Mushroom Spawn Bag 1.7kg – King Oyster Trex (Pleurotus eryngii)

Description

👑 King Oyster Mushroom Spawn Guide (Pleurotus eryngii)

Ready to step up your mushroom growing game? The King Oyster (Pleurotus eryngii) is arguably the best-tasting mushroom you can grow at home! Prized in the culinary world for their incredibly firm, meaty texture (often used to make vegan “scallops”), they produce stunning, thick, bright white stems topped with small brown caps.

Please note: King Oysters are a more advanced species to cultivate. Because they need rich nutrients to build those massive stems, they do not do well on simple “low-tek” pasteurized straw. They are best grown on sterilized or super-pasteurized supplemented sawdust blocks only!

🌾 Recommended Substrates To get those famous, thick, meaty stems, this 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 the King Oyster thrives on highly nutritious supplemented substrates, standard hot-water pasteurization is not enough to keep competing green molds away.

• 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 of the rich nutrients in the block, you must be extremely clean when mixing this spawn! 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.

• The Goal: Leave the bags to incubate until the substrate turns completely white with strong mycelium. Once fully colonized, it is ready to fruit!

🌤️ Best Fruiting Environment Unlike standard side-fruiting oysters, King Oysters are top-fruiters! You will need to cut the top of the bag open (or cut a teacup-sized hole at the top) to allow them to grow straight up.

• Temperature: King Oysters are strictly a winter crop! Once fully colonized and ready to fruit, they require a low, cold temperature range of 10-16°C to trigger pinning.

• Light: Place your fully white block somewhere with enough natural, indirect light to read a book by.

• Humidity: Keep it very high (80-90%). Because they fruit from the exposed top of the block, they need consistent environmental moisture to form healthy pins.

• Fresh Air: If you want classic fat stems and tiny caps, keep the fresh air exchange slightly restricted (like leaving a “collar” of plastic around the top of the block). If you want larger caps, aim for higher fresh air exchange (6-8+ room air changes per hour).

🍄 Tips & Harvesting

• Inoculation Rate: Because you are mixing your spawn into a sterilized material in a highly clean environment (like in front of a flow hood), you only need an inoculation rate of 3% to 5% by weight. A little bit of spawn goes a very long w

• The Stems are the Star: Unlike other mushrooms, the massive, thick stem is the most sought-after and delicious part of the King Oyster!

• When to pick: Harvest the entire bunch at once! The best time to pick is when the edges of the brown caps have unrolled and flattened out, but before they start curling upwards to drop their spores.

• Outdoor Flushes: After your indoor blocks are completely spent, break them up and mix them with some hardwood wood chips outside in a shady garden spot—you can often get natural King Oyster flushes throughout the winter!

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