Grow Tents for an Urban Mushroom Farm
So yeah, we're getting some of these blue oysters just uh ready to go into the grow room. Uh, before doing that, the bags uh are inflated, so they're super uh, they're, they just need to be deflated. So just hit a little nick at the top of the bag. I think that works really well, and after that, just kind of press any of the remaining air out. Then I just like to kind of take it and fold the bag in kind of like I'm folding up a paper plane or something, and just press out any of that air.
Then I just fold that under again and fold these little flaps right in, and that way we have a nice nice little surface to kind of let the block sit on while the mushrooms grow, grow right out the sides of the bag. So we'll do that for all of them, and that really is uh necessary for one, because I found that these mushrooms will start growing out of the filter patch if it's not folded in correctly. So you'll have, you know, the possible chances of the mushroom growing out the bottom of the bag and kind of like pushing the bag off the shelf. And you'll notice there's some mushrooms in there that have already started growing. Once the bag is kind of folding in, the mushrooms will cease to grow, and wherever the incision is made on the block is where the new growth will start to form.
But in this case, actually, sometimes you do have to take the mushrooms out because you can't get the block to sit flat. So yeah, we've been uh just doing doing pretty good, uh, just staying busy, kind of um keeping up with our farmers markets of course every week. And then also we kind of just been keeping up with everybody online, uh, you know, getting out stuff from our website, whether it be grow kits or some of the medicinal mushroom products. Um, but other than that, we've been doing doing pretty good here at Southwest Mushrooms. Um, everybody's been healthy and and happy.
So yeah, we're also just kind of doing some just restructuring as we go into this new year. Now we um, all right, you know, I wanted to improve some of the things here and just make things easier um and more efficient for everybody. So I don't know, we're just going over some things and trying to see what our standard operating procedures are in any way that we can adjust those, and then as well as just creating uh more capacity for like our work or workload to be able to handle that easier throughout the week. So uh, in my other warehouse, I'm getting another lab off the ground, and uh, we'll have a double door autoclave hooked into the to the lab, so we can kind of unload our spawn directly into the lab. So that'll be nice.
It'll increase the spawn production for us and honestly just make things a lot easier for our other lab, kind of taking off some of the workload on it and being able to bounce back and forth between labs to ensure everything gets done. So that's super super exciting, and really happy to get that done. Then we're just kind of working on some a couple new strains for for us. We have like a golden and no key growing, um, or we're starting to work on that, and a few new ratio strains um that we're toying with. Um, so yeah, we have some some pretty cool things that are going to be coming coming up this year, so that just working on all that.
So yeah, we're just setting blocks right back on these shelves. We're utilizing these grow tents as our fruiting rooms or our grow rooms for our mushrooms. These are pretty standard growing tents that you can find, you know, from, I get mine from Gorilla Grill. They make, you know, hydroponic grow tents that are super tough and super thick compared to the other ones that you'll see in the I. Guess on the market.
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The Mushroom Grower, Volume 1
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So, and I like the fact that they are spill proof and leak proof, so the flooring of the tent can hold up to 100 gallons of water without any leaks coming out, for the most part. And I've experimented with like cheaper tents and and thinner tents, and yeah, they just don't. I personally wouldn't use any other grow tent for growing mushrooms besides a Gorilla Grow Tent, just for the fact that, I mean, it holds the water within the tent, and you don't have any leaks. So if you're doing it indoors in like a house, and you have a grow tent that's like leaking water into your house, then that's, that's just not good. Um, so yeah, that was a main thing for me because I was growing, uh, with with the Gorilla Grow Tent inside my house.
I mean, I, I had it in my bedroom at one point, and uh, in the living room. So that was really nice, and I like the, you can set them up within 30 minutes, and then, you know, when it's time to take them, take them away, you can break them down relatively easily easy. But another reason why I went with them is because I'm renting, uh, the space. And if you're just like new to the business, and you want to rent a space, and or if you're just on a budget, you need, you know, yeah, I think the tents are a great option. The reason I went with the grow tents really is because they're super cost effective for me, that I have a grow room that I can basically, a plug and play grow room, you know, with all the components that I add into it, it's just a great system for me.
But yeah, one day this will be updated to, you know, as I grow, and and you know, do more with these mushrooms, and I'll definitely update the grow rooms as as I'm able to, so update everything. Now, I got all these blocks in here. I'm going to go ahead and get them a nice little cut, make a nice slice with the oysters. And some of the other species that we grow, we can just leave the bag right on. We fold it right underneath and set the block right on the shelf, and then from there, nice little incisions made through the plastic.
And this will basically allow the mushrooms to form where we've made these cuts. They'll sense the heightened oxygen levels in our grow room, as well as the nice high humidity, and that'll basically trigger the mushroom mycelium to send the mushrooms to develop right out the right out the incisions. It's a relatively quick process. I mean, to the right of me, I have some of the oyster mushrooms that were put in here just about six days ago. So usually about within seven to ten days, depending on, uh, strain and time of year, temperature outside or in your grow room.
All right. Well, you have those, uh, all done, and we're harvesting some blue oyster mushrooms today, and a couple other species as well. So it's just a nice oyster mushroom that has a blue to off green colored caps and just grows out of these nice clusters. So we're going to be weighing these out in some five pound five pound boxes. So this is a pretty productive oyster mushroom.
I really like it. It's kind of like a staple here. We can always rely on it to just really give us its, uh, it's best, and usually we average about two and a half to three pounds on a block first flush. Super simple harvest. The mushrooms really just pop right off, uh, when you come up to them, and it, it's really one of the least labor intensive mushrooms to harvest.
This is a great mushroom for first time growers because it's a super forgiving mushroom. I mean, you can have the temperature fluctuate, the humidity can dry out a little bit. It's very fast at colonizing your substrate, so the wait time Isn't too long. Some of the strains that I grow here take like several months before we can put them in the grow room. Oysters are a good one for beginners, and it's just like a good one for consistent supply.
I mean, it's a predictable. There's so much different variety when it comes to oyster mushrooms. You can grow a pink oyster, a golden oyster, a white Italian, blues, pearls, all kinds of stuff. The king trumpet or king oyster is also an oyster variety, so there's a lot of options for oysters. So yeah, getting into growing mushrooms with just oyster mushrooms can still have a lot of, you can still make it have a lot of diversity.
You can still grow a lot of variety. You can grow different colors, different shapes, and they all are pretty predictable. You know, you can have the mushroom mycelium colonized relatively quick and have blocks usually colonize within two weeks. They also give out a couple good flushes without much effort. I mean, you harvest the mushrooms, leave the blocks on the shelf.
You can go through and mis miss the blocks with a with a nice water solution to kind of give it a little bit of hydration, but honestly, um, that's not even done here. So one thing about the oysters, though, the shelf life isn't the longest compared to some of the other mushrooms like shiitake and really everything else, usually only lasting about a week. So that being said, it's a definitely a mushroom that needs to be requires prompt attention and getting sold and distributed. So yeah, we just have the really nice, dense, meaty clusters that chefs love these, and you just everyday cook really enjoys working with the oyster mushrooms. It's really versatile and really easy to prepare.
So with the oyster mushrooms, they're relatively quick to harvest, but there's a lot of things you got to look out for leading up to harvest to tell what's the ideal point to harvest your mushrooms and what's what's the age of your mushroom. So usually they start off like this. You just see a bunch of, uh, maybe I might have a better example around here. Not in this grow room, but yeah, they start off like just tiny mushrooms. We can see just like this huge mass of a hundred or or more mushrooms starting to grow out, and they start out as like a dark, dark blue color.
Um, over the next course, over the course of the next few days, we'll see them start to increase in size, uh, gradually. So this would probably be by the next day. You see the cluster get a little bit bigger, a lot more defined. We could see that the mushrooms are starting to really showcase their gills, and at that point, the caps are still nice tongue shaped caps that are curled in at the ends. Towards maturity, we'll start to keep our eye on this part of the cap as it starts to fan upwards, meaning that it's reaching its, uh, adulthood.
Let's see if we have another mushroom block in here. So this one would be within like the next two days. Yeah, we could see that the mushrooms have like tripled in size by now, really showcasing these gills, and we can see a cluster of mini mushrooms. Another thing is the edges of the caps are still rolled in and kind of tongue shaped. Um, a sign of of over maturity would be when the caps have fanned it upwards.
I might even have a block in here that might be a good example. When you side fruit this this strain in particular, it gets pretty heavy, so it tends to jump off the shelf if you don't catch them in time. So yeah, the mushrooms will get super mature. This one, we just kind of have a mushroom that is mature, and we can notice the top caps have started to to really fan upwards, uh, and we still have some bottom ones that are curled in. So this would actually be an ideal stage for harvest for Me, we'll just harvest that cluster, set it right there, and we'll just put the block right back in the grow room. Let this do its thing, you.