Nearing the first larger harvest

It’s been about a month since my last post, and during that time I’ve been busy. I’ve taken the grain spawn I made in the video I posted and used it to produce 80 gallons of inoculated bulk substrate. I’ve incubated that substrate for a couple weeks, and moved it into my second tent for pinning, which is the first stage of actual mushroom growth. I’m now ready to switch the tent to fruiting conditions, at which point all of the little pins will spring forth into large clusters of harvestable mushrooms. A few of the mushrooms have taken this last step early, helpfully volunteering to be used for promo shots and taste testing. Tonight I’ll be cooking my first King Blue Oysters and Lion’s Mane.

In preparation for actually selling my first harvest I’ve acquired just about everything I need to set up a farm stand, and ordered a 20 cubic foot refrigerator to store the harvest in. Since I’m still in the process of setting up the business side of things (my wife’s flower farm and I will both be operating under our new umbrella company, Be Kind LLC of Oregon), and haven’t finished acquiring insurance yet, I’ve also purchased a large scale dehydrator in case some of the first harvest cannot be sold immediately. Friends, neighbors and family may also soon find themselves being showered with free sample mushrooms, as the first harvest may in fact arrive a bit ahead of the refrigerator.

Along the way the new atmospheric pressure sterilizer has been delightful, the second grow tent has worked wonderfully and the lower energy fruiting technique that doesn’t require full sterilization of the bulk substrate seems to be working perfectly. All off to an excellent start.

More updates soon, possibly including a way of actually ordering some of my mushrooms. Stay tuned!

Getting started

It’s been an adventure learning more about mushroom cultivation these last few months. After a successful small-scale test run with King Oyster mushrooms I’m now working on scaling up my growing operations and diversifying. Instead of one grow tent I’m now operating two, and instead of one strain I’m currently cultivating three: Blue Oyster, King Blue Oyster and Lion’s Mane. Yesterday I finished inoculating four gallons of grain spawn for Blue Oyster, and two gallons for each other strain. After two weeks incubating the spawn will be propagated to the bulk substrate from which it will fruit, and I’ll begin pipelining the next batch to allow for continuous production.

With my initial test run I used a small pressure sterilizer, and a glove box for sterile work. To scale up I’ve transitioned to using a 55 gallon atmospheric pressure sterilizer and a flow hood; the difference is night and day. Instead of having to give the sterilization process my full attention for hours to produce a small batch I can now leave it unattended and produce large batches. Instead of sterile work being slow cumbersome in the glove box, it’s now quick and easy with the flow hood.

The next set of challenges will include trying a new grow technique to reduce power consumption, installing ventilation ducts, improving my electrical systems to handle higher loads, and last but not least: working on marketing and distribution.

Along the way other growers have been immensely helpful, especially Southwest Mushrooms, who has shared an incredible amount of hard-won knowledge, and of course Paul Stamets, who has provided incredibly detailed information on growing a variety of strains of gourmet mushrooms in all of his books. Plus, he’s just a delightful person.

While this site will eventually have more customer-oriented features, for now I’ll be using it to document my journey from a beginner finding his way to a functional business. Stay tuned for updates.