John wrote:

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I am using small bags which in the past I gave sprayed with water twice daily to keep them humid.  I am not very satisfied with the results and if I go away for the weekend it seems it can limit growth just at the wrong moment.

As a simple fix I have just started putting them into large plastic storage boxes where a humid environment can be better maintained. I have chocked open the lid a crack to maintain some air circulation, but it is a balance between humidity and fresh air.

Has anyone tried a similar set up and found a good balance?

Thanks,

John

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Hi Jenny,

It sounds great where you live – a cave with plenty of wine, cheese and bread!

A few things you could do to help prevent contamination:

1. Use the proper mushroom cultivation bags with filter patches – this will help a lot. Once they’re sealed, the substrate inside will be protected from any mould spores that might be present.
2. Clean down the worktop, mixing vessel and your hands with 70% Isopropyl alcohol (sometimes called rubbing alcohol). This will make sure whatever touches the coffee is clean
3. Work quickly whilst you mix the coffee, spawn (& straw if using) and get it into the grow bags. This will reduce any time it is open to airbourne spore

Hope this helps – let us know how it goes!

Best wishes,

Adam

Jonny asked:

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Hi,

I’ve noticed from the pictures of  the course,  video and the grow kit I bought from you that you don’t fully fill the bags, they are roughly 70% full.

Is there a reason for this? How full do you fill your bags? Should they be below the level of the filter for better air circulation?

Thanks Jonny

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Hi Robban and welcome to the course! Apologies for a slightly slow response to your question about grow bags…

I believe you can order cultivation bags from this supplier in Austria and they will deliver anywhere in the EU:

https://gluckspilze.com/Media-Containers-packaging

https://gluckspilze.com/Delivery-to-EU-member-countries

Otherwise, you can also have some success with normal plastic bags and then cut a number of very small holes (less than 5mm) in the bags, but this is likely to lead to higher rates of contamination.

Hope this helps.

best wishes,

Adam

Hi Jennifer,

Good questions! We get asked this sort of thing alot and to be honest we struggle to have enough time to answer them properly. We’re making an in-depth course to go into this sort of detail, which will aim to be a complete resource for people like yourselves. It will answer these questions and a whole lot more and be somewhere you can keep going back to to learn as your project progresses.

For now, I would say that some important factors for choosing a grow space would be that it is somewhere you can make changes to (i.e. drill through walls to install fans and ducting), have electric and water supply, to be well insulated and easily accessible to bring in coffee and take out compost.

For our most recent growing setup we spent £15k, but this wasn’t neccessarily the cheapest way of doing things. Here’s a picture of inside the fruiting room:

Hope this helps a little for now.

Best wishes,

Adam

Hi Robert,

Which country are you in? If in the UK, you could try Mushroom Box who I believe sell 1kg bags of Oyster mushroom spawn which is about what you would need:

http://mushroombox.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=95

Best wishes, Adam

Hi Bill,

yes using grounds which are more than 48 hours old (and even more than 24 hours old during the warmer summer months) will defintiely increase your instances of green mould.

I’m not sure on the effectiveness of pasteurising grounds by microwave – my feeling is that if mould has already begun to develop (this may be hard to see at first) then it would probably not be a very effective way to kill it off. Only a full sterilisation at 121C would guarantee killing it.

With regards pasteurising straw – the best method is cold water pasteursing in a lime water bath, documented in the additional resources of module 3 inside the course.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes, Adam

Hi Mateo,

Great that you’re interested to delve deeper into culture work – I’m sure some people here will find it useful. As you said this kind of stuff is covered well elsewhere on forums like the Shroomery, Mykotek and Mycotopia, where there are hundreds of options and different ways of doing things.

Our approach, based on quite a bit of experience of teaching and working with other organisations interested in growing mushrooms on coffee, is that most people just want to have success and grow in the simplest way possible. That means no  pressure cookers, a sterile working environment and 3 stages of expanding a culture into spawn before adding it to the coffee. Just add good quality spawn to a balanced coffee-based substrate and focus on growing the mushrooms well.

Fair play to you though for getting into the more skilled side of mycology – let us know how you get on.

All the best,

Adam