All-in-One Mushroom Grow Kit | Maya Mushrooms (UK) (2024)

A copy of our instructional guide can be downloaded here: All-in-One Grow Bags Instructions – Folded Booklets

Note, that a printed hardcopy of the instructional guide will be included with your order.

There are numerous ways of growing mushrooms, and will depend on your experience, available equipment and time availability. At a minimum, you will need to purchase the following in addition to your grain bag(s):

Liquid Culture – A mushroom liquid culture of the strain you want to grow. (You may also use a spore syringe, but we do not recommend it due to the higher risk of contamination)

Substrate – You will need to decide on the most suitable substrate for the mushrooms you are growing. Substrate is required to mix with colonised grain spawn to ensure a successful yield.

Fruiting Chamber (optional) – Different strains of mushrooms like to grow in different ways. Popular set-up examples are a monotub, a shotgun fruiting chamber, a ‘martha’ style humidity chamber where mushrooms are grown on trays or blocks, or even on suspended straw columns in a temperature and humidity-controlled room.

We highly recommend doing some research on what mushroom cultivation method will best suit you. A good resource is the ‘Shroomey forum’ – it has a wealth of cultivation advice on growing most strains of mushroom and an active forum of cultivators who can share their experience and knowledge.

The approximate sizes and volumes of our grain bags are as follows:

• 1.5kg – 15cm x 12cm x 12cm (approximately 2.16 litres or 2.28 quarts (US measurements)

We recommend leaving the bags 1-2 weeks before inoculation as a precautionary measure to self-validate the sterility of the bag. If there are no signs of contamination after 1-2 weeks, you can be assured that your bag is still perfectly sterile as it should be and is ready to use.

Although we have multiple checks to ensure all the grain leaves us in perfect condition, on rare occasions, they can become damaged in transit and subsequently become contaminated. If this does happen, please contact us, and we will arrange for a replacement to be dispatched. Please keep hold of the contaminated bag, as we might need more information from it before we can dispatch a bag to you.

Due to the high risks of contamination during inoculation, please note that we do not offer refunds or replacements for any bag that has already been used.

To make our kits, we first triple-rinse the grain to remove dust or chaff. Next, we soak them overnight in a purified water + gypsum solution to partially hydrate the grains and allow any endospores to activate; adding gypsum provides additional nutrients to the grain, which supports healthy mycelial growth and also stops grains from becoming clumped together.

The partially hydrated grains are then slowly brought to a boil until the grains are hydrated to precisely 55%. We quickly drain the boiling water and immediately distribute the grain on our outdoor drying racks, leaving them to steam off and cool.

This process removes any excess external moisture, resulting in perfectly hydrated grain, which is dry to the touch.

The resulting grain is then weighed into genuine Unicorn bags with an added hydrated mix of Coir, Vermiculite and Gypsum, double-sealed and processed in our industrial autoclave on an extended 125°C cycle for 2.5 hours to ensure all contaminants are killed off.

Once allowed to cool slowly, the bags are left to stand for two weeks. After which they are individually checked to ensure they are perfectly sterile and only then do we allow them to be dispatched to our customers.

The time it takes for the grain section to fully colonise will depend on many factors. The type and quality of your culture, whether you’re growing from spores or liquid culture, temperature, and even lighting conditions can affect colonisation rates.

If you follow the included instructions, usually within a few weeks on average, and for full colonisation of the bag, nomally just over a month. Inoculating grain bags with spores can be notoriously unpredictable, with germination rates sometimes taking over one month alone.

Whilst we do our best to remove all traces of foreign matter from our grain, on rare occasions, a very small stone might find its way into our bags from harvesting the grain. This will not affect the bag in any way, nor the colonisation of the mycelium.

Small white clumps within the odd bag will be clumps of gypsum, which we add to the grain.

Gypsum adds essential minerals to the rye grains and can be used as a supplement at almost all stages of mushroom production. Gypsum also aids in stopping the individual grains from sticking together in the bag, allowing for faster and more healthy colonisation – with less chance of contamination.