With the increasing interest in mushrooms, and in particular medicinal mushrooms, wouldn’t it be great to grow your own mushrooms at home?
Mushroom grow kits are one easy way to have fresh mushrooms at home, but if you want more than just a few at a time, a mushroom spore syringe may be the answer.
If that sounds like something out of a medical manual, don’t be alarmed. This type of syringe is used to inoculate substrate, or the environment in which mushrooms grow. By using a syringe, you have an easy and effective way to grow the mushroom strain of your choice.
So let’s look at all you need to know about a how to get started with this.
What does it mean to use inoculation to grow mushrooms?
Let’s start by understanding inoculation. In order to cultivate mushrooms on your own, you need to “inoculate” a substrate, which means introducing a mushroom spawn into a planting area.
If you think about finding mushrooms in the wild, they grow on certain trees or on the ground in different types of matter. A log is one such example of substrate, or material in which the mushroom grows. You can recreate that type of growing environment at home with the right substrate and a mushroom spore syringe for the mushroom you want to cultivate.
Before embarking on mushroom cultivation, you’ll have to make sure you pick the correct type of substrate for the mushroom you want to grow. It’s helpful then to understand the different types of mushrooms, choose the medicinal mushroom you want to grow, and then find an appropriate substrate for that type of mushroom and then you’ll then be ready to use one.
What is a mushroom spore syringe?
A mushroom spore syringe is simply a syringe – like the one used to measure and ingest medicine – that has mushroom spores and syringes inside of it. Please note that many resources for mushroom spore syringes refer to so-called “magic mushrooms,” but we are referring to the many medicinal and non-hallucinogenic mushrooms that can be cultivated with a spore syringe.
A spore syringe holds the mushroom spores along with water, which suspends the spores without destroying them.
Here is a link for Oyster Mushroom 5 Pack Spore Free Live Myceliu Syringes.
Where do you get these types of syringes?
You can buy a mushroom spore syringe online, or make one yourself. Making your own is more labor-intensive. Most importantly, you need a spore print, the powdery deposit from a mushroom, which is harvested in different ways depending on the mushroom. You will also need sterilized water, a gas burner, a pressure cooker and other materials.
If you’re just learning to inoculate substrate, it’s best to start with a purchased, ready-made mushroom spore syringe. Typically you want a syringe that’s got a multitude of spores in it.
The spore syringe method is reliable and effective but it’s important to remember that the spores will need time to germinate and come to life, before they colonize or grow in the substrate and finally form mycelium, or the feeding structure of the mushroom. Once you have mycelium, it will create fruiting bodies or mushrooms.
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How do you use a mushroom spore syringe?
Once you have a mushroom spore syringe, you need the appropriate substrate for that type of mushroom. The substrate should be pre sterilized in order to work with spores.
Let’s take shiitake mushrooms as an example. It’s a popular mushroom, with an excellent taste and texture when cooked, and it is widely cultivated. It’s also healthy, with benefits such as having antiviral properties, and immune-boosting and antitumor effects.
In the wild, shiitake typically grows on trees such as oaks and beeches. You can inoculate logs, but cultivating shiitake mushrooms is most effective in sawdust, for instance broadleaf hardwood sawdust and chips such as that from cottonwood, poplar, alder, willow or aspen. You can also purchase substrate for your specific mushroom strain.
You can increase the amount of mushrooms you cultivate by having several bags of sawdust. Each syringe can inoculate many bags, since you need about 3 milliliters of spore solution for each 1 liter of substrate. Your spore syringe will have instructions for quantity.
Your syringe should also have instructions for storage. You don’t have to use the entire syringe. You can always cap the needle and store it in a refrigerator for future use.
After inoculation, your mycelium will start growing, followed by the fruit or mushrooms. Once again, follow the instructions to know where and how to store the substrate bag, such in a dark closet, at a specific temperature.
You can harvest and eat your mushrooms when they’re ready, and you can also create a spore print that will allow you to make your own syringe in the future, if desired. Once you have experience, you can duplicate your mushroom strains over and over again with new bags of substrate.
Depending on which mushroom you would like to grow, there are more than plenty of choices with Root Mushroom Pre-filled syringes available on Amazon.
Final Thoughts
With a little experience, you can learn to use a mushroom spore syringe to grow your own mushrooms at home.
This way, you can experience a multitude of healthy, medicinal mushrooms, perhaps even some new varieties that you can’t find at your local grocery stores. It’s also an exciting new adventure for those who like to garden, grow and cultivate at home.
Sources:
https://www.mushbox.co/Growing-Mushrooms-from-a-Spore-Syringe_b_5.html
https://www.mushbox.co/Liquid-Culture-and-Live-Spawn_b_4.html
https://mushplanet.com/cultivation-techniques/making-a-spore-syringe/
https://www.mushrooms.com/mushroom-spores-cultures/magic-mushrooms/spore-syringe
https://sites.google.com/site/hedchoothai/-hed/kar-pheaa-hed-growing-mushroom/-mushroom-spawn/-how-to-use-a-mushroom-spore-syringe?tmpl=%2Fsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPrintDialog=1
https://homeguides.sfgate.com/inoculate-log-mushroom-spores-78031.html
https://spores.com/shiitake-mushroom-culture-syringes
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