Growing indoors
Our grain myceliums can be used for indoor and outdoor cultivation.
The substrates used are generally made up of a carbon base such as straw, wood shavings, or fresh wood logs. Most of the myceliums we offer are lignivorous: they decompose wood.
A substrate can be enriched with different materials richer in nitrogen such as wheat bran, alfalfa, or coffee grounds. This helps increase yields, while revaluing certain co-products and potentially integrating a circular dimension into mushroom production.
It should be noted, however, that the richer a substrate is in nitrogen and sugars, the more favorable it will be to the development of bacteria and molds, and the risk of contamination will therefore be higher.
To reduce this risk, substrates are generally pasteurized or sterilized, meaning the substrate is heated to a certain temperature that allows sufficient or total elimination of microorganisms that compete with our myceliums. These microbes are generally bacteria or molds that feed on the same substrates as our myceliums.
After pasteurization and cooling of the substrate, inoculation (=seeding) is done under the cleanest possible conditions to avoid introducing new molds or bacteria into the substrate.Depending on the types of substrates, varieties, myceliums, and the commercial or amateur scale of cultivation, it is sometimes possible to do without pasteurization. However, the risks of green molds developing instead of our beautiful mushrooms are then higher. Nothing beats experience to get a fungal hand.
Example 1: Oyster mushroom cultivation on straw
Ideally use chopped straw. Soak the straw in hot water (+-75°) for 30 to 60 minutes. After cooling, crumble the mycelium and mix it with the straw at a rate of 5 to 10% mycelium relative to the wet straw.
The substrate is placed in airtight containers (plastic bags, buckets, etc.), but equipped with small openings to allow the mycelium to breathe. The substrates are incubated for 2-3 weeks at 20-25° before moving to fruiting.
Note: There is an alternative technique to heat pasteurization which is lime pasteurization. To do this, use slaked lime (white limestone lime). Dilute one cup for about 50 liters of water.
Soak the straw overnight (12h) in this lime water. This will allow the straw to moisten and raise its pH (=alkalinize), which will create an environment unfavorable to the development of bacteria or molds and rather favorable to the development of oyster mushroom mycelium.
You can also use our organic straw pellets, which are already pre-pasteurized and well suited for oyster mushroom cultivation.
Example 2: The cultivation of shiitake on sawdust or wood pellets.
In a unicorn 3T bag, put 1kg of dry wood sawdust. Prefer hardwoods like oak or beech. You can also use firewood pellets with a maximum of 20% softwoods.
Boil 1.5 liters of water and mix it in the bag with the sawdust. Ideally, maintain a core temperature of 90° for at least 1 hour. Depending on the characteristics of your sawdust, you may need to add or reduce the amount of water. You need to reach about 60% humidity, without having stagnant water at the bottom of the bag.
Wait for the complete cooling of the bag. Meanwhile, keep the bag closed and only open it when necessary to avoid the entry of contaminants. Add 250 g of shiitake mycelium on grains (10%).
Close the bag leaving air inside the bag. You can use a sealer, tape, or string to make a knot.
Mix the substrate by shaking the bag to distribute the grains throughout the substrate. Put the bag in incubation at a temperature of about 20° for 10 to 12 weeks.
Remove the bag. Keep the substrate moist, if necessary with a small growing tent. Harvest, enjoy.
Indoor Crops
Cultivate outdoors
The substrates are generally composed of straw, wood chips, or wood logs. The idea can be, for example, to make use of a shaded part of your land, branch shredding, cutting certain trees, mulching certain areas of the vegetable garden, etc.
Outdoors, the presence of other fungi and bacteria naturally present increases competition and the risk of substrate contamination. Therefore, the recommended inoculation rate is about 20%, to increase the chances of success.
Log cultivation is relatively accessible because it requires little equipment at the start. The risk of contamination is rather low. The main factor is the moisture of the logs. If conditions are favorable, log or stump cultivation can yield for 5 to 10 years.
Cleanliness advice: wash your hands well with soap before opening the bag, clean all surfaces and tools that will come into contact with the mycelium and pasteurized substrate to increase the chances of success.
Documentation to download for further reading:
About our organic myceliums:
What we call our myceliums, or our "mushroom whites" (mushroom seeds) are made up of grains and are used to inoculate substrates.
Storage: When you receive them, we advise you to use them quickly. If you do not plan to use them within 4 to 5 days, we then advise you to put them in the fridge (1-5°) where you can keep them for several weeks. We then advise you to use them within 4 weeks.
We are not a resale site, we produce 100% of our myceliums in our facility in Grez-Doiceau (Belgium). Some of our strains are selected directly from the surrounding nature, others come from other recognized producers in the field. We select our strains based on different criteria such as their vigor and natural resistance to diseases, their taste quality, their productivity, their visual quality, etc.
We maintain the potential and vigor of our strains through regular mushroom cultivation in non-sterile environments, and then their reproduction in sterile laboratory conditions, which allows us to guarantee the purity of our strains.
An organic label: All the ingredients involved in the production are certified organic by Certisys, and that is how we can certify our myceliums with the organic label.
Deadlines: Most of our myceliums are produced to order, so there is generally a production delay of 2 to 3 weeks. This allows them to be sent at the peak of their vigor as soon as incubation is finished, without going through refrigerated stock. They then withstand transport conditions much better.
