Sawdust Spawn Mycelium Inoculation
So now I'm just getting ready to inoculate, and today I'm going to be, uh, using some sawdust spawn to inactivate these blocks with a lion's mane. So these bags have been inactivated with grain spawn, allowed to colonize. Now that they're fully colonized, I'm going to basically expand them out another generation to production blocks.
Noticed that the yield is, uh, pretty pretty good with sawdust bond with the lines man. Still average around two and a half pounds a block on the first flush, sometimes even three. So we just make sure the bags kind of get a little wiped down. Just break up the block, trying to get as little clumps as possible. There's, uh, tons of little small pieces of sawdust in here that are each colonized with mushroom mycelium. So the sawdust will create tons of inoculation points, and we'll get a really quick colonization. Each of these bags will be used to inoculate 10 more blocks.
So if I were to go ahead and fruit these now, since they've been inaugurated with, I'd probably get about a three pound first flush. But I guess you got to weigh the pros and cons of using sawdust spawn as opposed to grain spawn, because, you know, I could get three pounds on the first flush out of this one block, but then again, I could also take it and turn it into 10 blocks and get two and a half pounds on the first flush of those bags. So if you have the time, this could be very good for your production.
Written protocol
Southwest Mushrooms Genetic Library
The strains themselves, the same cultures used in this footage.
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Most of the time, we do use grain spawn, but this comes in handy when you just want to expand out your your mycelium a little bit more than you normally would. Get the most out of it basically. We'll see what else we have in our spawn inventory. Just the chestnut right now and some black, uh, and let's go ahead and start using some of our reishi spawn. We'll go ahead and do some itaki as well. [Applause].
Put these on standby. Since we have our table filled with genetic material to use to inoculate, we'll go ahead and get through this first and come back for more.
So I'll just put on a couple layers of shoe coverings just before I go in there. I like to just give my, uh, myself a fine little miss. Get some labels ready. Kind of just wash off my bag a second time, some isopropyl alcohol. Before I start inoculating, I'm going to also check the temperature of the substrate in here. So we're sitting in the 70s, high 70s, between 77 to 79 degrees. So it's looking good, and then I start setting myself up. So I'll heat up my scalpel. While that's going on, get myself staged.
So so I'll check it to make sure it's airtight. If it's not, we'll give it another seal. Go ahead and slap a label on it. So just kind of keep my inoculations station and my surfaces kind of clean in between between inoculations or sets of inoculations.
The inoculating with sawdust spawn, uh, as opposed to inoculating with a grain spot, it's basically the same procedure. You're pouring, you're pouring the inoculate, the inoculum, into the bag. It acts as a basically a spawn. It colonizes the substrate just as grain spawn would. The only thing is grain spawn is a little bit more nutritious, so you're probably going to get a little bit more of a yield. But I look at as, you know, you can take one block and get three pounds for your first flush on like a grain spawn inoculation. Or I've noticed when I use sawdust spawn, I might get like a quarter pound to a half pound less per block, but that block gets expanded out. Instead of just getting three pounds, you know, I have ten blocks that aren't out producing two and a half pounds. So it's like 25 pounds. So I'd rather go that route sometimes. Sometimes we just have tons of grain spawn, or most of the time we do, so we can just
Inoculate with grain spawn. From there, just go straight to fruiting. But right now, lion's mane's been really popular for us, so we're just trying to get the most out of it. I've noticed with lion's mane and shiitake, inoculating with saga spawn is pretty similar, uh, yields that you would get with grain spawn, as for me, that is. So it works out just fine. So when moving bags across my surface, I kind of just grab it by the edges and and pinch it shut. That way, it stays sealed a little bit before it makes it to the impulse sealer. If any clumps find it into our to our substrate we just break it up so usually it takes about five to ten seconds to get a good seal on these bags if you don't uh if you don't at least wait five seconds i found that you're bound to get kind of like a leak or some kind of pull or tear that's why i just like using two of these impulse sealers at this point so i can kind of bounce around and let them cool down accordingly it just keeps me moving in my lab keeps me keeps me occupied so at this point i'm gonna move bags out of the lab you