We love growing mushrooms and our goal is to help you have the best mushroom growing experience possible. (if you need another copy of the instructions that came with your kit, please go to this page to download a PDF)

Here are a few tips for growing mushrooms based on our most frequently asked questions:

How much brown rice should I use to make my grain spawn?

If you’re preparing to make grain spawn with brown rice, we’ve found that filling a quart sized freezer bag halfway up with cooked brown rice works great. You can always do a larger bag/quantity but it will take longer to colonize. Put the rice in the zip bag when it’s still hot to kill off any microbes that may be in the bag, zip it closed and let it cool completely before adding liquid culture.

What is paper bandage tape?

This is paper bandage tape. It’s inexpensive, breathable paper tape that’s designed to allow air in and out while filtering out microbes. You can find them next to the Band-Aids in most stores. It’s one of our favorite things to keep in our mushroom growing toolkit as it can be used for a variety of mushroom growing applications.

Can I make plug spawn for inoculating logs with a mushroom growing kit from The Mushroom Conservatory?

You can! This was not the original intent of our kits and does take more work, so it’s not mentioned in the instructions that come with them, but you absolutely can make plug spawn for growing mushrooms on logs with your kit. We have full instructions coming soon for this (make sure you’re signed up for our email list if you’d like to get a notification when we put those instructions online) The basic idea is that you make grain spawn with brown rice, then after you sterilize your hardwood dowel plugs, you add grain spawn to those and let them colonize and voila! Plug spawn! We prefer to use 5/16″ 1-inch-long hardwood dowel plugs (it’s handy if you’re into tapping maple trees as you’ll likely be using the same size drill bit!)