Inoculating Substrate with Mushroom Mycelium

So this uh bulk substrate in this lab gets sterilized atmospherically. So we just use steam and 212 degrees for a prolonged period of time. Then after that, they're brought in here and loaded in the clean room, and then they're allowed to cool and come back in as soon as possible and start the inoculation like we're doing now. So sometimes I you can uh sometimes if I need to, I'll use the autoclave to sterilize bulk substrate just like this. Just takes less time, but it increases the capacity in which I can sterilize.

So so uh I use basically a bag that has been manufactured specifically for the cultivation of mycelium. It's a unicorn bag. So it's a polypropylene bag that can withstand our high temperatures through sterilization, and also the bags are equipped with a filter patch. So this allows adequate gas exchange while the mycelium runs through the sawdust or substrate. So these are crucial for how we do it, or really how a lot of farms out there do it, allowing us to sterilize substrate, inoculate it in a clean room, and then allow it to incubate in a completely sterile space. They make a whole bunch of different sizes of these bags, just depending on what's what size of a size bag you need. All that can depend on too, the sterile the size of your sterilizers. So if you're using like a pressure cooker, which I need a lot smaller of a bag. Cleaning is pretty important.

Especially when you're like inoculating multiple species with different spawn bags, after each spawn bag is used up, then I like to kind of go through and disinfect the surfaces. Prevent, a good practice in preventing any potential risk for a cross contamination. Let's say one bag of spawn might have had a contamination that was unseen. Then, you know, you go on to your next bag, and maybe something in the area that you touched or what not had that contamination on it, so that'll move along through the rest of the inoculation process. So just kind of cleaning down and whatnot between different spawn bags is good practice for me.

So start doing another strain. This is the Blue Oyster. It's a pretty, uh, aggressive mycelium. Yeah, you really want to break it down as much as possible, because when you're like looking at the grain, each little individual grain becomes an inoculation point into our substrate. So one big piece like this would just be effective, just as effective as one of these smaller ones. So when you break this one up, it just becomes a bunch more inoculation, or a lot more inoculation points than you would have had previously. So this aids in the speeding up the colonization time and getting a more thorough, thoroughly colonized substrate.

Get pretty warm in the lab, so with the flow heads running and whatnot, that it adds to the heat already in here. Usually it's around 77 to 81 degrees in here. Before I had the positive pressure system that I have now, it would, it would typically get around in the 90s. Usually when you're inoculating, it'll be around 90 to 91, and it'd be in the hundreds when you unload substrate, so it's a lot better now. These HEPA filters, uh, typically last anywhere from two to five years, depending on the particulate account in your lab. So yeah, for me, I like to change them pretty often. Usually right about or before the two-year mark, I'll swap them out just for good practice to ensure that the lab is always an optimum performance, which is super important.

Then, as I move my bags across the flow bench, I'm just kind of making sure I have them tightly gripped. That way the bag kind of stays sealed using these magnetic impulse sealers. That way, while the bat. I used to have the manual impulse sealers, so what I would do is I would seal the bag, and I would count to 10, then I would release. So this enables me to let go. It does the cooling for me, so it counts to however many seconds you can set this knob, and then whatever, whatever temperature I want for heat, depending on the thickness of the bag. That allows me to utilize the full potential of my lab and my flow bench. Instead of, you know, waiting, I have all this space. I'd rather keep moving so I can, uh, seal multiple bags at once, and by the time I'm getting to the last bag that I'm sealing, the first one that I started is done, so I can move back, collect the bag that has finished sealing, and replace it with another. So saves me time instead of, you know, counting to 10 per 200 bags that you do. That's, uh, it's like two, you know, a lot of seconds.

Oh, now I'll shake these. Actually, no, I won't. Yeah, we can. Now see, once the bag's been fully mixed, we can see the grain spawn kind of evenly throughout the substrate. Each grain is going to regrow with the mycelium that’s colonized, it's colonized with, and then spread out, spread throughout the substrate until full colonization occurs. Another thing too is, you can just put the spawn up to the corner and break up any, any chunks that you do notice. Sometimes you'll need to reseal the bags because they might come, uh, the seal might break during the shaking process. These are about 12 pound blocks, so when you shake a whole bunch of these, it's, uh, you know, at first it might.

Make you a little sore, but for a while, you just get used to it. I remember when I first upgraded to 12 pound bags, and I was doing seven previously. Definitely felt the burn. I remember, uh, just inoculating, and, uh, I had a couple hundred bags of shake, and I think I was like in the first like 20 bags starting to get sore. It's like, man, this is gonna be tough, but you get used to it, and that's that's that for that batch.