Lions Mane – First grow

For this grow, I decided to try my hand at cultivating lion’s mane mushrooms from liquid culture with my DIY substrate and grain equipment.

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The rundown

Lion’s mane is what we consider a “gourmet” mushroom—a species we cultivate primarily for the joy of eating and enjoying it as sustenance. There are hundreds of edible and delicious mushroom species, from portobello to oyster to morel—the list seems endless. I chose lion’s mane because it’s a quick colonizer with a tendency to start producing mushrooms early in its development (which, as we’ll see, has its pros and cons).

Growing edible mushrooms from scratch is notoriously tricky, as their phenotypes—the physical characteristics of the mushrooms—can vary greatly depending on how well you set up their environment. It’s like pulling a carrot from the ground only to find it’s grown in a Z shape; it’s still a carrot, just not what you were expecting.

For this grow, we’ll be using beginner-friendly and accessible equipment, like a still air box (SAB) for inoculation and a shotgun fruiting chamber (SGFC) for fruiting conditions. These setups aren’t perfect, but they are widely available and, as you’ll see, can produce excellent results comparable to more expensive, large-scale setups. Most of the precursor/colonization equipment I am building from scratch like the grain jars and substrate bag are very easy to make yourself but do require external equipment like a pressure cooker to sanitize. If you would rather purchase the premade jars and bags online, they are available.

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Preparing the Substrate Bag

Since lion’s mane loves wood, I prepared a substrate bag with a mix of 80% hardwood fuel pellets (HWFP), 20% wheat bran, and 70% water by weight. HWFP is a compressed wood that expands when it absorbs water. The wheat bran adds extra nutrients for a bigger yield.

The most popular substrate for growing gourmet mushrooms is referred to as “master mix.” This is a 50/50 blend of HWFP and usually, soy hulls, though the type of supplementation is negligible so long as it has cellulose, lignin, nitrate, and trace other molecules needed for mushroom growth. The problem with going high on supplementation like 50/50 is it requires an increasingly sterile space to work in. More supplementation means more stuff for bacteria to land on when you are mixing the colonized grains into the bags in the future. If any of these mold or bacteria spores lasts long enough in the bag, it can lead to the entire bag becoming contaminated.

Ideally, you should be doing everything as sterile as possible but it’s important to realize we work with what we have. I use a 100qt tub with two holes drilled in the side as a DIY still air box (SAB). A SAB just allows space where nothing will drop down/into your workspace, though it is NOT entirely sterile as evidenced by the giant holes you use to stick your arms in among other issues.

It works well enough. A SAB with 80/20 supplementation has never disappointed me; I always secure at least one flush.

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Inoculating the Grain Jars

I usually leave the jars in the pressure cooker overnight to give them time to cool in a sterile space; Inoculating into a hot jar will kill your mycelium and leave you with a hot grain jar that will do nothing. Patience pays off.

Once cool, I bring out my SAB again and sanitize everything inside with 70% isopropyl alcohol. 70% is the best at breaking down bacteria and cell membranes – Do not get 90 or 99%. Everything in this innoculation process will be done inside the SAB unless stated otherwise. I unwrap my LC syringe from a trusted supplier and screw on the needle. I make sure all of my jars are lined up and ready to inject without having to shift or move anything; Larger SABs make this increasingly easy. I take my needle outside of the SAB and flame sterilize it using a torch. It is safe to heat the end of the needle to red hot and will ensure all bacteria are obliterated. The needle is brought back into the SAB while still hot and a small amount of LC is expelled from the syringe to cool it off and ensure sterile LC from inside is primed in the needle and ready to go. Stick the needle through the gasket/RTV silicone into the jar and expel ~1.5CC/ml of LC per 1lb of grain. For jars, 2CC is usually plenty. Remove the needle. Repeat the flame sterilization process between jars; If one jar is contaminated you don’t want to drag that contamination into all of them.

Once all jars are inoculated, set them on a shelf somewhere dark and ambient. Now we wait. Most mushroom cultivators are eager to look at their jars/grows constantly; It can be super frickin exciting seeing mycelium form! With our mason jars, this is quite easy and I recommend you look at your jars often as long as you are careful! The mycelium is incredibly delicate at first and needs to take hold of grain so that is can reproduce and expand; Thus it can take upwards of 2 weeks before you see any mycelium growth. Especially for species like lions mane, the mycelium is almost invisible until it starts to form pins/fruiting bodies. The rule of thumb is as long as nothing looks wrong, everything is probably going right. Contamination is usually a bright flashy color or very stinky smell and will be easily discernible most of the time. If you have to stare and ponder if it a slightly off color or slowly slower growth, it’s probably mycelium. Mushrooms have existed long before us and long after us, they usually perform best without any intervention beyond getting them setup 🙂

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Combining the Grain and Substrate

Once the jars are fully inocculated, this can take a few weeks or even months for subpar genetics, we need to mix them with the substrate. Mushrooms can grow directly from grain but it’s very inefficient and we can massively increase our yield by giving them something to latch onto and fruit off. We are going to break out the SAB again, bring our jars and substrate bags inside, and sterilize everything once more. We cut open the substrate bags and simply dump in our grain according to our specified ratio. You can use a wide variety of grain:substrate ratio but I like to sit at ~1:4/5 for gourmets. This means for every 1 pound of grain, there will be 4 or 5 pounds of substrate. So with 2 pounds of grain, I can have two 5/6 pound fruiting bags. Each bag having 1lb grain:4/5lb substrate. I usually prefer smaller bags as the bigger ones are a PITA to mix and keep hydrated later when we fruit. Make sure to keep this process as sterile and methodical as you can. The grain is ready to fight off any contamination that may land on it as the mycelium has had time to develop an immune system in the jars; The substrate on the other hand has no immune system at all. The goal is to get the mycelium to eat up all the substrate before any contamination takes hold; So being sterile when you mix is the biggest key to getting large and plentiful flushes/harvests in the future.

When finished, simply close and sit bags in a dark, ambient shelf/area.

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Waiting for Fruiting Bodies

After mixing, the bags will now start to colonize. The grain mixed all throughout will give the mycelium many points of innoculation and hopefully within 2-3 weeks, it will start forming pins/fruiting bodies. These are indicated by larger masses forming above/on the block. You may see little spikes/tentacles smashing against the bag as if they are trying to get out. We are ready to start fruiting.

Cut a few “X” shaped patterns on opposing faces of the mushroom bag and set it up in a nice humid area with ventilation. We will go into the specifics in the next section, but the fresh air introduced through the “X” slits will encourage the mushrooms to form new pins in those spots and start growing out towards fresh air. Mushrooms entire goal is to reproduce so they want to get somewhere the spores will be picked up and blown away. Nobody tell them we are going to eat them, but that is one important behavior of mushrooms: They almost always grow towards air.

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Setting Up a Simple Fruiting Chamber

Fresh air is one part of the equation but mushrooms are almost 90% water, so that makes water the second part of the equation. For optimal fruiting conditions, we want a very high relative humidity of around 90% and fresh air cycles (depending on your setup) of around once every thirty minutes. This is not realistic for most people and that’s okay! Mushrooms will grow anyway. A simple fruiting chamber consists of a large plastic tub (I choose ~100qt and up) with large holes cut around the sides covered by micropore tape. Micropore tape (or paper tape) or a type of fabric tape that will allow air to pass through while keeping a majority of the moisture in: Perfect for our mushrooms. I place the entire mushroom block inside the chamber and give the walls of the chamber a misting once in the morning and once at night. This keeps the humidity relatively high as water evaporates inside the box throughout the day and the micropore/holes in the tub allow for fresh air exchange. It’s not perfect, and you will see evidence of that.

Lions mane and most gourmet mushrooms will let you know through their physical characteristics exactly what they want. Lions mane will grow very coral or brain like whenever it is not receiving enough fresh air; This is the mycelium trying to expand its surface area to absorb more air. It makes sense, a large coral like structure will allow more air to pass through then a large white blob (the type of lions mane we usually think of). Additionally, it will start to turn yellow and brown when it does not have enough moisture. Both of these are indicators you should be watching for in your own growth and fixing if you can. I manage to keep humidity high enough that my mushrooms never complain or turn yellow early, but I sometimes suffer from lack of air flow as evidenced by the coral-like lions mane. I promise it still tastes amazing and in no way will affect your grow for bad other than potentially lower yields.

If you’ve made it this far, you should really give yourself a pat on the back.

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The Final Stretch: Harvesting

Once the lions mane stops growing as fast and starts to take on a yellow tint, it is ready to harvest. If you grow your lions mane from the top, it is going to take off A LOT of sawdust and wood from your block. This is okay, simply brush it off. It’s just not pretty and impacts future flushes potential to grow in the damaged area. Side growing on the other hand usually results in the mushroom coming from a more concentrated “stalk” and thus pulls a lot less sawdust/substrate material. Either way works and if your mushrooms grow either way, it’s not like you have much of a choice 🙂

The best way to prevent top fruiting/pins is to pack the top and bottom of your bag as tight as possible. Mushrooms form where fresh air is located; Cut off the air, cut off the mushrooms.

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Note: Contaminants

Contaminants are all around us at all times of day and night. When we have healthy immune systems, like humans and mushrooms once they are developed, these contaminants do not pose an issue. As we get sick and age though, they do present more and more. If you noticed the green mold in the main image of this blog (or right above this text), you have a good eye! That is what we call “trichoderma”; The most common type of green mold all around us. This is the mold that makes your bread turn green when it’s left out too long.

Whenever your grow has signs of contaminants, you need to dispose of it. It is not worth saving, or trying to save, the grow. Contamination is often parasitic and will feed off your healthy fungi until it shrivels and dies as well as spread to your other grows! The green mold we see is the stage when it releases spores, it’s late life cycle. There’s no need to worry about it impacting your mushrooms though! As long as the mold is not on any of your actual fruiting bodies/mushrooms, it is safe to consume. Dispose of anything that is questionable of smells bad; Mushrooms should have an earthy smell!

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Key Takeaways

This was my first serious endeavor in growing gourmet mushrooms from scratch, start to finish. Honestly, it feels like I’m learning cool life skills while growing what look like tiny alien organisms. When I started, I wasn’t even sure I’d get a single piece of lion’s mane to taste after all the sweat and effort. But taking that risk taught me so much: skills that transfer outside the grow room, like sterilization techniques and how to cultivate and sustain something from start to finish.

There are a few components I am going to change going into the next grow. I plan on building a larger SAB to work in; 100qt is large but enough that seems tiny when you need to fit double-gusset bags full of substrate into them as well as 10 grain jars. Bigger is better and will save you time and hassle and contaminants down the line. I also intend on doing a dual-layer type bag for my next grow with grain and substrate being in the same bag. I will compose an entire blog post on my ideas and affinities with this type of bag, but they are popular with online AIO resellers.

Maybe mushroom growing isn’t for everyone, and that’s totally okay! But understanding how one of the oldest and most unique organisms has played a role in our lives can make the world a little smarter and just a little funnier (because you’re a funguy or fungirl but like fungirl with the funguy pun :D)

Until next time, have fun!
Jaxon

Key: LM(Lions mane) SGFC(Shotgun Fruiting Chamber) SAB(Still Air Box) LC(Liquid Culture) HWFP(Hardwood Fuel Pellets) AIO(All-In-One) DIY(Do-It-Yourself) PC(Pressure Cooker)