What You Could Use Your Pots For

Directly Injectable (Spores to Grain)– Injecting the spores into the pot.

1. Remove the coloured cap from the syringe after opening the needle packet. Screw your needle into the end of your uncapped syringe. Leave the needle protector in place until ready to use.
2. Remove the protective foil cover from the lid of your pot. Do not remove the plastic lid, or any part of the lid. After shaking the syringe very well, please inject a 1ml-20ml spore solution into the pot. Alternatively, you can place a singular piece of agar into the pot by removing one injection port.
3. Shake up your pot to speed up the colonization process and leave them in the dark to cultivate.
4. We’d recommend leaving them alone after the injection, shaking them only when you see signs of life start to appear.
5. Throughout the process, set your pots within your Fruiting and Incubation Chamber, or your heat mat– ensure it’s set to 26-27c.
6. Shake the pot around three days after you’ve noticed life- you’ll be able to break up and re-distribute the mycelium throughout the grain.
7. Shake the pot once more when the mycelium spots have grown to around 1cm on average.
8. The pot is fully colonized when all the grains are white with mycelium. When this occurs, it’s ready to use.

Bake and Shake– Strain testing for possible contamination

Lift off from where we left our project after the steps previously mentioned. When you started incubating the pots, you would have noticed other colours forming in the pot if contaminants were present.

White mycelium is great, but any other contamination will show as a colour or smell. The clear pot and lid will allow you to easily inspect your project, and a quick sniff of the lid will allow you to recognize any off-smells, like sweetness or alcohol.

Continue to colonize your pot in the darkness, on top of your heat mat (26-27c).

Every time you shake up the pots to break up the grain and speed up colonization, you are allowing any hidden contaminants to show themselves. Mycelium has an ability just like the human body does, to hide and encapsulate them.

These contaminants always escape when mixing spawn to bulk. Shaking your pots mimics the process of spawning to bulk, therefore if your mycelium is clear after shaking the pot, you know your mycelium is clean.

Grain to Grain Transfer– Expand your existing grain spawn, allowing one shaker pot to transfer mycelium to 10 shaker pots

Following on from the directly injectable method.

1. Shake the master pot to help break up the grains, so you will have some loose to perform your transfer.
2. Place your colonized master pot and the slave un-colonized pots in a sterile environment. A Still Air Box or a Laminar Flow Hood would be beneficial in this process.
3. Each grain shaker pot comes with two injection ports. Remove one of these injection ports to allow the master pot to transfer colonized grains to the slave pot with uncolonized grains. Remove one of the ports from each slave pot.
4. Tip the pot to transfer some 5-20 grains from the master pot to the slave pot and when finished, replace the port to the pots to keep the contents sterile.
5. Incubate the pots at 26-27c for 3 days before shaking the slave pots for the first time.
6. If contamination shows at any point, please discard and start again from a new master pot.
7. When a slave pot has passed the bake and shake test is fully colonized, you may use your slave pot as a clean master pot. Only qualified master pots should be used for grain-to-grain transfer or monotubs.

Spawn Running for Monotubs

You have used our directly injectable method, and you now have a fully colonized pot of clean grain spawn.

1. Colonize your pot in darkness, and re-shake your grain pots to achieve fully colonized spawn in as little as two weeks.
2. A 45l Mono Tub or Ultimate All in One Incubation and Grow Chamber will need 3 grain shaker pots as spawn and 2x 1kg bags of our CVG mix.
3. A 25l Mono Tub or All in One Fruiting and Incubation Chamber will only need 1x grain shaker pot as spawn and 1x 1kg bag of our CVG mix.
4. Follow the instructions for our monotub kits here.

Fruit From the Pot

You have used our directly injectable method, and you now have a fully colonized pot of clean grain spawn.

1. Bring your pot into the light and maintain the 26-27c incubation temperature. Do not place in direct light.
2. After placing your pot in light, fruits will form within 10-20 days. No fanning or misting is required.
3. Open the pot to harvest your first yield of perfectly clean fruits.
4. A larger fruiting bag is included with the fruiting kit. This kit can be misted and placed over the top of the open pot for slightly larger fruit to form. This method will allow the mushroom heads to form fully and is best used for taking sterile mushroom prints. The bag acts as a humidity tent, so leave the filter clear and free so the mycelium can breathe.
5. Secure the bag over the base of the pot with dark tape and incubate at 26-27c and in 10-20 days the mushrooms will form.
6. After your first harvest, please weigh your fruit. 80% of the wet fruit weight is the amount of water you’ll need to add back to the pot. Use clean tap water to rehydrate the cake.
7. After adding the water, put the bag back over the pot and place back into the warm light spot. Your water should be reabsorbed into the cake, and fruiting should begin in the next 10 or so days.
8. Repeat until you’ve exhausted the cake.