Using Mushroom Substrate As Spawn | GroCycle

they're welcome to this video where we're going to be taking a look at using mushroom substrate as spawn so one question we get asked quite regularly is can I use substrate and as spawn and obviously the reason people ask this is because using grain spawn which is what we usually recommend as spawn them that's what most commercial mushroom farms would use to inoculate their substrate using grain spawn is expensive it's one of the highest production costs that you'll face when you're growing mushrooms and so you know this is what people are normally using but it's fairly expensive and also when you look elsewhere when you look at things like sourdough yogur is often possible to reuse a culture over and over again and always sort of expand it and use it for the next batch that you're making so people naturally wonder you know can I do that with mushrooms can I use the substrate from one batch break it up and use that as spawn for the next batch so that's what we're gonna be exploring today so we're actually going to do an experiment in a minute we're going to do this ourself and follow it over the following weeks and we'll come back and share this result with you but before we get into that experiment I just want to explain to you why it is that usually this is not recommended as a way to inoculate your substrate and it comes down to something called senescence now you can think of senescence almost like the aging process over time through the continual process of cell division that goes on in the mycelium it begins to lose its vigor you get harmful mutations that occur in the cells and what you end up with is mycelium that is less strong in its growth you tend to get more incidences of contamination we're competing organisms out-compete the mycelium and even when you do get to full colonization you find that you get lower yields because you don't have the same nutrient input that you do when you use grain spawn and in addition to that you have to take into account the fact that when you're reusing the substrate as spawn you're not introducing a pure culture into your substrate like you are with Grainne sponsor Green spawn is really a pure culture it's grown on sterilized grain and there's really a complete absence of other competing organisms that you're introducing into your substrate however when you use spent substrate you're going to have to accept the fact that there are going to be competing organisms in that substrate that you're introducing into the next batch so this will happen over the course of its incubation and fruiting period particularly if you're working with pasteurized substrate instead of sterilized substrate but during that process of sitting in an incubation room for a couple of weeks in a fruit moon for a couple of weeks the surface of the substrate is going to come into contact with other competing organisms whether it's mold spores whether it's bacteria they're going to be present on the substrate so when you then break off a piece of that place it into your new batch of freshly pasteurized substrate not only are you introducing your mushroom spawn in the form of the substrate but you're also introducing some of these competing organisms and therefore opening the door to them growing on your new substrate now having said that it is possible to use substrate as spawned many years ago when I first thought I grow mushrooms just out of interest I did the experiment that we're going to do today and I found that it worked fine you know I used some substrate from a bag where already grown a crop of mushrooms from I broke it up crumpled it up and used it to an ocular another batch so it does work and there are many other people out there you'll find on the internet that say you can't do this what I want to test today there was where's the limit to that you know how many times can you reuse it and also how reliable is it you know if you're going to make a batch of 10 bags in this way are they all going to work like that is just a few of them going to work so that's what we're going to do today we're going to break up some substrate from a bag that's already produced to crops and mushrooms and we're going to introduce that as the spawn to another ten bags and then we're going to track that over the next few weeks and we're going to record things like you know what's the success rate to get to full colonization and we're going to record the yields that we receive as well and then we'll compare that to about the bags that we normally make that are inoculated with the grain spawn and see how the two compare now there is of course a third option which we're also going to do today which is sort of almost between the two and that is to use a bit of substrate that has reached full colonization but it hasn't fruited any mushrooms yet so this is in a way kind of at a younger stage so I've got here one bag that's just two weeks old it's just finished in the incubation chamber it's fully incubated but it hasn't fruit at any mushrooms yet it's still in the process of growing quite quickly as it does through an incubation and so my hypothesis is that it's going to work out much better to use this substrate has spawned than it is to use this substrate which is another two weeks older three weeks older so and has already been in the fruit and room it's put a lot of energy into producing crops and mushrooms and just looking at the bag you know I can see that the mycelium in this bag has aged more than the mycelium in this bag so we'll do these two things alongside each other we're going to compare using spent substrate from a bag that's already produced a couple crops of mushrooms we're going to compare that to using substrate that is just two weeks old and it's only finished colonizing and we'll compare that to substrate that's been inoculated with grain spawn so I'm going to get on now and do this experiment I'm going to show you just roughly how we go about doing it and then we'll come back in a few weeks once we've been able to track the results of this and share them with you let's go side [Music] all right so I've done the first couple bags here and what we've done in the end actually is do a 20% spawn rate so we've broken up each of the old columns into chunks of roughly five chunks from each column and we'll be adding it to five bags for each of them so we'll make five from each batch whether it's the older columns that have been in the fruit and we've already received a couple crops from whether it's the newer columns that have just finished incubating we're going to make five of each and we'll come back and compare this in a few weeks time once they've gone through the process of colonization and fruiting and we can compare the results there's quite a small trial we've only got five bags of each but it'll be enough for us to get an idea of how far you can push this and what I'm hoping is that both of these bags grow fine and that we can go on to the next generation with this as well and use these bags to spawn for the next batch and keep going with that basically over the months ahead and we'll see how far we can push it all right that's it for today's video thanks a lot for joining us and if you want to keep up with this experiment and other future videos please do subscribe to the channel and we'll see you next time right [Music]

Channel: GroCycle

Views: 22,069

Rating: 4.9214287 out of 5

Keywords: mushroom spawn, mushroom substrate, make your own mushroom spawn, diy mushroom spawn, reusing mushroom compost, growing mushrooms, inoculating mushroom spawn, inoculating mushroom substrate

Id: uuQQ_Mjk1bg

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020