Reishi Ganoderma Mushroom Grain Spawn 1.5kg (102)

Reishi Ganoderma Mushroom Grain Spawn.

Reishi (Ganoderma lingzhi) is hard, usually flat, zoned bracket fungus; reddish brown, shiny top. Grows at the base of living and dead deciduous trees or around stumps. Cap shelf-like, semicircular; dark red to dark brown, lighter toward the margin, texture is hard, shiny, often zoned. Pores are circular to angular; whitish to brown. The stalk is rarely present. The spore is printed brown. Spores magnified are elliptical, with a double wall. When they are young and fresh, reishi looks varnished, often with striking color bands of red, yellow, and white.

Indoor Cultivation

Step 1: Gather Supplies

The first step when growing reishi mushrooms is to order and gather the supplies you’ll need, including:

• Reishi spawn – You can use grain or sawdust spawn when growing reishi mushrooms indoors.
  
  We recommend grain spawn as it’s easier to break apart and mix with the substrate.
  
  Reishi spawn holds sawdust together tightly, making sawdust spawn harder to break apart and spread evenly through the substrate.

• Hardwood pellets – These are an easy alternative to sawdust or wood chips. And readily available as people use them for pellet stoves and grills.
  
  They’re also relatively inexpensive and easy to store. But, make sure you get hardwood pellets as reishi doesn’t grow on softwoods.
• Large grow bags – These bags are perfect for growing mushrooms indoors.
  
  They have filter patches that allow the mycelium to breathe while it colonizes the substrate. And can withstand the temperatures required for sterilizing your substrate.
  
  You can also use these bags as mini fruiting chambers. They have space for the reishi antlers to form on the top of the substrate while inside the closed grow bag.

Step 2: Prepare Substrate

Once you have all your materials, you’re ready to begin. First, you’ll need to prepare your reishi growing medium or substrate. A large grow bag usually makes a 5 lbs (2.3 kg) fruiting block. 

Ingredients

To make a 5 lb (2.3 kg) block of the substrate, you need:

• Five cups of hardwood pellets
• One and a quarter cups of bran
• Six cups of water

Process

1. Combine the pellets and water in a bucket or bowl and soak for 30 minutes. The hardwood pellets will break apart and become sawdust. Warm water will speed up the process but is not necessary. 
2. Add the bran to the sawdust and mix thoroughly until evenly distributed. 
3. Do a squeeze test to make sure your substrate has the correct moisture content. When you squeeze your substrate slightly, it should stay together in your hand, and only a couple of drops of water should come out. 
4. Place the mixture into your grow bag, expel as much air as possible and fold the bag according to the instructions.
5. Now place the bag in a pressure cooker and cook it for two and a half hours at 15PSI.
6. Remove the bag from the pressure cooker and allow your substrate to cool. Once completely cool, this can take up to eight hours, and move on to step three, inoculation.

Step 3: Inoculation

Inoculation is the process of mixing the reishi grain spawn into the prepared hardwood substrate.

Before you begin, wipe down all work surfaces and clean your hands well with soap to avoid contaminating the substrate.

Next, you need to add reishi grain spawn at a 5% spawn rate to the wet substrate and mix them together. 

You can do this inside the bag, but it’s often easier to mix them outside the bag in a large box or container.

Once the substrate and spawn are well mixed, load the inoculated substrate into your grow bag.

Close the top of the bag with a rubber band, tape or a tie of some kind. 

Step 4: Incubation

Place the closed grow bag in a warm, dark area at room temperature and leave it to incubate. 

The reishi spawn will grow and spread throughout the bag until it completely colonizes the substrate. 

Reishi is a strong colonizer and usually takes 10 to 14 days to colonize a bag of a substrate. 

But with optimal temperatures and 80 percent humidity, the reishi could colonize the block in a week. 

Lower temperatures will slow the colonization process down.

Step 5: Fruiting

Once colonization is complete, you need to provide the right temperature and humidity, called fruiting conditions, for your reishi to fruit and produce mushrooms.

Reishi grows best at room temperature around 75-85 F (24 – 29C) but tolerates a wide range of temperatures, and cooler temperatures around 65F (18C) can help initiate pinning.

Like other mushrooms, reishi needs high humidity to grow best. They do well with humidity levels of 85 to 90 percent.

When reishi mushrooms first appear, they produce finger-like projections called antlers that look like candy corn because of their color.

At this stage, growing reishi mushrooms gets interesting. You can grow these mushrooms in the form of antlers or conks, depending on your preference.

Step 6: Harvesting

Reishi mushrooms grow a lot slower than many other types of mushrooms. 

While some mushrooms, like oysters, can double in size daily and be ready for harvest in a week, reishi takes a lot longer.

If you are growing antler reishi, you can choose when to harvest them.

Harvest when the antlers are only a few inches tall, or allow them to grow for months and enjoy the unique shapes that develop.