XXL MonoBag Grow Kit

Reducing the risk of contamination is crucial in successful mushroom cultivation, and you can achieve this by working in a small, clean, and draught-free space, ideally using a Still-Air Box (SAB).

Before starting, cleanliness is paramount; take a shower, put on fresh clothes, and cleanse your hands and forearms with one of the hand wipes for 40-60 seconds. Ensure you have a face mask on, but hold off on your gloves until step 4.

Next, prepare your syringe by attaching the sterile needle we've given you. Now, take your SpawnTub out of its box. Be mindful, once it's out of the box, it's more exposed to the open air and any potential contaminants - that's why working within a SAB is strongly recommended to minimise this risk.

You'll notice a grey rubber injection port on the lid of your SpawnTub. Use a 70% IPA / 2% Chlorhexidine wipe to sanitise this for 40-60 seconds. Now you're ready to inject the spore or culture solution. Pierce the needle through the cleaned rubber port and inject 2-3ml of solution into the port. Just remember, the filters on the lid are not for injection!

After injecting the spore solution into the SpawnTub, it's time to set the stage for the colonisation process. Remember, Mycelium is alive and needs to breathe, so storing your SpawnTub in an airtight container is a no-go. Instead, utilise the cardboard box that it arrived in. It acts as a perfect shelter for your colonising SpawnTub and helps keep it free from dirt and dust.

Temperature plays a vital role in the colonisation process. High heat (above 26C) or cold conditions (below 18C) can invite problems like contamination or sluggish to non-existent growth. The sweet spot is around 23C (give or take a couple of degrees), room temps at a minimum and consistency is key. Heat mats are not recommended as they can cause undue condensation, potentially leading to a breeding ground for contaminants in your SpawnTub.

Using a liquid culture, agar or grain-to-grain instead of spores? Aim for 26C - those are live mycelium, not spores.

Maintaining the right temperature can be challenging. If you find yourself in this situation, an incubator might be the solution. It's a more cost-effective choice compared to running your home's heating system constantly, and it tends to yield better results.

At 23C (give or take a couple of degrees) you can usually expect your SpawnTub to be fully colonised in about 2-3 weeks. Still, nature likes to keep us on our toes, and this timeline can fluctuate based on a multitude of factors. Patience will be your ally here. Even once it looks fully colonised, if you have the patience, give it an extra 3-7 days - this will almost guarantee full colonisation in the places you can't see.

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When the grain inside your SpawnTub is fully covered with healthy, white mycelium, you're ready for the next step. It's important not to open your SpawnTub before this point, as uncolonised grains can get contaminated when exposed to open air.

The next step involves hydrating and sanitising your coir substrate. First, open the polypropylene bag containing the coir substrate and pour 850ml of tap water into the coir. Then, close the seal, leaving a little gap for steam to escape. Place this bag inside a microwavable container (to prevent any mess) then microwave for 10 minutes on high. Make sure your microwave is clean before you start. Don't worry about losing a lot of water from the steaming process, we've accounted for that.

After microwaving, remove and let cool to room temperature.

If you don't have a microwave, no problem! You can use steam sterilisation with a pot of water. Here's how:

1. Get a large pot ready: Fill with lots of water and and get it to a heavy boil.

2. Boil a kettle: Pour 850ml of boiling kettle water into your coir bag. Seal the bag and drop it into the large pot of boiling water. Put a lid on and turn off the heat.

3. Leave it to cool: When the pot is cool enough to touch, you are ready to remove the bag of coir which should be sufficiently sanitised for our needs.

Once it's cool, check it's at 'field consistency'. This is one of the most annoying terms in mushroom cultivation, but it means when you take a handful of substrate and squeeze it hard you get a tiny short stream of water releasing. A gentler squeeze can release a few droplets of water. We have calculated our substrate mix to take 850ml of water, but if something goes wrong and it isn't enough or it seems too much, it's simple - to remove water just squeeze a handful at a time. Squeezed too much out? Well, pour a little back in - it's easy to get right.

The MonoBag works just like our XXL MonoBox Grow Kit, without the box: your coir and colonised grain go into the XXL MonoBag, colonise in it and then fruit in it.

Before proceeding, clean your hands and forearms with your second hand wipe (or soap and water, dried properly), and put on your gloves.

Pour all of the prepared coir into the XXL MonoBag™, then take out a good handful and set it aside for later.

Open your SpawnTub, take the mycelium covered grain brick out and put it into the MonoBag with the coir. It'll be a solid block that you'll need to break up - squeeze it through the bag until it separates into individual grains, then really mix it all through the coir as evenly as you can. Each grain is an inoculation point, so the better you spread them, the faster colonisation will be, and the faster that goes, the less likely contamination is.

Settle the mix into an even, flat layer in the bottom of the bag, then spread the handful you set aside over the top until you can't see any exposed grain. This is called a casing layer.

Now close the bag: fold the top of the bag over, leaving a gap at one corner for top-FAE (Fresh Air Exchange), and tuck the piece of filter material we give you into that gap. It holds the gap open, helps keep the humidity in and keeps flies and dust out.

Store the MonoBag somewhere warm - aim for 23C (give or take a couple of degrees). Getting the temperature right at this point is crucial for success. You need the colonisation of the substrate to be quick, or there's a higher risk of unwanted microbes taking hold.

In the right conditions, full colonisation takes around 7-10 days. If it's taking much longer than this, the risk of contamination starts increasing fast. Even once it looks fully colonised, if you have the patience, give it an extra 3-7 days - this will almost guarantee full colonisation in the places you can't see.

Only when you're confident that the substrate is fully colonised with strong, healthy mushroom mycelium are you ready to begin fruiting. You now have a colonised block, known as a 'cake'.

Your cake fruits right where it is, in the MonoBag, with the top folded over and the filter material in its corner gap just as before.

Maintaining a slightly cooler (but still warm) temperature of around 21C (give or take a couple of degrees) during the fruiting stage is essential for excellent results with many popular species of mushrooms.

Humidity and FAE (fresh air exchange) are extremely important for pinning and healthy mushroom development, as is temperature and light. They all need to work in harmony. Humidity will naturally build up inside the bag from the water in the coir, which is still stored in the cake, and the filtered corner gap lets fresh air in.

Mist and fan: Misting 3-6 times a day and fanning is recommended for best results. Unfold the top of the bag, give the surface a fine mist of water (don't drench it), fan in some fresh air (a wave of your hand or a piece of card is plenty), then fold it back over with the filter material in its corner gap. After a dunk, wait at least 24 hours before you start misting again.

Placing an electric fan somewhere in the room on a low setting will also create a gentle air current inside the room, which will help increase the FAE inside the bag.

Your mushrooms will need light to grow. We recommend indirect sunlight or a 5000-6500K LED or fluorescent light a few feet away - if the light is heating the substrate, move it further away. If you notice the inside of the bag looking dry, it may be due to the fan being too close, the corner gap being open too wide, or grow lights (if using them) being too close and hot. Observe what's happening and adjust your setup as required. Fantastic results depend on it.

After around 3-7 days, you'll hopefully begin to see lots of tiny white dots. These are hyphal knots that will develop into primordia, aka mushroom pins. It will take 4-5 days for them to grow into fully mature mushrooms ready for harvest. During this time, they'll let you know if something isn't quite right. Fuzzy mycelium at the base of the mushrooms and/or thin stems are an indication that more FAE is needed. Increasing the fan speed or opening the corner gap a little wider might be something to try.

When the veil beneath one of your mushroom caps is about to tear off, this is when you should harvest your first flush. If you don't get there quickly enough, spores will begin to drop from your mushroom caps and make a mess! It's best to cut the mushrooms off with a clean scalpel or knife. You can also just pull them off, but be careful not to damage the substrate too much.

After you've harvested all the mushrooms from your first flush, you can use a method called "dunking" to get more moisture into your substrate. Take your cake out of the MonoBag and place it into a pot of fresh water. It will float to the top, so put a couple of plates on top to weigh it down. You need it to be fully submerged in water at all times.

Put a lid on the pot to stop dust and flies getting in. Leave your cake submerged for anything between 6-24 hours, depending on how much patience you have. But obviously, the longer you leave it, the better your results will be. When you remove the cake from the water, give it a little rinse under the tap - it's been sitting in its own dirty bath water for up to 24 hours - and allow excess water to drain away before putting it back into your MonoBag and folding the top over again, with the filter material in its corner gap.

You should continue to dunk your substrate after each flush. If you've taken good care of it, you should achieve multiple flushes of mushrooms from your grow kit before the nutrients are all used up.

Thanks so much for ordering our grow kit. We hope you love using it and reap the rewards!

If there's anything you're still unsure about, get in touch through Messages in your account or the chat button at the bottom of any page. We're a friendly bunch!