Straw vs Oak for Mushroom Substrate
So this is, uh, we did a bunch of blocks with a different recipe to see what the yields were, kind of as an experiment. So we tried, uh, straw and soybean holes 50 50 instead of oak mix with our oysters, and we did like some seven pound blocks and some eight pound blocks. We did some bigger blocks too. We experimented with dry bagging and doing a straight up custom mix of the substrate, and I just found that I really don't like the straw that much. I don't think it's a good substrate compared to using oak, um, because off of our seven pound blocks, I mean, we do get some good looking mushrooms. These are like a second flush, and let's see what the yield was on this second flush. So, almost a pound, but not quite, and, uh, on the first flush, we got like a pound and a half to 1.6 pounds. And, uh, usually on like a block this size with like an oak recipe, we'd easily get two pounds. So, um, I don't know. I think straw is great for if you don't have like a good setup for sterile inoculations and you want to do like an outdoor spawning. You can pasteurize the straw and just mix your spawn in and bag right outside, but for if you have the equipment to process the right substrate, I mean, might as well do it, but I just don't like it. Maybe I need to experiment more. I do have some more blocks and incubation that are going to be going into the grow room, and we just loaded a bunch yesterday off of a bigger size, so we'll see.
We're going to look at each strain grown on straw. We did piopino, chestnut, oyster, enoki, just to see. A new oyster too. Yeah, we got a couple new oysters. I have a Florida oyster and California, but just to see. I think straw would be a great choice if there were ever like a sawdust shortage and you couldn't get any. Then that's another reason why I tested it out too, just to see if we could still produce something good and worthwhile on it, which it would still work out. But being that the oak is available, then I'd rather just use that. So, and this stuff makes more of a mess in the lab. You'll have like little bits of straw flying all over the place, and that's just not preferred for me. So, yeah.
This is a Florida oyster. This is just a newer oyster that I'm experimenting with, and this is a grown on oak. And this is actually the second flush. The first flush produced three pounds, that's, and the second flush looks pretty hefty, so we'll see. We'll see what's going on. That's what the second flush typically should look like. It should look super good. Yeah, it looks like the second flush produced almost two pounds. Just about five pounds of mushrooms off of a ten pound oak soy block. So, compared to, I don't know. We'll see. We'll do some more math and see what works out.
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Scaling to commercial production, the economics and the room design.
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I like the Florida oyster, dude. It looks, this is a nice little, it's like they go downward. It's almost like a piopino, uh, shape, huh? It's just a cool, yeah, man. I know what you mean, because the, because the elms come up like a bowl. Yeah, these stay down like, uh, just nice little tree-like shelf clusters of oyster mushrooms, and it's not like unnecessarily a blue or a white. It's just like an in-between. It's cool mushroom.
This is going to a local restaurant, uh, by the name of Trotto. It's a restaurant owned by, uh, chef Chris Bianco. He's a pretty popular chef out here, and he has some really good food, so really cool to be able to get them their mushrooms. So, yeah, usually the distributor will just pick up, but since it's such a small small order of only like 35 pounds, I just offered to take it to them, so that way I don't have to wait for them.
All day. Right now we're going to Peddler Sons. They're a really big local Arizona based distribution company. They work with a lot of restaurants and resorts and even some grocery stores that we supply mushrooms to, uh, AJ's Fine Foods. So we, uh, during coved we kind of slowed down with the distributors, and they, they lost a lot of, uh, a lot of their workforce, and a lot of restaurants kind of were stuttered. We transitioned to just doing like online and farmers markets. We still sold to distributors a little bit, but really nothing much.
Now that it seems like things are picking up, we just got done with like a big expo where we're with Peddlers. They just got approved to supply a bunch of new resorts throughout the area, and one of the things they want to do is get mushrooms back into the program. So we're in the process of just launching the mushrooms back into the distribution. Before kovid we were doing like 500 pounds a week with this client alone, so they would send a, a cold truck to the warehouse, and we would just load up their truck full of mushrooms. So we're just getting back to, to kind of like doing stuff like that, and then we're going to a restaurant too. I figured, uh, yeah, just be easy to deliver both, both deliveries since I'm out and about.
Yeah, most distributors just come and pick up from your spot. They don't send like a truck or a van and just load the mushrooms up and take off, so it's pretty, pretty easy. One of the things working with distributors is, you know, you don't get paid right away. So you send them the mushrooms, and then usually in two to four weeks you get like a check in the mail. That's one of the things that I don't think people will realize. It could be a, it's a different kind of process working with distributors. So, I mean, that's something you got to take into account before you decide to promise them you can, you know, fulfill all their orders and keep up with their needs. Farmers markets are great to start because, you know, everybody's paying up front, and yeah, it works out real well. But yeah, my goal is just to kind of get mushrooms to everybody.
Hey, how's it going? A bunch of mixed cases for you guys. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it's going. Thank you guys. That's it? Okay, appreciate it. Yep, have a good one. All right, that's it for this place. We'll head over to Chado.
All right, I'm just gonna go over here. I have, uh, two more cases in my, uh, car. Oh, sweet, thanks for delivering. Oh, no problem, man. All right, so that's, uh, it's just a simple little run for the day. Um, got to see one of the chefs, got to drop off some mushrooms at the Peddler's distribution. So all in all, just a nice, nice day. Really good day. Back to the warehouse to go finish up harvesting and just get everything ready for this weekend where we're going to hit some farmers markets, and yeah, got a big inoculation coming up. So thanks. Perfect