PF-Tek MycoBag™ Grow Kit

Work in a small, clean and draught-free room. We always recommend working within a Still-Air Box (SAB) when inoculating any product.

1. Loosen it up: The MycoBag will arrive looking a bit like a dense cake! Squeeze the bag until the mixture inside becomes nice and loose.

2. Get clean: Make sure you're showered with fresh clothes. Clean your hands and forearms with the hand wipe for 40-60 seconds and let them dry completely before fitting your face mask and gloves - trust us, you won't get the gloves on otherwise!

3. Get your syringe ready: Give your syringe a good shake to break up any clumps, then screw on the sterile needle we've given you.

4. Take off the outer bag: Remove the secondary outside bag - you don't need it for this kit, but keep it, it could be useful.

5. Clean the port: Give the injection port a clean with the included 70% IPA / 2% Chlorhexidine wipe for 40-60 seconds and allow it a few seconds to dry.

6. Leave the filter alone: The white HEPA filter on the bag filters out dust and mould spores and allows clean air exchange. Don't touch it or try to remove it!

7. Inject: Pierce the rubber injection port and inject 3ml of your gourmet spore or liquid culture solution.

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Leave your MycoBag in a safe, warm place to fully colonise with mycelium. Temperature is so important for success - aim for 23C (give or take a couple of degrees). Being too hot or too cold may result in contamination or slow to no mycelium growth.

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

1. Keep it steady: Try to maintain a consistent temperature, i.e. don't let it go up and down too much.

2. Avoid heat mats! They will cause excessive condensation leading to water build-up and an easy pathway for contamination to enter your MycoBag. Consider building or buying an incubator if you're struggling to keep the temperature up - it's way cheaper than keeping your home heating on all the time and gives much better results too.

3. Keep it out of direct sunlight: A cupboard or a shelf out of the sun is perfect.

4. Give it a squeeze: An added benefit of the bag is that it can be safely squeezed and squished to loosen the colonising substrate, mixing the growing mycelium further to boost the speed.

5. How long? It can take up to 4 weeks to fully colonise in optimum conditions.

6. Ready? Your MycoBag is fully colonised when the substrate is completely covered in white mycelium - we call this a 'cake'.

7. Give it a few extra days: 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.

When and only when the cake is fully colonised, you are ready to use a method called 'dunk and roll' to prepare it for fruiting.

1. Cake out: Cut open the MycoBag and carefully take out your colonised cake.

2. Dunk: Fill a pot with fresh water, put your cake in and place a couple of plates on top to stop it floating - it needs to be fully submerged the whole time. Put a lid on the pot to stop dust and flies getting in and leave it for 6-24 hours. The longer you leave it, the better your results will be.

3. Get the vermiculite ready: Just before you take the cake out of the water, pour some of the vermiculite onto a clean surface or plate. Don't use it all, as you'll be repeating this after each flush!

4. Rinse: Lift the cake out of the water and give it a little rinse under a tap - it's been sitting in its own dirty bath water for up to 24 hours.

5. Roll: Place the wet cake onto the vermiculite and roll it around until there is vermiculite stuck to the full surface area. Don't be scared to press it on firmly.

1. Cover up: Please cover your mouth and nose when working with perlite - it's dusty and nasty to work with (take it from us).

2. Perlite in: Pour your perlite into a strainer and rinse it under a tap until it's soaking wet, then pour it into the XXL grow tent - don't worry if it's still dripping wet.

3. Foil down: Cut a piece of tin foil slightly larger than your cake and place it on top of the perlite. Don't ever have your cake sitting on damp perlite.

4. Cake in: Carefully place your cake on top of the foil.

5. Close it up: Fold the top of the tent 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.

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Maintain a temperature of around 21C (give or take a couple of degrees), this tends to be great for many popular species. Humidity and FAE (fresh air exchange) are extremely important for pinning and healthy mushroom development, as is temperature and light. They will all need to work in harmony.

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1. Mist and fan: Misting 3-6 times a day and fanning is recommended for best results. Don't start misting until at least 24 hours have passed since you dunked your cake, as there will be loads of water in your substrate at this point and you could waterlog it. After that, open the tent, give your cake a fine mist until it glistens, fan in some fresh air (a wave of your hand or a piece of card is plenty) and close it back up. If you notice any excess water, dab it up with tissue paper.

2. Keep the perlite wet (recommended, but not totally necessary): Perlite can dry out quickly, so every other day, pour some water into your XXL grow tent and mix it around with a clean hand so the perlite becomes drenched. It's okay to have an excess of water in there, and adding a little bit of 3% hydrogen peroxide to the water can help kill microbes. Just be careful the wet perlite never touches your cake - it just sits there, so it can bring a higher risk of contamination.

3. Fresh air: The filtered gap at the corner of the tent is your top-FAE. Place an electric fan somewhere in the room on a low setting as well - a gentle air current in the room will increase FAE inside the tent.

4. Light: Your mushrooms will need light to grow - we recommend indirect sunlight or a 5000-6500K LED or fluorescent light a couple of feet away.

5. Pins! After around 3-7 days you'll begin to see lots of tiny white dots - these are hyphal knots which will develop into primordia, aka mushroom pins... the exciting part! It'll then only take 4-5 days for them to grow into fully mature mushrooms ready for harvest.

6. Listen to them: Your mushrooms will let you know if something isn't quite right - fuzzy mycelium at the base of the mushrooms and/or thin stems mean more FAE is needed, so try turning the fan up a little or opening the corner gap a little wider.

1. Harvest time: When the veil beneath one of your mushroom caps is about to tear, it's time to harvest your first flush. If you don't get there quick enough, spores will begin to drop from your mushroom caps and make a mess! Cut them off with a clean scalpel or knife, trying not to damage the cake too much.

2. Dunk and roll again: After you've harvested all the mushrooms from your first flush, repeat the dunk and roll to rehydrate your cake for round 2 - a pot of fresh water, a couple of plates on top, a lid on the pot, 6-24 hours, then a little rinse and a roll in vermiculite.

3. Refresh the perlite: Pour your perlite into a strainer again and rehydrate it whenever you're dunking your cake.

4. Back in the tent: Place your cake back on the foil and close the tent up again, with the filter back in its corner gap.

5. Repeat: It's really important that you dunk your cake between each flush for best results. If you've taken good care of your grow kit, you should achieve multiple flushes of beautiful mushrooms 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!