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Focusing on Small Batch Mushroom Gardens

Category: Setup

Hardwood Pellets in Instant Pot

Posted on January 12, 2025January 12, 2025

So, today I tried hardwood pellets in the Instant Pot for the first time. I did 5 cups with approx 7.5 cups water, closer to 8.5. Then, I pressure cooked it on high for 30 minutes, given these pellets are supposed to be sterilized to begin with. I then let cool and added directly to bag. After a few hours cooling, I added each to a mini bag, yielding 5 mini bags at about 750g (1.65lb) each. This cook was a complete FAFO. I should have put the hwp in the bag and sterilized, cooled, opened bag mixed in colonized grain, but gonna try this with out sterilizing bag first.

One note on this no one seems to discuss: cleanup! I did this all on a clean countertop and just hand swept the hwp dust onto floor for sweeping. The drier I can make the cleanup, I’ve learned the easier it is. For the tools: scoops, instant pot inside container, etc, I took them outside and used a dry cleaning rag to wipe up the tools then shake out the dust. Using a dry towel and dry approach instead of a wet cleanup made this so much faster and easier.

Drippy Corn in Instant Pot

Posted on January 10, 2025January 12, 2025

Ingredients:

  • Instant Pot
  • 32 oz popcorn kernels
  • corn syrup
  • water

Using PGT’s video as a reference, I did all the steps he mentions with the exception of I pressure cooked the popcorn for 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. The yield was 10 half pint jars.

Humidity Kink

Posted on August 15, 2024January 12, 2025

I noticed a drop in humidity despite not having changed anything in my setup. I ran into this one before, last summer. After running a bit, the hose running to the tent will become weighted down and collect water, clogging the humidity stream to the tent. If I lift up the hose, water drips out. The solution for now is I made the hose as tight and straight to the tent as I could, if that don’t work, I used to prop up the hose with metal hanger into a rainbow arc. We’ll see how it goes.

Automatic Timers

Posted on August 9, 2024January 12, 2025

Fighting with heat this past week I realized my smart plugs “circulate” function had stopped working on two of the timers, namely the fresh air exchange and humidifier. Finally got some new ones from Amazon and got it circulating. Fresh air 1 min every four hours and humidity 1 min every 20 min for now and it’s staying around 76F and 80% humidity.

Flow Hood (Fan Filter Unit) Complete!

Posted on August 3, 2024August 4, 2024

Finally got the components working together, added some wallpaper for style and a table to hold both the FFU and my humidifier and keep things tidy and compact.

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More and More Heat

Posted on August 2, 2024January 12, 2025

Still an ongoing battle to see what I can do to lower the tent down a few degrees. I’m poking up to 81-82F and I’d like to keep it under 80F. I stopped the tent from leaking by taking down the “passive” exhaust hole I have from full 4″ opening to about 2″. I also improved the incoming fresh air by taking the thin filter I use on front end and moving it to back end, for some reason this fan performs better that way. I tried a make shift Styrofoam swamp cooler but the easiest solution right now is I put one of the ice packs I had on hand on the bottom shelf in the tent. I put the inside $ Walmart fan underneath that shelf and circulate air 5 min every 30 min. I usually put a fresh pack at 11am and that is enough to drop it from 80f to 74f-76f during the hottest part of the day. Will adjust as I go along.

Battling High Temperature

Posted on August 1, 2024January 12, 2025

It’s been a few days since I put the buckets in and I’m feeling the hit with degree change. I had the tent all dialed in prior to adding the buckets, but it’s a different ballgame with them in. I touched one bucket and can feel the warmth coming off of it, nuts!! I’m trying to increase the AFE but then, of course, the humidity drops. I also seem to be leaking too much humidity.. argh!

Bucket Day!

Posted on July 28, 2024January 12, 2025

Finally, all the math done, buckets prepped, today was the day to move my grain spawn into buckets (and a few shoeboxes)! In buckets, I put: Shittake, Lion’s Mane, Chestnut and Turkey Tail. In shoeboxes, I put: Golden Enoki, White Enoki and Turtle Shell Beech (not sure about this in a shoebox, might be better for a bucket, but we’ll see!). Overall, the recipe went well though i did seem to have more sawdust than needed. I think the baking of the bran (if there is no contamination) might be a new fave of mine and I’ve found a new source for bran.

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DIY Flowhood

Posted on July 26, 2024August 12, 2024

I’m currently waiting to inject liquid culture in the jars I prepped last week and came up on some do-it-yourself flow hood videos. Taking inspiration, I’ve come up with a game plan of my own.

  • Wooden box (got used)
  • Filter
  • Fan
  • Hinges to hold in place
  • Wood cutter

Formula Used for Fan

Basically, you want to ensure you have enough air to flow through filter, but not disrupt and so you have to look for a fan with the proper “CFM” (cubic feet per minute ) measurement, measuring airflow by the volume of cubic feet per minute the fan is able to move. For this, I found this formula used:

((width of filter x length of filter) / 144) x 100 = how many cfm’s your fan needs

example for my filter in picture above:

14 filter length x 10 filter width = 140
140 / 144 = .972
.972 x 100 = 97.2 minimum cfm

No more than 10%
97.2 x .10 = 9.72
97 + 9.72 = 106.7 max cfm

Final: Fan needs between 97 – 107 cfm

Filter Requirement

After some reading, I went with a HEPA filter that “effectively captures 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns“, purchased on Amazon.

See Final DIY Flow Hood

Making the Lids

Posted on July 20, 2024July 22, 2024

This batch, I’m making some plastic lids for my jars with a syringe filter for air exchange and a rubber stopper as an injection port.

For the lid itself, I purchased the “regular size” lids, which as the description on Amazon says, fit both the half pint and pint jars I have. I came to find out jar lids are standardized to a 2.75″ regular size and wide mouth being being 3.375″, and so I chose regular.

I also decided to use a 13mm diameter syringe filter so it wouldn’t take up the entire lid, trying to keep a good space between the stopper and filter. This became helpful when drilling later.

For the holes, I used a Ryobi drill bit set. After some measuring, the hole I used for the syringe filter was 5/32 and the hole for the stopper was 5/16. The biggest problem was cracks, though and I had to be very careful and DO NOT PUSH DOWN HARD WHEN DRILLING. Let the drill bit do its work and have patience. Pressing too hard OR putting the two holes too close together will cause cracks, making the lid useless.

I tested size and drilling first on a piece of cardboard, making sure the stopper and filter fit nicely and then made a template for the lid, using it to drill my first lid and then used that lid and a pencil to mark the drill spots on all the rest.

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Hardwood Pellet Hydration:  1 cup hardwood pellets to 1.5 water
1 standard six quart Instant Pot holds 6 half pint jars
One Instant Pot holds 5 cups of hydrated hardwood pellets and yields 5 mini (5x4) bags.
One 32oz popcorn kernel bag yields 10 half pint jars
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