Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the field of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.

I’m Kenny Coogan, and joining me is Erin Hamilton, owner of the Mushroom Conservatory. She loves people and mushrooms, and connecting the two.

Today’s episode is sponsored by All American.

We’re going to be talking about growing mushrooms at home. Welcome to the podcast, Erin.

[00:00:50] Erin Hamilton and The Mushroom Conservatory

Erin Hamilton: Thank you, Kenny. I’m so glad to be here with you.

Kenny Coogan: And I should also mention that you’re a regular contributor to our Mother Earth News Fairs.

Erin Hamilton: [00:01:00] Yes, I’ve had such an amazing time at the fairs this year. We’ve done a whole bunch of different mushroom growing workshops, and we even made some phenomenal mushroom mac and cheese on the Real Food stage when we were in Wisconsin.

And I just, I can’t even begin to say how amazing the world of people I’ve found there is. So it’s been a treat.

Kenny Coogan: Excellent. So I said that you’re the owner of the Mushroom Conservatory. What is that?

Erin Hamilton: So we teach people around the world how to grow mushrooms. And, uh, we make mushroom growing kits for growing gourmet mushrooms. I also teach workshops and write and do everything I can to help educate people. And, um, I actually got started about ten years ago. I took a foraging class. And it was so inspiring. And I got to the end of the class and I just was really worried I would pick the wrong kind of mushroom and die. And, um, so I spent several years digging into how do you grow mushrooms. And it was really hard to just get basic information about at first.

And so once I started tinkering with it, though, I was blown away at how easy it [00:02:00] was and what an amazing experience it was and how delicious they were. So I got really into it. And then I had to tell everybody about it.

So the Mushroom Conservatory originally came from, um, we developed a mushroom growing science kit and, for geared towards, um, like middle school students. And those really took off. And then I started getting all these letters from parents like, “Hey, we want to grow mushrooms. too, but like more than a science kit amount. We want to grow, you know, a lot of mushrooms to feed our families.”

And so that’s turned into people around the world growing mushrooms. And, um, it’s been really neat. We even have kids at a Montessori school in Madagascar that are learning how to produce their own food using our mushroom kits. And, um, it’s just been great.

[00:02:40] What’s So Great About Growing Mushrooms?

Kenny Coogan: What do you see the relationship between mushrooms and our food well-being in the ecosystem?

Erin Hamilton: So it’s pretty amazing what mushrooms can do for the human body.

Um, they’re really, really high in antioxidants, protein, and um, they’re actually one of, not one of, they are the only non meat source of vitamin [00:03:00] D. Um, so there are a lot of things that mushrooms can bring to the table, especially in places where it may not be so easy to necessarily get meat all the time. Or if you just want more variety in your diet, or you have some kind of dietary limitation, um, any of the above. You’re first off running into this like nutritional wealth, um, with any mushrooms you are going to eat, any gourmet mushrooms, you’re going to eat. And, um, you should definitely dive into that.

On top of that, if you love food, if you love flavor, um, there’s just so much to be had in the flavor and texture realm with gourmet mushrooms. Um, and then on top of that, it’s been absolutely fascinating to see what mushrooms are actually doing for the planet. Um, it’s been, it’s been estimated that mushrooms, like fungi in general, are cleaning up about 30 percent of the world’s pollution before we even know it’s existing.

So they’re out there actually actively working to restore our [00:04:00] ecosystem, even while we’re still trying to figure it out. And there have been some really interesting developments recently, with oyster mushrooms in particular, in cleaning up oil spills. And also, golden oysters have been making their way out into the wild, and we’re starting to explore the possibility that they’re actually on kind of more of an aggressive effort to correct a lot of the pollution issues that are happening right now, um, because of the way they decompose and put out less of a carbon footprint than things would, um, without them.

So it’s, it’s really fascinating, but mushrooms are really just this multifaceted wonderland of things that can heal and feed the world. And, um, they, there’s an estimated 13, 000 documented types of mushroom. They think that there’s between three and four million in existence.

So there’s so much left to be explored. So my mission is really to bring people towards that and hopefully encourage as many people as possible [00:05:00] to dive in and collectively work to see how mushrooms can change the world.

Kenny Coogan: When you’re educating all these people online and also at the Mother Earth News Fairs, do you see misconceptions about mushrooms? Can you share some of the ones that are more common?

Erin Hamilton: Yes. Um, some of the common misconceptions about mushrooms. First off, uh, one thing that I hear so frequently, um, whether I’m at an event or a farmers market or, um, wherever, I always have a few people that walk by and go, “I cannot stand mushrooms. They’re so slimy.” Mushrooms should not be eaten when they’re slimy. If you’re getting them from the store and they’re slimy, toss them. They’re decomposing. Once mushrooms get slimy, they’re at the decomposing point. There’s a few varieties that are like, have more of like, viscous textures. But in general, mushrooms should be like, a wonderful textural experience. They should not be slimy in any way. And they are, um, they’re wonderful when they’re fresh. And so that’s another thing with growing them, is you get access to these [00:06:00] mushrooms that you really just cannot buy in a non decomposing condition.

So a lot of times when people don’t like mushrooms, it’s actually that they haven’t gotten to experience great mushrooms, or um, even just fresh mushrooms. So that’s one really interesting one.

Another thing that people almost always think is that mushrooms have to be grown in the dark. Um, and actually they do need a little tiny bit of light to know which way is up. They don’t photosynthesize the way a plant does. They really don’t need a ton of light, but you give them a little light as they’re growing. We call it the “fruiting phase.” Once you actually see a little mushroom growing and turning into a large mushroom, the way we think it, in that phase, if they get a little bit of sunlight, it actually boosts their vitamin D level pretty significantly. Um, so it is great if there’s a way to get them some sunlight, but they are 80 percent water. So you don’t want them to get too much light where they’re getting more dried out. Because humidity is important for growing mushrooms.

So those are the two biggest misconceptions that I tend to have come up very frequently about [00:07:00] mushrooms.

Kenny Coogan: So we ask our social media followers for questions, and Pam Truesdale asks, “I’m trying to find a way to increase my income by starting a home based business. I have a plan in place for plant starts. But I’m wondering if mushrooms might be a good choice also. I live in the Pacific Northwest and feel like it is a perfect fit. In a perfect world, I would have food and plants as my career.”

Erin Hamilton: I think that’s absolutely beautiful. And I believe you can absolutely have food and plants as your career right now.

And mushrooms are a wonderful way to make that happen. Um, what I have found personally, we do a lot of farmers markets, and what I’ve seen is there is a huge demand for gourmet mushrooms. And there are never enough mushroom growers to fill it. We’re in Michigan, so, um, similar climate. I think you guys have a little bit more humidity over there. But you are in a great area for growing.

[00:08:00] You can grow mushrooms anywhere, but Pacific Northwest is a wonderful climate to be growing in because you’re not battling a lot of the dryness that people run into elsewhere, where they’re having to supplement that humidity more. But you can make, I mean, between $10 to $18 per pound of mushrooms, uh, depending on where you’re at and what the local supply and demand is.

If you think about like a, a five gallon bucket of mushrooms, like we use, uh, this is a little one gallon bucket, but you can really grow mushrooms in whatever container you can put well, oyster mushrooms, whatever container you can put holes in the side of.

So, usually people, if they’re doing production growing, they’ll do like a five gallon bucket. And one of those can kick out about four pounds a week when it’s in harvest mode. And you usually get several. Each round of harvest is called a “flush.” So you get, uh, usually about three flushes out of a five gallon bucket. So if you think about that, that’s 12 pounds of harvest per bucket. If [00:09:00] you’re getting $10 to $18 a pound. Um, and then you’ve got a bunch of buckets going. You can really make a nice income for yourself. It does take work and time, um, but it’s not too intensive and it’s, uh, pretty awesome.

I have never run into a day where I could even like wind up with leftovers. Like I, everybody wants mushrooms right now. So, um, I think that it’s a phenomenal way to supplement your income.

Be prepared to like, you know, get into the learning curve. Start with a small couple of buckets of mushrooms and get a feel for that. But that way you just know what you’re doing before you have, you know, 40 buckets going at once and you know, like, exactly what you’re doing and everything. Um, but I would heartily recommend giving it a try and grow mushrooms for profit. The world needs them.

[00:09:52] How to Start Growing Mushrooms

Kenny Coogan: All right. So let’s follow up on Pam’s question. What’s the easiest way to start growing mushrooms?

Erin Hamilton: So oyster mushrooms are a really [00:10:00] good starting point. Um, I usually tell people to start with pink oyster mushrooms. These are, these are actually some little pink oyster mushrooms. They’re in a little cute container so that I can show them off. But, um, oyster mushrooms are great because they’re a lot more forgiving than a lot of varieties. And, um, you don’t need as much specialty equipment to get started with those. You can actually start them on a bag of brown rice and then transfer that into a bucket of straw or coffee grounds.

So, we make kits for growing oyster mushrooms here at the Mushroom Conservatory. Uh, and they’re a really good starting point. You can actually start them on a bag of brown rice, and then you transfer that into a bucket with either coffee grounds or straw. And you don’t have to do any advanced sterilization processes or anything that you might have to do for more advanced mushroom growing.

And each one of these comes with a liquid culture in it, it’s mushroom culture, so it’s got living mushroom tissue in it. And you add that to a bag of brown rice, which we’ll show you in a little bit. But once you do that, it creates grain [00:11:00] spawn. And then you use that as sort of your mushroom seed to layer in your big buckets to grow.

So one of these little kits can start up to five buckets of mushrooms. So it gives you a lot of, a lot of space to tinker and kind of get a feel for it. And then from there, you know, you, you might get other kinds of mushroom culture or whatever. But there’s a huge range of mushrooms in the oyster mushroom family. So you can do a lot with different flavors and colors and all of this and really make a nice income off of that.

Um, but I’ve found that once people get comfortable growing oyster mushrooms, they’re ready to dive into other kinds of mushrooms because they’re starting to feel more confident and getting a feel for it. Uh, lion’s mane can also be another wonderful starting point. It uses a similar process.

Kenny Coogan: All right, so how do you start the grain spawn on the brown rice?

Erin Hamilton: So you actually use regular brown rice like you would get at the store, and you cook it a little on the dry side. And then you add [00:12:00] your liquid culture to that, and then you use paper bandage tape. It looks like surgical tape, but it’s, um, it’s porous, so it can breathe, but it’s not going to let bacteria or other particles in.

And so when you add your liquid culture to the bag here, you’ll actually tape the top with that instead of zipping it shut, and that gives it an air filter. And then you let that sit for a few weeks, um, and it turns into grain spawn, which then looks like this.

And um, that fluffy white stuff on there is called mycelium. And that’s basically, it’s not a root system, but it’s essentially the root system of the mushroom. And it’s also what fungi uses to communicate under the forest floor, and it’s what we use to start buckets of mushrooms.

Kenny Coogan: Just to confirm, that first bag was a demo, but the first bag you would have cooked rice, slightly dry cooked rice in there.

Erin Hamilton: Exactly. You cook it for about 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, less than the instructions would say to. [00:13:00] And then you, while it’s still hot, you put it in your zip bag, and you let that sit in there overnight until it’s cooled completely. You have to have it cooled all the way. And then you add liquid culture to it.

And there’s many ways to make grain spawn. And when you get into more varieties like shiitake, um, you’re going to start doing, you know, you’ll need to pressure cook your bags so that you’re sterilizing them, because oyster mushrooms don’t get contaminated as easily as a lot of other varieties of mushrooms. But once you’re ready to like really get into advanced mushroom growing, or even just like you’re doing production mushroom growing, um, at that point you’re going to start making your grain spawn in these bigger bags. It’s called a “unicorn bag.” And this is called a “air patch filter.” And, um, what happens is you’re gonna put your grain, whatever kind of grain you’re going to use, because you can use all kinds of grain. For some [00:14:00] varieties we’ll actually use, um, like. hard red wheat berries, which these are really awesome. We have tons of these, and I make a lot of grain spawn with these. Both have to be pressure cooked, same with like sawdust or a variety of other kinds. That’s when you get into using a pressure cooker for varieties.

But for growing oyster mushrooms, you start it out on a bag of rice, and then that gets put into a bucket of coffee grounds or straw.

Kenny Coogan: All right, so after a couple of weeks, you have the mycelium, then do you need to do anything to the bucket? How do we transfer that to the bucket?

Erin Hamilton: So once you get, once you get your, uh, grain spawn to a point where it looks like this, your rice is now covered with this fluffy white stuff, um, you take your, you take your bucket. And again, grain spawn, a little bit goes a long way. And, um, you could use this to do a big bucket or a little bucket or a few little buckets. It’s [00:15:00] very flexible and it’s not so much that this much equals filling this much of a bucket. It’s more like, um, it takes longer for a smaller quantity to colonize a larger quantity of whatever’s in your bucket for growing it.

So use whatever size bucket you want. But what we do with this, is you just take a regular bucket and then you drill holes in it. These are five eighths of an inch holes that we drilled, and it’s kind of just a zigzag pattern. So there’s one, two, three, four, five, six holes on this. This is a gallon. When you do like a five gallon bucket, you’re going to want to do more like maybe a dozen holes and just stagger them a little more so you’re not letting too much air into one spot and getting it dried out.

So you take your grain spawn. And you take either coffee grounds or straw. Coffee grounds, you just use them within a few days of when they were brewed, and you just layer them in there. You might put an inch and then you crumble in some of your [00:16:00] grain spawn and then another inch of coffee grounds.

If you’re going to use straw, you will either hot water pasteurize it, which is soaking that straw in hot water, um, for a couple hours or overnight. Um, and then once it’s cool, you would just drain it out and then use it in here. Or you can do cold water pasteurization, which I’ve gotten into doing more lately. It’s very handy if you’re trying to do a lot of buckets at once. And you actually take hydrated lime powder and you put that in cold water, and then you put your straw in there. And what that does is it temporarily boosts the pH level up high enough to kill off any microbes that are in that straw. And then after, you know, 12 to 24 hours, you drain all that off and then you start your buckets with that. It’s nice because you don’t have to haul hot water, which matters more when you’re trying to do like 40 or 50 buckets.

Um, so anyway, once you’ve pasteurized your straw, you take your grain spawn, and you just layer that in there the same way you would with coffee grounds.

So to recap that: You take your straw or your coffee grounds [00:17:00] and your grain spawn. You just put like an inch of your straw or coffee grounds, crumble some grain spawn, and you keep doing that all the way up. And then once that’s done, you cover up each hole on your bucket with some of that paper bandage tape. And that makes a nice little air filter. And then you put the lid on, and you let that sit for a few weeks. You don’t do anything to it. And after a few weeks, you’ll see tiny little mushrooms trying to peek out from some of these holes in here. And when you see that, just any of the holes that that’s happening on, you peel the tape off. And then you just mist the outside of the bucket with water every day, once or twice a day, usually, unless you’re somewhere very dry, then you might need a little bit more, but usually once or twice a day is good.

It’s wild. You don’t take the lid off. Everyone wants to take the lid off and peek inside, but actually you leave the lid on, and that helps CO2 to build up in the bucket, which helps the mushrooms to grow out the sides.

So anyway, once you see those little baby mushrooms popping out, they’re called “pins.” You’ve got about a week from when they’re pins [00:18:00] to when they’re becoming full grown mushrooms that are almost ready to harvest. So it’s pretty fascinating how quickly that happens. But yeah, that’s the gist of it.

Mushroom Growing Substrate and Containers

Kenny Coogan: Okay, so Erin, I like the flavor of coffee much more than I like the flavor of straw. Does the substrate influence the end product?

Erin Hamilton: Personally, I can’t tell a huge difference between the two. Um, I’ve noticed the difference being more in hydration. It does seem like the coffee grounds hang on to moisture a little bit more than straw does. But you have to, uh, make sure that you’re really using fresh coffee grounds, because if they’re more than a few days old, they will start getting moldy.

I had a friend who was really excited to start growing their mushrooms, and they saved up coffee grounds, and they called me. They’re like, “I’ve been saving coffee grounds for six weeks. Can I start now?” I was like, oh no. And they went and looked, and [00:19:00] sure enough, they were already moldy because they just, they can’t wait that long. So that is the catch with using coffee grounds. You have to use, have enough to use within a few days of when they were brewed.

I don’t notice a big flavor difference. Straw is very convenient. Um, and I do think I’ve run into less contamination using straw, but, um, again, I grow in larger quantities. And so I think that, you know, when you’re trying to come up with large quantities of coffee grounds, that’s more the issue. I think both work really well.

Kenny Coogan: You’re saying that your friend collected coffee grounds for six weeks. It went bad. But we’re gonna put the good mycelium in the coffee grounds, and that’s gonna overpower the bad mold?

Erin Hamilton: Exactly. Um, when there’s already good mycelium in there competing, it’s more of an ecosystem type situation. So it’s not just sitting there, stagnating, waiting for whatever microbes to catch on to. If there’s [00:20:00] no good mycelial activity happening in that, if you haven’t introduced like mushrooms that you want to grow, something’s going to latch onto that and take those nutrients and start growing on it. So it’s definitely a competition.

And one question I get a lot is, um, can I start a bucket with two kinds of oyster mushrooms growing in it? And they will actually fight each other until one wins. And then it will grow, but it won’t be as strong. Um, and so you wind up with kind of one, one kind of wimpy mushroom that won. And once in a blue moon, you’ll be able to get two kinds to grow in a bucket.

But usually they will fight. And that’s true of most fungi is it’s always one trying to take over the container.

Kenny Coogan: So what kind of mushrooms can be grown using this bucket method?

Erin Hamilton: So, this bucket method, you can use this for a lot of varieties, but doing the no, like, rice, no pressure cooking method, you’re going to do oyster mushrooms. So there’s king [00:21:00] oyster, pink oyster, blue oyster, golden oyster, phoenix oyster, um, black pearl oyster, and a few others. And they all have really distinct flavor profiles. Like the black pearls are kind of peppery, and pink oysters are kind of bacon-y, they’re just fascinating.

So you can do those. You can do lion’s mane. You can do wine cap mushrooms, which actually tastes like potatoes, not like wine. They just have a beautiful wine-y colored cap. Or there’s golden wine caps that also have this like kind of beautiful honey colored cap. Um, and they’re pretty big.

So those all do well in the buckets. Um, and you can also do a lot of other varieties in buckets. But once you do that, you need to start sterilizing your substrate a little bit more. And so we’ll talk about that. I would say the bucket method is really particularly good with oyster mushrooms and lion’s mane.

[00:21:48] Mushroom Liquid Culture Recipe

Kenny Coogan: Now in your starter kit, you had a little syringe of liquid culture, right?

Erin Hamilton: Yes.

Kenny Coogan: Alright, so what is that? And how do you make it?

Erin Hamilton: So [00:22:00] liquid culture is truly amazing. Um, and What it is, is, uh, this is why I love pressure canners. I, they’re amazing and they let you make things like liquid culture. And this is always the next question after people start growing their own mushrooms is, “Well, how do I make more liquid culture? Can I take the mushrooms I grew and make liquid culture with them?” Um, and so what liquid culture is, is it’s sterilized water with a nutrient in it, with mushroom tissue that we’ve grown in that. It’s a sterile process to make that, and it’s pretty cool how it works. And so, you make a special jar, you take a Mason jar, and then you put, uh, you drill holes in the lid, and you put a, uh, injection port and an air filter on the top. I’ll show you that in just a minute.

Then what happens is you’ll put your, you’ll put water in that, and then you [00:23:00] add a nutrient in a very small quantity. It’s about 4 percent of the totality of the size of the jar to the ratio of water. And so, um, when people are getting started with making their own liquid culture, I usually tell them to start by using light malt extract or honey. Either works really well.

And so you would take a quart sized jar, and you would pour in a tablespoon of either honey or light malt extract, and then you put your special lid on, and you put that on. And you do, you want to do a few jars at a time.

You put your culture in the pressure canner. And you actually just put that up to 15 PSI for about 15 minutes. And, um, and then once it’s completely depressurized and cooled, you take your mushroom culture jars out of there.

At that point you have a jar of sterile medium that you can then add mushroom culture to. And so usually you’ll have like your mother culture, which is just your [00:24:00] strongest, freshest mushroom culture. Um, mushroom cultures tend to work generationally. So you have three or four generations where you can add it to a liquid culture and then it grows in a whole jar, and then you can use that to add to another culture, and then it grows in a whole jar. And it, it’s exponential. But then once you get to a certain point, it gets weaker. So you really do want to have your like your, uh, your starting point culture that’s really strong.

So this is a mother culture here that I have that, um, is a first generation culture that came straight from mushroom tissue grown out on an agar. But you don’t have to do all of that in order to make your, uh, liquid culture. And you’ll actually take this, and you just add a little bit to your culture jar. And so you’ll inject about a milliliter, which is a very, very tiny amount. It’s like a very tiny amount. And you inject that into the jar, and then you just let your jar sit somewhere safe and quiet in room temperature for about three weeks. You shake it once in a [00:25:00] while. Usually I’ll put a marble or a magnetic stirrer in that jar so that it helps break up the mycelium as it grows. And then you’ll see this beautiful like gel type substance growing in there, and that’s when it is officially liquid culture. And you can use that inoculate your grain spawn and start things growing.

[00:25:19] How to Grow Mushrooms with a Liquid Culture

Kenny Coogan: So, Erin, we just talked about the liquid culture, but can you demonstrate, after you harvest it, what do you do with it?

Erin Hamilton: Well here, let me show you this really quick. So, this is an All American 921 canner. And, I did a whole bunch of culture jars in here. If you get one of our kits, you don’t have to make your own culture. But when you get into wanting to grow in larger quantities, you’re going to become curious about making your own cultures, and it really opens a lot of doors with mushroom growing if you have one of these.

So, I have… This actually [00:26:00] holds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 18. There’s two stacks of nine in here. So this is 18 pint jars of liquid culture that I started here. And so if you look at that, this is the lid I was talking about. And that’s a self healing injection port so that you can inject culture into it without letting any germs in.

And this is an air patch filter so that it can breathe without any bacteria getting in. It actually is made out of the same stuff as this paper bandage tape that you can buy right next to the band aids. Very, very handy stuff to have on hand if you’re going to grow mushrooms.

Um, so just the last thing I want to show you about liquid culture before I dive into showing you how to start growing them, whether you make your own culture or just from one of our kits, either is great. But what you do is you take your mother culture here. Um, we don’t sell our kit with a needle. We use oral syringes. Um, they, they’re just not necessary to use it, but when you’re making liquid culture, uh, you’ll actually use like an 18 gauge [00:27:00] veterinary needle. And you take your culture jar here. And you want to just disinfect the top really quick. Peroxide works great or 70 percent isopropyl alcohol. You don’t want to use 90 percent because it’s pretty flammable, which you can find out the hard way. But I’m just wiping off the space where I’m going to be injecting on. That makes sure that I’m not getting any extra bacteria on there.

You take this and so you get your jar there. And I’m just going to do the one milliliter into this jar. I did two. That’s okay if you do two, but do that. And so then all you do is you let that sit in your cabinet for a few weeks while it grows.

So once you’ve done that, whether you grew your own culture or you’re starting with one of these kits, you’re going to, you’re going to cook some brown rice.

And I have my [00:28:00] little demo bag of brown rice here. You wanna cook it a little bit on the dry side. Um, and I would, I usually put in just a little bit less water than the instructions say. Whole grain brown rice, no salt or butter or seasonings or anything. And, um, then when it’s still hot, you wanna take it out about 15 minutes before the instructions would say, if you’re like cooking it to eat. So you just want it to be a little firm. And you’re gonna scoop that into your plastic freezer bag. Squeeze out all the air and let that sit and cool overnight. And so what you did there was kill off any microbes, bacteria, whatever that’s in there. You also hydrated it to give it a good base.

So once you have that, you open up your handy dandy kit from The Mushroom Conservatory. And you’ll have a liquid culture. There’s also a full set of instructions that cover everything I’m talking about right now, and then some. It tells you how to like start a straw bed outdoors if you’d rather do that instead of a bucket, or lots of interesting stuff there. And then there’s also an [00:29:00] alcohol wipe here in case you don’t have any peroxide or rubbing alcohol on hand. That way, you can get started without waiting for anything.

You just want to make sure that the part of the bag you’re working with, is sterile, so I always wipe it down really well with your rubbing alcohol. You’re gonna do this when you get to the bucket part, too. You just, everything with mushroom growing, wipe it down with alcohol or peroxide. If you’re in a house that has air conditioning or fans, I like to turn them off before I start doing this. Give it like half an hour for all the dust to settle so you don’t have any extra particles floating around that don’t need to be.

And so then, just wipe this off with rubbing alcohol. Um, your cooked rice, a little on the dry side. And you’re just going to open like a little corner of the bag and take the cap off of this. And then you’re going to put in just one milliliter. There’s five milliliters in each one of these syringes. So you’re just going to take that to the one milliliter. This is a good way to hold it. So you have most control over how much is [00:30:00] coming out. Otherwise, if you like a lot of people trying to do this or whatever, and, um, it, you don’t have as much control, so you might put too much out. And the thing that you have to be careful of is trying to get, um, too much moisture in there where it’s going to start fermenting itself instead of growing.

So once you’ve done that, you just take your paper bandage tape. And I like to just tape the top of the bag where the zip is, and then I pop that zipper open. But you could also cut corners off the bottom of the bag and do the same thing. But all you’re doing is making a little paper air filter here. And, just make sure that the zipper is not zipped in there. So you got a nice breathing port for all this to grow well.

And then you just let that sit for a few weeks until it looks like this.

Kenny Coogan: And we call that a “mushroom spawn bag?” [00:31:00]

Erin Hamilton: Yeah, so it’s a mushroom spawn bag. This is how you make a mushroom spawn bag. Um, so this will be referred to as “grain spawn “. Once it’s in this state, it’s referred to as “grain spawn.” And this is enough grain spawn to grow a ton of mushroom.

So when you’re growing personal quantities of mushrooms, enough to feed your family, you’re going to do great with using freezer sized bags to do your grain spawn. Uh, when you get into growing larger quantities and you’re wanting to grow for the farmers market or something like that, or you’re providing local restaurants or whatever your mushroom growing endeavor is, you’re going to want to start making your grain spawn in bigger bags. These are called unicorn bags. Uh, and sometimes they’ll just be called “mushroom growing bags.” But they have an air patch filter on them, and you fill that up with your, with your grain, and then you’ll actually pressure cook those. Um, you don’t need to get into that right now, but if you want to do larger quantities, that’s, that’s where you go with that. Go in one of these.

Kenny Coogan: You mentioned brown rice, but are there other grains that you can use for grain [00:32:00] spawn?

Erin Hamilton: Yes. So this. This is, um, red, hard red wheat berries, and these are really great for doing grain spawn on. You would soak them overnight in water and then drain off all the extra water, and then you actually would have to pressure cook those.

I like using rice for beginning because you don’t have to do as much to sterilize it. But you can also use, millet is wonderful for doing grain. Um, I use a grain grinder to crack up dried corn, and I’ll use that as a grain spawn and for different things.

Um, so there’s a lot of different grains you can use. A lot of people will also use wild bird seed. Um, again, you have to sterilize most of that. So a pressure canner is really the way to go. If you’re going to explore growing on those grains. There’s some kinds of mushrooms that would really prefer only to grow on those. So, um, rice is great for oyster [00:33:00] mushrooms, for lion’s mane, um, and for starting a lot of kinds of grain spawn.

But when you get into more advanced growing, you’re definitely going to want to take the time to start growing on other grains. Learn how to use a pressure canner if you haven’t already. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and you feel like a very cool mushroom scientist when you do, so.

[00:33:18] Podcast Credits

Kenny Coogan: All right. Well, thank you so much, Erin Hamilton. You’re the owner of the Mushroom Conservatory. And people can find you on social media and, of course, your website. So thank you, Erin, for all those great tips today.

Erin Hamilton: Absolutely. Thank you, Kenny.

Kenny Coogan: Today’s episode was sponsored by All American.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends.

To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit our website,

www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@MotherEarthNews.Com with any questions or suggestions.

Our podcast production team includes [00:34:00] Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, John Moore, Carla Tilghman, and Alyssa “Warner.

Music for this episode is “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw.

The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.

Meet Erin Hamilton

Erin Hamilton is the owner of the Mushroom Conservatory. She loves people and mushrooms and connecting the two.

Additional Resources for Growing Mushrooms

Check out the Mushroom Conservatory and the mushroom-growing kits it offers!

Find Erin at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Fairs

Thank you to All American 1930 for sponsoring this podcast episode!

 Our Podcast Team

Jessica Anderson, John Moore, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner
Music: “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw

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The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.