Mushroom Spawn Bag 1.7kg – US Lions Mane – CNS (Hericium erinaceus)

Description

🦁 Lion’s Mane Mushroom Spawn Guide (Hericium erinaceus)

Ready to step up your mushroom growing game? You are looking at one of the absolute most popular cultivated crops of the last 10 years around the entire world! Lion’s Mane (Hericium erinaceus) is an extraordinary choice edible.

Belonging to the unique “tooth fungus” group, it produces huge, heavy yields of spectacular cascading white spines. As it grows, the dense white puffball can look remarkably like a giant brain, It is also widely known by several other fantastic names, including the mountain-priest mushroom, bearded tooth fungus, and bearded hedgehog.

Please note: Like other advanced wood-loving species, Lion’s Mane requires rich nutrients to build its massive, dense fruitbodies. They are best grown on sterilized or super-pasteurized supplemented sawdust blocks only!

🌾 Recommended Substrates To get those famous, huge yields, this wood-loving strain requires a high-nutrient diet! We highly recommend:

• Master’s Mix (a 50/50 blend of hardwood sawdust and soy hull pellets)

• Hardwood sawdust heavily supplemented with nutrients (like oat bran, wheat bran, or soybean meal) at a rate of 10% to 30%.

🛠️ How to Prepare Your Substrate & Inoculate Because Lion’s Mane thrives on highly nutritious supplemented substrates, standard hot-water pasteurization is not enough. You will need to treat this like an advanced grow!

• Hydration: Before processing, ensure your bulk substrate mixture is thoroughly wetted to a 60% moisture level.

• Sterilization is Key: Your supplemented substrate blocks should be fully sterilized in a pressure cooker at 15 PSI for 2.5 hours, or “super pasteurized” by steaming them at atmospheric pressure for 10 to 12 hours.

• Clean Inoculation: Because you are mixing your spawn into fully sterilized material, you must be extremely clean! Always inoculate your cooled blocks in front of a laminar flow hood or inside a Still Air Box (SAB) wiped down with 70% isopropyl alcohol.

🧫 Incubation (Colonizing Your Block) Once you have cleanly mixed your spawn into your prepared, sterile substrate and sealed your bags, it is time to let the mycelium take over!

• Temperature: Store your inoculated bags in a clean, dark space with stable temperatures between 16-20°C.

• Fresh Air: The growing mycelium needs to breathe! Ensure your incubation room has good ventilation, aiming for ideally one room air change per hour.

• What to look for: Hericium mycelium is famously thin, wispy, and delicate compared to aggressive oyster strains. It might not look thick and bright white, and it often tries to fruit (forming little white brain-like lumps) right inside the sealed bag as soon as it’s ready!

🌤️ Best Fruiting Environment Lion’s Mane are typically side-fruiters! We recommend cutting small slits or “X” shapes into the sides of the bag tightly against the substrate to allow the dense “brains” to pop through.

• Temperature: Once fully consolidated, they thrive in a very comfortable mid-range fruiting temperature of 16-22°C.

• Light: Place your fully colonized block somewhere with enough natural, indirect light to read a book by. Good lighting helps trigger healthy pin development!

• Humidity: Keep it incredibly high (80-90%+). Those delicate, cascading spines will dry out, stall, and turn yellow very quickly if the air is too dry. Mist the air around the cuts frequently.

• Fresh Air: To get beautifully proportioned “teeth” rather than loose, spongy, coral-like growth, aim for high fresh air exchange (6-8+ room air changes per hour).

🍄 Tips & Harvesting

• Inoculation Rate: Because you are mixing your spawn into fully sterilized material in a highly clean environment, you only need an inoculation rate of 3% to 5% by weight. Your 1.7kg spawn bag will go a very long way!

• The Culinary Experience: When sliced into thick “steaks” and pan-fried in butter, Lion’s Mane has an incredible texture and flavor that remarkably mimics crab or lobster meat!

• When to pick: Harvest the entire structure at once! The best time to pick is when the distinct cascading “teeth” or “spines” have elongated and are clearly visible (around 2-5mm long is the best time to harvest) but are still brilliant white. If the mushroom starts to take on a yellow, pink, or brownish tinge, it is drying out or slightly past its prime and should be harvested immediately. Gently cut the base of the mushroom flush off the block with a knife or tear away by hand.

Please note this culture is sold with our Mushroom Spawn and Cultures sale agreement. By purchasing you agree to this agreement