Cleanliness is the name of the game

Well, after about a month and a half or so, my grain jars are ready to move into substrate and begin the process of actually becoming mushrooms. Growing mushrooms is a pretty interesting process and can be a lot of fun. It does get expensive at first as you are learning the ins and outs. I think I have found a really nice process though and things should go a lot more smoothly from here.

The biggest thing to pay attention to when trying to grow mushrooms is keeping your area clean. It is so easy to get contamination and once that happens, all that money and time is wasted.

For my substrate, I am using a mixture of coco coir and vermiculite. Some strains require different substrates, but B+ grows just fine with this mixture. It is also pretty cheap to make on your own, so after this grow, I will be buying what I need to make my own substrate. I also plan on learning how to make spore prints and create my own spore syringes so that I can continue growing forever without having to purchase anything.

Before mixing the coco coir and vermiculite together in the tub, I sanitized everything with isopropyl alcohol. I also did this in my bathroom with the air vents closed and ran hot water from the shower to create steam. The steam made it so there wasn't anything floating in the air that could land in the tub.

Then I boiled two cups of water to mix in the tun with the substrate. After pouring the water in, I closed the lid and waited for it all to cool down to room temperature. The boiling water helps to sanitize the substrate and creates enough humidity for the mycelium to thrive throughout the next steps in the growing process.

Once the substrate has cooled, then I got everything ready to mix the jars of mycelium into the tub. After I took these pictures, I wiped everything down again with alcohol, shook the jars to break up the mycelium chunks and poured it into the tub.

Now that everything is mixed, the tub stays shut for the next 10-25 days. Once there is mycelium growing across the entire tub, little mushroom pins will begin to form. Once that happens, I will start to open the tub once a day to allow fresh oxygen and allow the Co2 to escape. Fingers crossed that everything goes good with this tub because I really want to try these mushrooms next month for my monthly mushroom trip.

Growing mushrooms has been an interesting process and it is completely different from how cannabis grows. I am having problems with my seedlings and they aren't doing that great again. Hopefully I am able to get the soil dried out a bit so the roots can start expanding. I am not a fan of the seedling stage at all and it has been so long since I have been in this stage. But with every grow, I have been learning more and I will be back to having monster weed plants in my grow tent.