The Mushroom Spawn Lab Training is an important masterclass for anyone interested in starting a mushroom farm. This program includes 4 training modules:
- DIY Clean Air Flowhood
- Agar Making and Fruitbody Cloning
- Grain Spawn Making
- Mycology Lab Techniques (Spore Print, Tissue Transfer Techniques, etc)
DIY clean air flowhood
Making your own flowhood it’s a fun project. Building your own comes with a bunch of advantages:
- It's way cheaper to build a clean air flowhood than to purchase one. The price for a flowhood ranges from $500 to $3000 or more. You can build one equally efficient with less than $100 so why not build one?
- Another advantage is that you can customize it as you want (shape and size)
- Commercial flowhoods are equipped with fiberglass filters which are hazardous for your health. When you build your own you may use fiberglass-free filters
Find out more on what’s the difference between a DIY flow hood and a purchased one
Agar media making & fruitbody cloning
Making agar media has a great challenge -how to correctly make media without letting competitor organisms to take over the nutritious food that you want to offer to one fungus. Even if it seems simple there’s a lot to know on how to do it right. For example what kind of agar is suitable or what’s the balance between material and water content -this will greatly influence overall growth and success. Any mistake will cost you time, energy and materials.
Of course you can learn from your own mistakes by trying to make media without any guidance -this is desirable if you have time to play around and if you have funds to loose on materials. But if you’re interested in a boost and to put in place an efficient work method, then you need this.
Here’s how this training is going to help you out
- You’ll be able to make mushroom inoculum -used for spawn making/or mushroom growing -this is the first step in the spawn making process
- If you’ll find large mushroom fruitbodies of interest in the wild you’ll be able to clone them and keep the strains for later use
- You” be able to start your own fungal culture bank
- If you’re interested in selling fungal strains you need this
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
+ Lesson 1: Fungus nutrition theory
+ Lesson 2: Fungus food requirements
+ Lesson 3: Growth factors: media type
+ Lesson 4: Growth factors: pH, moisture & temp
+ Lesson 5: Growth factors: gas exchange & culture age
First of all you’ll need to understand fungus nutrition and the factors involved in it – this is necessary because some fungi have slow growth rates. This will teach you how to build nutritious recipes and how to adjust the environmental factors to offer your fungi optimal conditions for development
+ Lesson 6: Strain theory
+ Lesson 7: Strain growth rate evaluation
+ Lesson 8: Equipment & materials
There are differences between strains (growth rate, tolerance ability, yield, etc). This will explain you what’s the power of a strain and how to evaluate that. You’ll be also introduced to the lab equipment and materials involved in the agar making process and fruitbody cloning. You need this if you want to speed up the growth rate of particular strains.
+ Lesson 9: Recipe & preparation
+ Lesson 10: Heat treatment
+ Lesson 11: Pouring the media
+ Lesson 12: Media storage
+ Lesson 13: Making media -instructional movie
This shows you the step-by-step process of making agar-based media for both plates and tubes. You’ll also learn how to pour the media using a flowhood and in what conditions to store that. You need this if you want to avoid competitor organisms to take over your mycology projects
+ Lesson 14: Mushroom fruitbody cloning theory
+ Lesson 15: Mushroom fruitbody cloning -how to
+ Lesson 16: Media& fruitbody cloning -instructional video
You need this if you’ll find interesting mushroom fruitbodies in the wild or when you’ll want to clone any medicinal or gourmet mushroom fruitbody. This comes with detailed instructions on how to perform cloning.
Grain Spawn Making
Over 70% of the specialty mushroom farms out there are making their own spawn. The good news is that anyone can do it! even a 10 year old. All you need is professional guidance and you’ll be successful in making your own mushroom spawn.
These teachings may be used to make sawdust spawn as well – generally used for inoculating logs or bulk substrate for shiitake mushroom cultivation & more.
Moreover, this training includes essential teachings on how to differentiate between good spawn and bad spawn. Quality when making spawn is highly important for the successful mushroom growing
Spawn making is a successful business idea used by several companies out there to make substantial revenue. However, when you do your own spawn there are several advantages:
- When growing mushrooms you'll afford to use as much spawn as you want in your mushroom substrate recipes and this always gives you with 10-20% more mushrooms (depending on the amount used) and therefore more profit. When you purchase your spawn you can't use as much as you want/block because it costs you.
- When you make your own spawn you become independent from the market price/lb of spawn set by random companies. Price per bag of 10 lbs of spawn ranges from $10 to $40 or more. It's expensive and it's not stable either -it's something that you cannot control unless you make your own. This freedom is essential if you're in business otherwise you might be pushed to increase your product's price;
- You'll be able to CUT COSTS. Shipping spawn to a destination costs in some cases even more than the spawn itself. For a 10 lb bag that costs $35 when you add the shipping cost around $40 you get to $75 or more. When you're business gets bigger you'll feel the difference. Make your own and you'll spend $2 or less/a 10 lb spawn bag;
- Most spawn companies out there have limited strain availability as spawn (ready to ship). If what they have doesn't match your location you might get low yields or no mushroom fruitbodies. By making your own your free to play around and test different strains and pick the best ones you like;
- You can sell spawn to people wanting to grow mushrooms
HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
+ Lesson 1: Good vs bad spawn
+ Lesson 2: Competitor organisms
+ Lesson 3: Good habits, bad habits
+ Lesson 4: Troubleshooting
Quality is very important when you’re making mushroom spawn because the support on witch the mycelium grows is food for many organisms. The key is to offer the nutritious grain to one organism and that’s the desired fungus -this is part is going to show you who are the main organisms, how to identify process mistakes and how to avoid competitors by implementing good habits
+ Lesson 5: Materials & recipe
+ Lesson 6: Picking the right container
+ Lesson 7: About inoculum
There are several types of containers on the market; however, picking the right kind can be tricky. This is going to show you what are the characteristics of a quality container. You’ll also learn about types of inoculum and what you’ll need in order to make quality spawn. This part contains instructional movies
+ Lesson 8: Hydration
+ Lesson 9: Heat treatment
+ Lesson 10: Inoculation
+ Lesson 11: Incubation
This part reveals you the process starting with the heat treatment procedure. You’ll also learn basic flowhood work procedures, how to inoculate and what are the incubation growth rates for different fungi. This part contains instructional movies
+ Lesson 12: About spawn storage
+ Lesson 13: Sawdust spawn making
Spawn storage basics is a must to know because storing spawn the wrong way can contaminate your hard work. The fungus falls into a dormant stage, however, different fungi behave differently when placed in a cold room. This part will explain you what’s the time span for spawn to be considered fresh. You’ll also learn how to make sawdust spawn.
Mycology lab techniques
Once you have your spawn lab up there’s a bunch of lab protocols that you need to have in place when working with fungus tissue. This part is designed to help you with what you need to know if you want to build a mushroom culture bank, or want to transfer fungus tissue from a plate into a tube or from a tube into another tube. Here’s why this part is important to know:
- Spore prints are necessary when you want to get new strains for a particular fungus that you're working with
- Liquid inoculum will speed up the mycelium colonization time for particular fungi
- A mushroom culture library is good to have if you consider growing different varieties of mushrooms
- Tissue transfer protocols are essential for any mycology lab
This Spawn Lab Starter Pack is a valuable addition if you want to make your own spawn for mushroom growing. These teachings come in video format and are easy to follow. They contain quizzes so you can learn even more. Support is also provided just in case that you run into trouble.
The current price for this program is set to $250 which is very low if you compare the value that you get.
Your mentor is a mycologist with over 16 years of experience in mushroom growing and spawn production.
