We’ve already established that the process of creating your own fruiting blocks is essential to growing your mushroom business. Sure, gaining profit is possible when buying blocks, but true growth requires active participation in the full process from start to finish. Part of which involves inoculating fruiting blocks.
While liquid culture is great for bonus materials, it’s best to not rely on it for your primary means of generating grain spawn. For consistency, buying from a reputable seller or creating your own are the better options. Liquid culture often grows well, but contamination takes hold easily, and there’s a large risk of losing an entire batch of grow bags if it’s your main source of spawn. However, for a one time grow or trial run, the inexpensiveness of liquid culture helps equalize the risk.
To accommodate the grow room expansion, we built a new lab several months ago. While the differences between it and our old lab are all pretty small in themselves, together they create a substantial improvement over the old layout. We thought we’d share our set up and what we have going on.
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.
Contrary to popular belief, mushrooms generally require a fair amount of light to grow well. In fact, the mushrooms that grow on the back of our blocks and don’t get much light tend to grow looking slightly wilted. While they’re still good for personal consumption, they’re not the quality we want to sell to a restaurant.
Mushrooms love fresh air and moisture. The two are a large component of a healthy grow room environment, and an essential balancing act for the growth of high quality, restaurant ready mushrooms.