Beginner Guide: Modified Monotub Setup for Growing Mushrooms

[Music] what's up guys welcome back to real simple mushrooms where we try to simplify home mushroom cultivation uh in our last video we went over how to actually make your own DIY modified monot tub uh if you missed that video check it out up there it's got some good information today's video though we're going to get into actually spawning this tub so we are going to take some grain spawn and some substrate put it in the tub I'm going to show you guys how to do the liners um how to clean the tubs how to spawn them how to mix it uh and how to set yourself up for Success okay before we jump in let's quickly go over everything that you're going to need uh obviously you're going to need the monot tub that we made in our last video uh a trash bag to cut a liner from uh scissors gloves mask uh painters tape and then micr Port tape and then make sure so you know it's microport it says it right on the inside of the uh spool here 75% isopropyl alcohol your clean grain spawn and obviously you're going to need your substrate we like to use uh dino soil here at real simple mushrooms it's a great uh manure based substrate great for these top Fring species okay guys before we get started let's talk a little bit about uh preparation okay so at least 30 minutes before you start doing any kind of mushroom work uh it's always best to turn any kind of fans off your heaters air conditioners any ceiling fans anything that might be circulating air make sure all your windows are shut uh we want to minimize air flow around our workspace because there's all this microscopic stuff floating around in the air that's just waiting to land in our tub and ruin our grow so we want to avoid as much of that as possible so always turn all the fans off at least 30 minutes before you start working give all that stuff a chance to settle uh and then we're going to take your 70% isopropyl alcohol you're going to wipe down all your surfaces you're going to clean inside the bin all the little nooks and crannies really good you're going to wipe down all your grain bag you know mycelium is extremely resistant to contamination when it's fully colonized like it is in this bag right now but we're going to be breaking this up mixing in this tub with substrate then it's going to have to recolonize during that period of recolonization it's susceptible to contamination so we want to give it a fighting chance we want to make sure this is as clean as possible make sure you're wearing gloves make sure you're wearing a mask make sure you've showered and that you've got clean clothes on uh if you do all those things you're going to have a much better chance of success all right well let's get all this stuff cleaned up and let's get to the [Music] action now just be sure that you clean all of your surfaces really well you clean both sides of your liner clean inside and outside of the tub and make sure you really clean your grain bag or grain jar thoroughly as going to be dumping this in okay now that we've got the tub and the liner and everything clean we're going to install the liner and how I like to do this I actually like to put it together on the outside of the tub [Music] first [Music] okay now once you have that together just take it off flip your tub over put your liner right inside just like that so it's already in there sometimes I'll put a little piece of tape and just to hold it up while I spawn it okay so now we got our liner in everything here is clean let's get our soil now again clean everything as good as you can man always always always clean always be clean in ABC all right now for a 20 qu tub I like to use 2 lb of Spawn and I like to use about 4 to 5 lbs of substrate 2:1 ratios is what I go for generally with these top fruiters um I have the most luck with that some of them like 1: one but majority of them two to one I find to be the sweet spot for spawn to sub ratio so 2 lb of Spawn 4 lb of soil roughly and what we're going to do here I don't know if you can see this let's check my view here all right now that you can see what I'm doing one [Music] here and open this up and we're using Dino soil from T Twisted tree farms I love this stuff it is a tortoise manure based substrate mix I've been using it for years with really great success and once you get your soil in there your substrate in there you want to make sure to break up any big chunks in there right I don't really weigh this at this point because I you know pretty much got it all figured out I can eyeball it see big chunks like that you just want to make sure you break all that stuff up you want the melum to be able to work through it easily any real dense chunks it's going to slow it down so just make sure everything is nice and broken [Music] up okay so we're going to take our spawn now cut that up we just going to take this all right now all of this here again we're going to break all of this up each one of these grains is like a little melium seed it's an inoculation point so your melum is going to start to spread out from each one of these colonized grains here and also when you open your bag make sure you give it the sniff test it should just smell like fresh mushrooms if it smells sweet if it smells sour it smells anything like other than like fresh mushrooms probably Chuck it it's probably bacterial or contaminated okay once you get all those broken up nicely then go ahead and mix all the substrate and the spawn together really good make sure you get down in the edges and the corners I'm going to distribute this as evenly as possible um throughout the tub here probably go a little bit more substrate in there I like to end up with about 2 and 1/2 to 3 in substr substrate depth in the tub that works best for the top fruiters that I like to grow personally more now one of the reasons I love dinosur is because they do such a great job with it man it's always at perfect Field capacity when I pick it up um you know it's never giving me any issues with contamination and you know don't be afraid of of some of these manure based substrates like my girlfriend would never let me grow if uh my soil smelled like poop so you don't have to worry about that it doesn't smell bad actually can't smell it at all just smells like fresh soil um so once you have it in there you really want to go around and press the sides down really tight um the reason we do the liner is for side pins right side pins are caused by a little microclimate in the gap between the tub wall and the cake as the mycelium starts to absorb some of the moisture the cake will shrink and pull away from the wall and the reason we put the liner in there now is because the liner will actually shrink with the cake and it'll prevent that little microclimate from forming on the sides and it will stop the the pins okay so once you have it all packed down nice and tight mixed up really good what we're going to do is we're going to take just a little bit [Music] more and just put a light dusting over the top just covering some of those exposed grains Okay and then give it a little pat down after that this isn't a true casing layer this is just a top layer to cover the grains um I will be playing with some casing soon cuz some new studies came out that were pretty interesting that showed how much a casing layer can affect your yield almost double or triple it so I'm going to play around with it probably be my next video actually uh I'm going to do a casing layer and do a comparison um between non-ed and cased okay so that's how it should look now right it's nice and even make sure it's nice and level too you want it you want it level uh like I said you want the sides packed down nice and tight uh once you have it like this now it's time to go in and just trim that liner out all right that was kind of a pain the ass but now that's trimmed go back in and just give it another repack all right looking good now what we're going to do is we're going to take our microport tape now okay and we're going to cover up our fresh air exchange holes with one layer of microport tape um if you're in a really really dry area you can start with two layers [Music] um and I'll put links in the description for uh all the stuff I use in this video so I'm going to put a layer of microport tape over every hole here now there's a lot of debate about whether you seal the tub up until the substrate is colonized and then then let it get fresh air which in my testing I've found that I get better pin sets when I do that so how we do that now is take some painters tape right and we're going to cover that up and just seal those holes cuz this is a nonpest tape no air will escape through this and it doesn't stick to a bunch of stuff so it'll peel right off when you are ready to put it in pry conditions so this is what I do here and this will just make sure that the CO2 stays up um cuz that's what gets us good pin sets all [Music] right that's pretty much it U now what we're going to do is clean the lid really good put the lid on and set this thing to colonize okay so here we go we're going to put the lid on it and there you go that is how you spawn uh a monotub now we're just going to sit here and we're going to let this colonize uh and I'll check in with a couple updates uh every I don't know maybe in about 2 weeks I'll check back in and show you guys what it looks like show you what good fru and conditions look like on the surface and we'll get into a little bit more detail on the process from here all right thanks again for joining guys um if you like what you see subscribe share it definitely helps the channel we're new here uh I really do plan to to put out a lot of good good information um good content and again you know we're just trying to simplify everything here uh a lot of people overthink growing mushrooms and try too many things and I found the simplest texts usually work the best uh and that's why they've been around forever so with that I will bid you guys Ado thanks for joining uh appreciate yall take it easy peace

Channel: Real Simple Mushrooms

Views: 25,107

Keywords: how to spawn a monotub, mushrooms, how to grow mushrooms, monotub, growing mushrooms, mycology, bulk substrate, grain spawn, growing shrooms, how to grow shrooms, monotub fruiting conditions, mushroom cultivation tips, mushroom tutorial, beginner mushroom cultivation, how to spawn, mushroom cultivation for beginners, diy monotub, homegrown mushrooms, spawn techniques, mushroom growing techniques, diy cultivation

Id: 6fkFU3qhjZo

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023