How to Grow Mushrooms: The Best Way to Make Fruiting Blocks
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Over the years we’ve developed a system for creating fruiting blocks that has served us well. It’s sure to develop even more in the future, especially as we collaborate with more growers, so keep an eye out for possible updates.
Masters Mix Materials:
- Masters Mix was created by TR Davis, of Earth Angel Mushrooms. It’s 50% soy and 50% sawdust. It’s by far the best substrate we’ve found for growing the widest variety of mushrooms. There’s a good video explaining it on his channel.
- Our bags are delivered from Unicorn Bags, Majestic Mushrooms, and Myers Mushrooms. With Myers Mushrooms you can use the code “Mossy” for $5 off your order.
- We order soybean hulls and sawdust pellets through our co-op, which stocks them specifically for us. Getting our sawdust sourced there took some active communication, but it’s convenient to get both at the same spot.
- We used to order our sawdust pellets through the local tractor supply, where we had a deal with them where they stock our sawdust year round since we buy it every week.
- We’ve raised weekly production from a ton to a ton and a half, using the hydrated weight, which comes out to a lot of both soy hulls and sawdust.
Cost
- Labor is the biggest cost of making fruiting blocks. While many people talk about getting better biological efficiency from smaller bags, 4 ½ – 5 pounds, we use 12-pound bags, which cut our labor costs in half.
- Getting caught up in saving pennies per bag could make sense as a wholesaler, but we find it better to focus on efficiency.
- We find paying for the sawdust pellets more efficient than spending time getting free materials. Without the infrastructure to store materials and work with them, they will cause a lot of problems.
- Buying the pellets also provides the benefit of getting sawdust that is already heat treated and doesn’t have variable moisture content, which can mess with the fruiting blocks.
- We don’t grow any varieties that require anything other than the masters mix. We chose a process and a substrate mix and decided to stick with it to keep things simple. This also saves us from needing an expensive mixing machine.
- Developing a process that keeps your labor low and quality high is essential. We sell straight to restaurants, getting the wholesalers markup, allowing us to do less work and receive more profits. We have sold through distributors at times when we had a higher supply than demand, but consider direct sales to be the best route to pursue at our scale.
Making the Bags
- Adding the dry materials: we put the sawdust in the bags first, then the soy hulls, because soy soaks up the water faster, while the sawdust is harder and needs to be more hydrated. When the water flows in it mixes the two together a bit.
- Dry materials come to roughly 5 ¼ pounds per bag.
- Mousetrap, recently replaced by Fin-Rear (which we’ll discuss more in the future), has a refill line up to 7 pounds of water.
- We call this method the “No mix, dry pack method”, though we’re working on a better name for it. We add dry ingredients without mixing, add water, let it hydrate in the bag, cook it, then inoculate it in the lab and mix it. It doesn’t make sense to us to mix it in the early stages just to mix it again when we inoculate.
- Our bags are about 60% hydrated, which we think leads to our large first flushes. Fruiting blocks tend to use the water faster than the substrate, and methods of adding more water in later have been very hit and miss.
- In Mouse Trap, we use a House of Hydro refill valve from our Humidifier kit. Use code “Mossy” for a free set of replacement discs.
- We use a magnetic impulse sealer similar to this one to seal the bags.
- It used to take us 2-3 hours total to create 166 bags each week, but with our process evolving we now make 280 bags over two different production days. Our bags are placed into a 300-gallon cattle trough from Tractor Supply. They’re covered with a black plastic tarp and an old blanket for extra insulation, and the sides are insulated with aluminum foil bubble wrap. We use two 4.5KW elements in our boiler for a total of 9KW.
- It takes 12-16 hours to get the trough up to temp, then we cut one element off and run at half power to maintain temperature for the rest of the 36-hour cycle.
It’s important to sit down every once in a while and figure out what you could be simplifying or improving upon. We are always working on developing the best systems for every step of the mushroom growing process, and always welcome new ideas and feedback. Our goal is to make it easier for up and coming mushroom businesses to get started, because the stronger the mushroom community, the more innovations and improvements will be developed to benefit us all.
How to Grow Mushrooms: Best Way to Make Fruiting Blocks
Hi
i Love your videos I am just getting started in the mushroom business LOL in the very beginning stages I just watched the video about mixing your bags with soy wood chips and water You steam them then you inoculate your bags I think you said you then mix it with your substrate The question i have is what substrate are you using ? Is it the same bag(soy wood chips and water?) or are you using something different ?
Thanks so much for your help jkeep up the great videos
The master’s mix (half soy, half sawdust pellets) is the substrate, it’s just different word usage. Thank you for watching, we’re happy to help. -Melanie
Thank you for your reply. Is it “Soy Hulls” or “Soy Pellets” or does it matter ?
Thank you in advance.
We use soy hulls, but I’m not sure how much it matters.
-Melanie
I’m. It sure I’m understanding steaming the bags.
I get that it’s a sterilization thing.
But that’s as far as I get.
Are you unsure of how the process works, or why we do it?
I am unsure of the process. I have a pressure cooker but am afraid the bags might melt if pressured for an extended time, so steaming might be the way to go for me. I am only interested in this as a hobby. Any insight or recommendations would be appreciated.
As far as I know, we’ve never had a problem with the bags melting, but finding what works for you is important.
Hey guys
Love your work.
For your sterilising, I’m guessing not under pressure. Is this why you go for so long?
Great content, and I love the videos as well! Mouse trap was a great idea, and I look forward to seeing what Fin-Rear is.
Quick question about the soy hull pellets. I assume it isn’t organic soy, so do you know if they’re tested to ensure they don’t contain glyphosate (Roundup) or other herbicides/pesticides? I know that fungi have the ability to bioremediate petrochemicals and chemical compounds of many types, so I wonder whether glyphosate or other herbicides/pesticides would persist in the final product (fruiting body), even if the substrate contained some prior to mycelial infiltration and digestion.
Have any customers asked about the growing medium, and on a similar note, what would it take to get certified as organic (I assume you’d have to use organic soy hulls)? It seems that “local” tends to be more important than “organic” from a marketing perspective, so this may not matter ultimately.
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
We sell Masters mix organic and conventional.
what is your recipe using hard wood pellets and cotton seed hulls ?
We’ve never used cottonseed hulls ourselves. Those that do usually use them by themselves, but they’re not a great substrate.
I’m not that much of a online reader to be honest but your blogs really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your website to come back later on. Many thanks
With the above process are you inoculating the mushroom spores directly into the masters mix and eliminating the need to first grow a grain spawn? If so- how do you introduce the spores into the bag and retain sterile conditions? Do you just insert the needle into the bag and then seal up the hole?
If a grain spawn is required, again how do you mix it in and retain sterility? Can this be used in a fruiting container tub rather than fruiting blocks?
The blog post published today explains our inoculation process. https://mossycreekmushrooms.com/blog-1/2020/06/30/inoculating-fruiting-blocks-with-grain-spawn/
How did you decide the correct length of time to sterilize via steam? What temperature do you need to maintain and for how long?
All of our methods have been figured out through a lot of trial and error, honestly.
Can we use soybean meal ? If so , same rate ?
Yes, you can use soybean meal. It’s a different ratio, but I’m not sure exactly what that is.
How long do you let the bags hydrate before pressurizing them? And do you seal them after or before sterilization?
Thank you
They get sealed afterward, and we let them hydrate until they can stand on their own.
HI, first I would like to say that you do a wonderful works as myco-growers AND as teachers for all of us, thank you so much! :)))
My questions is about the pellet mix. We always read that the substrate has to have quiet good aeration through a mix of sawdust and larger chips to enhance the yield and avoid anaerobic fermentation inside the bag, furthermore for big bags of 10-12 pounds. I imagine you did many tests to end up that is was not so important. Can you just comment on this, I’m really interested to go your way (I’ve a straw and corn hull pellet small factory just next to my home;), but I’m still a bit scared about this anaerobic fermentation?
Thank you for any hint!
We haven’t had any problems with our system, and we’ve been doing it this way for several years now.
I have been watching your Youtube videos on my TV and cannot comment there so I have taken the opportunity to open your site and comment finally!
Great videos mate! You obey all the rules….massive content and good information. Thanks!
I was also interested in your startup and development – I am going through hat phase now, but I am starting much smaller. Houses in West Australia don’t have basements. We build on a sand pad and what you see above ground is what you get!
My grow room is a DIY greenhouse (28″ x 19″ x 62″) fitted out with a computer fan for air and a plastic container fitted with 5 foggers for humidity! It works but! I am maintaining 85% – 96% humidity at 18 – 29℃.
It has been bloody cold here recently – down to 2℃ in the nights so growth has been poor but I got my first pins today on a block I made from coffee grounds and straw! Pearl oyster – nothing difficult!
I am in process of changing to Masters mix and Goat mix but have no one here stocks pellets much, Australia is always about 10 years behind America. Hopefully coming soon.
Keep up the videos and I will go back and ‘like’ all the ones that I have seen on the computer. I’ll start my Youtube channel and website when I sell enough and get bigger premises!
Mal Dingwall
Sounds like you’ve got a decent setup going for getting started. Good luck!
Hey guys,
thank you so much for sharing so much of experience and passion! Please allow me, to ask for a detail of your fruiting bags: I read, that they weigh about 12lb – but could you tell, what volume the substrate-block in the bag has? Or – if that’s simpler – the dimensions of the block?
I’m about to get started just as a hobby and I’d like to try and use reusable containers (buckets, that is). Now I’m desperatley searching for numbers to at least roughly calculate the ammount of raw material I need (substrate-ingredients, water, spawn) for my 10qt-buckets.
Thank’s a lot!
Honestly, it would be best to run some experiments to see what volume works best for your bucket size. Getting started often takes some trial and error to get things figured out and running smoothly.
Hi,
What size unicorn bags? There seems to be so many different ones.
Also, do you know of a good alternative to soy pellets? Dealing with soy allergy so I want to avoid so much contact.
Thanks
We use Xls-A bags.
People have been known to use alfalfa at 20% or wheat bran at 20-40%. Oysters perform better on soy, but not worth the reaction, though.
I didn’t have notifications set up properly so I did not see your reply. Today’s video looked like it was made to answer my specific bag questions!
Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it.
Alfalfa or Wheat – thanks.
Food (grocery store food) has to be clearly labeled when it contains or may contain a major allergen. Soy is one of the majors. I’ve never seen a may contain notice on a pack of mushrooms, but if most oysters are grown on soy I would expect one –
May contain soy,” “This product was produced in a facility that also has soy,”.
Wheat is also a major allergen.
Do you have any insight there?
– either it’s not required in this case
– the grower does not know of the requirement
– the mushrooms are grown on some alternative.
Is this a requirement you have encountered?