- Before using the oyster mushroom kit you will first need to make sure that you have a number of supplies, to ensure your mushrooms will grow properly;
- 1 x bag of pre cooked brown rice (uncle ben's or any generic brand), isopropyl alcohol spray, paper bandage tape, gloves and a clean, dark place, where the mushrooms can grow.
- Firstly sterilise both your working and growing space with isopropyl alcohol, by spraying and wiping down the spaces (you are best to use 70% alcohol but 99.9% will work fine too). You can even clean the liquid culture syringe to ensure this is sterile too.
- Ensure there are no windows open in your work area, keeping air flow in the room to a minimum
- Shake your liquid culture and cut the corner of your rice bag, making a small opening. Place your culture directly into the corner of the bag (as fast as possible), injecting between 1 and 2 ml of liquid culture into the rice.
- Make sure your bandage tape is ready as you will then tape this corner hole shut and make a second corner hole, taping this shut too (to create a filter, so that the fungi can breathe).
- Place your bag into your clean space and aim to keep the space at a moderately warm temperature.
- After around 1 - 2 weeks you should see the rice becoming colonised, as white mycelium starts to form and grow throughout the rice (you can look through the window at the bottom to check this).
- If this takes more than 5 weeks then there has been an issue with colonisation and you will need to start again.
- Once the bag is colonised (around 90% white coverage), your mushrooms will be ready to fruit.
- Cut the corners (that were previously taped), and spritz the bag with water every day or two.
- Within 5 days you should start to see small pins, that will then form into your beautiful oyster mushrooms, growing straight out of the corner holes that you have cut for them.
- If you see any green/blue/black or red spots during the process, this is a contamination and you will need to throw your bag out.
