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Part 3: Spawning to Bulk

(Fruiting) Shroomscout’s
Comprehensive “Easiest Way to
Learn Shroom Growing with Uncle
Bens Tek” Instructions.
Shroomscout’s Official “Easiest Way to Learn Shroom Growing with
Uncle Bens Tek”

So, you want to grow magic mushrooms. You’re a bit confused, lost, or
overwhelmed by the whole process, the many different Teks, or even the
basics and where to start. You’ve come to the right place!

I’ll break this write-up into 4 main posts. At the bottom of each post
will be a summary in bold.

Part 1: Understanding how mushrooms and mycelium grow (Very

important, do not skip!)

Part 2: How to Inoculate Uncle Bens Bags (Inoculation &

Colonization)

Part 3: How to Spawn to Bulk (Fruiting)

Part 4: How to Harvest, Dry, and Prepare for next flush

(There will also be a TL;DR at the bottom of Part 4)

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Part 3: How to Spawn to Bulk (Fruiting)

Click here for the video version of this post!

Historically, shroom cultivators had generally two options for fruiting their
mushrooms:

1. Shroom “cakes” from a jar, placed in a fruiting chamber

2. “Spawning to bulk” in a plastic tub, with a substrate.

The concept with both Teks are the same: Introduce water, humidity,
evaporation, and FAE (Fresh Air Exchange). You are simulating the
fruiting phase that occurs in nature. Fresh Air Exchange is like Gas
Exchange from Part 2 on steroids: you will need WAY more of it when the
time comes.

How Cakes in fruiting chambers work:

We won’t be using this method, because it doesn’t work super well with
the irregular shaped “cakes” from Uncle Bens bags. Also, cakes don’t
produce the same size harvests as Spawning to Bulk. The 100%
colonized cakes are removed from their jars soaked underwater to
hydrate them overnight. Then, they’re placed on foil to separate them
from Perlite, a waterlogged high-surface-area material that allows for
high humidity and evaporation, and given immediate FAE (Fresh Air
Exchange). This triggers mushrooms to grow. The mushrooms can be
harvested, the cakes re-hydrated, and placed back into the chamber for
a second flush. Once again, we will not be using this method for Uncle
Bens spawn grains (though you can experiment with it!).

Spawning Uncle Bens Spawn Grains TO BULK:

Spawning to bulk in a Monotub is easy and will get you bigger yields
for your spawn grains.

Explanation: There are three parts for spawning to bulk you need to
know.

1. The tub. modified, unmodified, or dub-tub?

2. The substrate. CVG, CV, or just Coir? What ratio of spawn:

substrate?
3. The conditions. Let it fully colonize, or put to fruiting right away?
Moisture?

The tub. You will need at least a 4-quart (1 gallon) plastic tub. My
preferred tub is in the Materials section below. Many people use 6
quart Shoebox tubs for Shoebox Tek. We are basically doing just
that. It will need some way to introduce airflow. Many people cut
holes and stuff with polyfill, or cover with micropore tape. I prefer to
not do either; I simply crack my lid with BOD’s Unmodified Monotub
Tek. I find that cracking my lid 1-2cm, and adjusting to create perfect
conditions, has been a great method. As a bonus, if you don’t modify
(drill) your monotub, you can use BOD’s Floating Harvest Tek to
harvest. This is what I do with my monotubs. You can’t do this if you
drill your tub. If your mushrooms begin growing too tall, you can toss
a bag over it or do a dub-tub method.

The Substrate. Your options are 100% Coco coir, or a Coco coir &
Vermiculite mix, or the CVG mix (Coco, Verm, and Gypsum). You’ll
need to take some water, a 5 gallon bucket, and rehydrate your
substrate with boiling water to pasteurize it. Some people believe
adding extra new nutrients to the bulk substrate will help increase
yields, such as manure or coffee grounds. They’re probably right,
but I also believe it will lead to contamination. Your colonized spawn
grains already contain all of the nutrients required to fruit
mushrooms, but the grains are 100% colonized by mycelium and
won’t be contaminated. If you add extra coffee grounds, manure, or
potting soil to your substrate, I believe you are asking for
contaminants. I only use 100% Coco coir, and it’s been great. I
haven’t had a single tub contaminate yet. You’ll hydrate your
substrate, then make sure it’s at “field capacity”, where it is barely
holding water, but is still hydrated.

Many growers use Liners, cut black plastic bags, to prevent a

microclimate developing on the sides and bottom of the tub.
The idea is that the liner shrinks with the substrate as it
 changes over time, preventing any fresh air or proper conditions
from forming on the sides and bottom, where you don’t want
mushrooms to grow. Side and bottom pins aren’t the end of the
world, but they are a pain to harvest comparatively. I do not use
liners. Though I get a few side pins every now and then, I can
prevent side pins by focusing on perfect surface conditions
(more in the next section “The conditions”).

You’ll break up your ‘cakes’ from your Uncle Bens bags into the
tub, add your field capacity substrate, mix thoroughly, then
move onto the conditions. It’s that simple.

The conditions: There is some debate as to whether or not you

should let your mycelium colonize your substrate first or put the
tub straight to fruiting conditions (light, FAE, misting,
evaporation). Personally, though I had success going straight to
fruiting, I often dried out my tubs before they produced pins (baby
mushrooms) because my air is so dry here.

Instead, I went with the first method: I let my bulk substrate

colonize, 50-75%, until I saw “primordia”, “knots”, and a few
“pins”, then introduced fruiting conditions. This method has
worked much better for me.

During this time, you want to focus on “Surface conditions” of

your substrate. Read this Tek on surface conditions, for the
love of god. If you can maintain thousands of tiny droplets, and
some humidity on the sides/top of your tub, you’re in great
shape.

Once your surface conditions are proper, you should see pins
develop across the top. These pins start out growing slowly,
but will suddenly become full-grown shrooms. Here’s a great
timelapse example from /u/tornadic_Vortex.

Finally, you will want to harvest your tub, rehydrate your

 substrate (as mushrooms are 90%+ water weight), and prepare
for a Second Flush (More on that in Part 4: Harvesting).

Materials Needed:

Monotubs: At least 2-4 tubs. Size should be 4-6 quarts for 1-2 bags
of spawn, depending on tub height.

I use the IKEA Samla 1-gallon tubs with lids, and they are
perfect. They’re much more tall than then are horizontal, which
is what you want. The lids are clear plastic too.

Substrate: I use 100% Coco coir bricks.

Here’s the bricks I use. $5/brick, and 1 brick is enough for like 6
tubs at least.

Optional: If you want to add vermiculite, it’s a good idea. It helps

maintain moisture levels even better than coco coir, but I have
had great success with 100% coco coir.

Bucket to pasteurize/hydrate your substrate.

I use a home depot 5 gal bucket with lid. An insulated cooler-

style bucket might work better, but this is really fine.

Mister.

Here’s the mister I use.

I do not recommend “sprayers”, because the force of the water

is often too strong and will bruise your mycelium.

Light source and timer (optional).

Here’s the timer I use. I use 6000K color temp light bulbs or
LED’s.

I ended up soldering my own LED strips into fixtures for my

 closet. Here’s my closet.

You can use ambient light from a window, or a room.

Mushrooms don’t need light to grow. Light only tells the
mushrooms which direction to grow towards.

My Method for creating the perfect Uncle Bens Monotub:

Part A: Shroomscout’s Easy AF bucket Tek.

I basically follow Bod’s Bucket tek, except I don’t bother measuring my

water amounts, and I use a home depot bucket.

1. Place an entire brick of coco coir into the bucket.

2. Boil ¾ gallon of water. You may need more later.

1. If you have nasty tap water, I’d recommend using distilled

gallons for this step.

3. Add the boiling water, stirring with a knife, to the bucket. Break
up the brick as much as possible.

4. You want to keep adding boiling water until the substrate is

generally hydrated and broken up.

1. You DO NOT want standing water, or for it to be soaking wet

on the bottom. It’s not the end of the world if it is, though. I
don’t measure my water amounts TBH.

5. Put the lid on, and let it sit HOT for hours until cooler to the touch.
Waiting overnight works really well.

Part B: Adding your Spawn

1. In your clean monotub, add 1” deep coco coir at field capacity.

You will add more later.

1. I squeeze my coco to field capacity over my bucket, then add

 each handful at a time.

2. With clean scissors, cut open your spawn grain bag. Check for
contamination.

1. Inside should be clean, healthy, white mycelium 100%

colonized.

2. If there are a few grains uncolonized, that’s ok. Make sure to

brush off these grains and dispose of them properly.

3. Blue bruising is totally fine, but green, solid yellow, red, and
purple are signs of contamination.

4. If it’s contam’d, throw that shit out and sanitize everything

again.

3. Using gloved hands, start breaking apart your “cake” into the
coco coir.

1. Some people use cheese graters, but I find using my hands

works fine.

2. Break it apart as finely as you can. Individual clumps of grains

are perfect, but do not leave large clumps.

3. In this post, you can see my broken-up grains sitting on top of

my 1” of coco. The following pictures show what it looks like
after mixing, then casing with coco.

4. Mix thoroughly.

1. This is very important for even flushes. MIX THAT SHIT UP.

5. After mixing, check your substrate depth.

1. You want 2-4” deep, depending on tub height.

6. Add more coco coir (at field capacity hydration) as needed to

 reach 2-4 inches, and mix thoroughly repeatedly.

7. Once you have a solid 2-4” deep spawn:substrate combination,

level it out.

1. Using your fingers, smooth the surface out. Make it level. Pack
it down a bit if you need to.

2. You want your surface as uniform as possible.

8. 8) Add your casing layer. At field capacity, sprinkle enough coco

coir to cover all visible white grains completely, 1/8” to ¼” deep.

9. a. Like Step 7, you want this “casing” layer to be as smooth as

possible.

10. b. This casing layer is critical to help maintain moisture and create
the perfect microclimate for pins to develop.

11. Done! Now, you’re on to creating the perfect climate for your
monotub:

Part C: Caring for your tubs

1. You now have the option of putting your tubs straight to fruiting,
or letting it colonize.

1. I let my tubs colonize first, like this. You can see my casing
layer is having mycelium colonize through. This is good.

2. Let them sit undisturbed for a few days with the lid on. Maybe
lift the lid once or twice to exchange airflow, but otherwise you
can leave them to colonize like they did in the rice bags. This
step is much faster than spawn grain colonization, though.

2. Once they’ve colonized the majority of the surface, or you see

knots or pins, flip/crack the lid.
 1. In my link above, you can see my first pins coming out of the
surface. At this point, I cracked the lid.

2. This step is to provide FAE (fresh air exchange).

3. Give them some light. A lamp or bulb, 6000k, on a timer for 12h
on/off works perfectly. Window light and ambient room light is ok
too.

1. If your tub doesn’t have a clear lid, you can cut the center of the
lid and tape saran wrap over it. I recommend IKEA Samla 1
gallon tubs, or something similar, because they have clear
plastic lids.

4. After introducing FAE, you will likely need to mist more

frequently to maintain surface conditions as water is removed
through evaporation.

1. See this post for proper surface conditions.

2. You do NOT want water pooling on your surface. If you mist too
much, it will pool and suffocate the mycelium underneath. In
this scenario, crack/fan your tub more frequently, and it will dry
that pooling up.

5. Once you get your pinset, try not to mist directly on the pins. A
little water is ok.

1. Here’s a video of my pins the day before they were ready to

harvest.

6. Keep an eye on your tubs now. You will only have a 12-24 hour
window to pick the mushrooms at the perfect time, covered in Part
4: Harvesting.

Congrats! You will soon get mushrooms. Here’s my pinset. And here’s the
same tub 24 hours later. THEY WILL GROW EXTREMELY FAST at this
point, so be attentive!
SUMMARY OF PART 3, SPAWNING TO BULK:

Your bags need to be 100% colonized

I like using unmodified monotubs, 4-6 quarts in size. IKEA

Samla 1 gal tubs are perfect.

I only use 100% coco coir as my substrate, pasteurized with the

Bucket Tek.

I add 1-2 bags of Bens per 4 quart tub, and mix in coco coir until
2-4” deep.

Add a casing layer to make the perfect microclimate for pins.

Let the tubs colonize until knots/pins show up.

Then, induce fruiting conditions with light, FAE, and misting.

[CLICK HERE for PART 4: Harvesting, Drying, and Preparing for the next
Flush]