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Oyster Mushrooms and growing them

Mt Toaker

Member
So I've been working 2 days a week at a small oyster mushroom operation my buddy has been starting up for a couple months. I've been helping him out for the past month and we are getting it together to go to farmers markets this summer and maybe sell some to restaurants.

Here is a bit of the process.

First off we have our live spawn that we inoculate into jars of rye, my boss doesn't tell me exact measurements in the jars but from what I've gathered its VERY similar to that of some other varieties of mushrooms that people here may or may not be knowledgeable of. I have no pictures of the jars but they are like any other mycelium covered grain in a jar. After those jars are all colonized we then start the pasteurization process. This I do have pictures of.
 

Mt Toaker

Member
Heating up!

Heating up!

First things first, we pasteurize 2 bails of straw at a time, you need around 80 gallons of water to do that and to get that to 170F is a lot of work, so here is our burner that we just got. She weighs in at 210,000 BTU and will take 100g of water to our temp in 3 exactly.

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She's a beaut isn't she?

Next up we have our chipper/shredder set up and we start shredding our 2 bails of straw into the 2 55gallon drums. No pic's of the shredder, my buddy is in the only photo I have but its just a regular old chipper mulcher from home depot.

Here is the big vat of water we heat up, its an old high school whirlpool tank for athlete's we got for free some how. My buddies dad had it I think. All stainless steal!

Here she is heating up

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Mt Toaker

Member
Pasteurizing away!

Pasteurizing away!

Ok so our water is getting up to 170F now we are shredding straw into our barrels specially modified for the task of holding heat and draining easily. Our insulation is from Lows, stuff claims to block 97% radiant heat which is exactly what we are looking for. The insulation is also good for up to 250F so our 170 isn't even coming close to it.

Looks nice huh?

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Ok, now the barrels are packed with straw, and I mean packed. I smash it down with a big broom handle and a board to pack it as much as I can to fit about 1 1/4 bails of shredded wheat straw into the barrels. So there is about 2 1/2 bails between 2 55g drums. After they are packed we start pumping the 170F water into the barrels.

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We just use an old RV water pump rigged up to a battery as you can see, nothing too complex.

Now we wait 1 hour and hope they don't go below 155F.

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After 1 hour we drain the straw. These nifty valves make it easy, too bad they are $15 each.

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Mt Toaker

Member
Packing and Planting

Packing and Planting

Ok so after we pasteurize the straw and drain it out we let it cool to around 100F. After its cool we use a trash can as a mold and pack straw into these really thin plastic trash bags. We use clear to see any contam issues that pop up. We had to get white this last time though but we should be able to see anything dark against the thin white, you can see that 1/2 way across the table they are different bags. Each bag has one quart jar of the living spawn in it that I was talking about in the beginning.

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After the bags sit 3-4 weeks they begin to fruit

see in the foreground the cluster of small heads, a few days later they look like the ones in the background and are about ready for harvest, in the summer they grow faster cuz its warmer.

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And finally

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RandyCalifornia

Well endowed member
Veteran
Nice shrooms. You guy's got the process down. More people should be doing this, good eats and good for you too. These same mushrooms produce Lovistaten naturally. I have to take that stuff every day in a pill for cholesterol, I'd rather eat a bunch of those every day in my soup.
I figure if shrooms can make you trip they gotta have other powerful stuff goin on.
I eat Reishi's every day too, mushrooms of longevity.
Thanks for postin this info. Big ups
 

resinryder

Rubbing my glands together
Veteran
Nice thread. Couple of questions. You slice the bags so the shrooms pop out of them? Also, do you layer the spawn around the sides of the bags as you layer the hay into them? Or how do you determine where the spawn goes in the bag?
 
U

Ultra Current

Tagged

Dope thread. I have the same questions as everyone else and would like to know temperatures. I would lovw to grow some oyster mushrooms. I had some for the first time a month ago but i over cooked them.
 

Dr.Dank

Cannabis 101
Veteran
I used to be a commercial shroom grower in Florida then inside chocolates they went! Thanks for sharing been wanting to start a legal business with the legal ones :) for a while now
 

ronbo51

Member
Veteran
Cool setup. I grew mushrooms for 7 years commercially. I grew oysters in plastic ducting that we hung from the ceiling. 7 foot long tubes of straw. The gray oysters way outproduce the yellow or the pink, but the yellow oysters are so beautiful. I modified a 6 foot wide steel pipe to be my steamer. Hooked up to a 200K BTU oil burner, automated. I did mostly shiitake, reishi, oyster. Have you tried Lion's Mane yet?? Super easy and they look fucking cool too. If you get an autoclave you can start on sawdust. You should be able to sell all you grow if you have access to high quality farmers markets, but it is a tough business. High fixed costs, low prices(in the end mushrooms are just another ag commodity) make it very competetive. Lowest priced producer wins. But it sure is fun, and interesting. I did around 200 to 500 pounds a week and it was a hard slog to keep it together with limited capital. Good luck and keep the pictures coming.
 

ronbo51

Member
Veteran
Another thought. We had a separate facility for the oysters. When you walked in during fruiting the air was thick with a fog of spores. Oyster spores are dangerous. Wear a respirator or at least a dust mask to protect your lugs while you work.
 

Mt Toaker

Member
Nice thread. Couple of questions. You slice the bags so the shrooms pop out of them? Also, do you layer the spawn around the sides of the bags as you layer the hay into them? Or how do you determine where the spawn goes in the bag?


We poke the bags so the holes are about 4" apart. As far as the planting of the spawn we do 3 layers of spawn with straw PACKED into each layer. I kinda mix the spawn lightly into the layer a little bit, you want it spread out a bit so it can grow towards each other and colonize the bag faster. Fast colonization means less chance of a contamination to grow.
 

Mt Toaker

Member
I used to be a commercial shroom grower in Florida then inside chocolates they went! Thanks for sharing been wanting to start a legal business with the legal ones :) for a while now

Do it, the return is pretty solid on them when you get going. Its work but I'm hoping to be doing this and only this by next year. Its just a matter of having so many bags stacked and fruiting. I've done the other kind too but this is far less stressful, just takes a lot more space and work. Also ordering some of this to put a few in your grow room with produce CO2, they take in O2 and expel CO2 like we do!
 
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