use these larger bags in our farm, and the smaller 10T and 3T Unicorn filter patch bags sometimes as well.

To clarify what Eric said regarding spawn rates – we used to use 15% a few years back when we were still experimenting with growing on coffee grounds. The higher rate increases chances of success which is why we would recommend starting higher and then reducing it once you have had some bags grow well and have got a feel for the process.

We are about to update all the course materials in the next couple of weeks and the ideal mix that we will teach will just be 3 ingredients:

– coffee grounds
– pasteurised straw (20% of coffee weight)
– spawn (10% of coffee weight)

This should give you good results with a substrate mix up to 3kg in each bag. If you grow with larger amounts per bag then you need to increase the straw to 30%.

It is best to get the process right in smaller bags and then move to larger bags later, as besides using the ideal mix there are lots of small things you will get an intuition about from watching how the mycelium behaves. This knowledge is useful when you grow in larger bags as you tend to encounter more problems and you then have a good idea of how you can rectify them.

Hope that makes sense – feel free to ask more if not.

best wishes, Adam

Hi Charlie,

great to hear of your trials, successes, and learnings. Thanks for sharing your photos too – really nice looking mushrooms!

The thing you mentioned about mushrooms growing in the top of the bags (instead of out of the holes you punched) sometimes happenas if humidity levels are slightly low outside the bag. The mushrooms choose to start fruiting in the more humid environment in the top of the bag.

If you fold the top of the bag over after punching the holes (so there is no space for them to grow inside the bag) you should find that they grow out of the holes you cut instead. This should give you a bigger yield and nice clusters which makes for easier picking.

Also, we’re about to update the course info in the next few weeks and one of the things that will be changed is to simplify the mix – so that there is no need to add the agricultural lime. We’ve found better results with just coffee, cold pasteurised straw and spawn.

When growing in those bigger bags you may also want to consider upping the straw to around 25% of coffee weight to reduce density and increase air exchange througout the bags.

Hoep this helps.
best wishes,
Adam

• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by Adam.

Hi Camilla,

what we have always done is to take a printed letter along when collecting and ask if the member of staff you speak to can pass it on to the manager. In this letter, just set out how often you would like to collect and what time of day you will come, what you need them to do etc. Ask in the letter if they can just notify all staff about the arrangement. Then just keep showing up on a regular basis and usually withiin a week or two it becomes established to the point that most/all cafe staff are aware of it and save the coffee for you.

You may have the odd occasion to begin with where you show up and someone had forgotten to save you the grounds, but this usually stops happening if you just keep going regularly.

Hope this helps.
best wishes, Adam

For the benefit of others, Leisha emailed in:
——————
Hi Adam

Sorry wasn’t sure how to attach photos in the forum.

Here is the latest bag, the original one that was quite bad I had already tossed out. I thought the yellow was just that liquid waste metabolites you had mentioned in another forum post. To be honest though, I hadn’t washed out the greenhouse since the smelly bag and I have noticed that the temperature has been getting into the 20’s during the middle of the day in the greenhouse.

Cheers,
Leisha