Product Description

This sterilized hydrated grain is the perfect item for growing a bulk amount of mushrooms. We have taken all of the struggle, cost and work out of preparing the perfect grain substrate yourself and left the fun part for you.

Quickly getting perfectly made grain for spawn production for the new grower or the experienced but busy mycologist has never been easier or cheaper.

This grain is a mix of 75% Milo, and 25% millet for fastest colonization rates. It is hydrated, sterilized, and is ready for inoculation. It comes in a sealed spawn bag with an injection port to make inoculation by liquid culture or spore suspension as quick and easy as it ever will be!

Important note about replacements

Occasionally the rigid corners of the bags get damaged during transportation. This can lead to contamination.
So if the bag contaminates before inoculation, we will replace it free of charge. Just send us a picture of the bag. Include the injection port in the image.

If the bag contaminates after you inoculate it, and you believe that it wasn't your fault, send us a picture and we will replace it for our cost. This will be $1.75 for the replacement bag, plus the shipping. To save on shipping we recommend buying more or having it replaced when you buy more as shipping one single bag costs $6.30, while shipping 8 bags only costs $2.07 per bag.

How?

Simply inject some of spore syringe or liquid culture of your choosing through the provided injection port and wait for it to grow! We often see full colonization in one week.

Why Milo & Millet?

Both are small hard grains: Making it easier to break up the spawn and providing more inoculation points then a grain such as rye. A study on the rate of grain colonization also determined that a 75% milo, 25% millet spawn colonizes faster, compared to pure Milo; 18 days, or pure millet, 20 days, the combination colonized in 16 days. 11% faster. The study used smaller amounts of spawn, so this is a very significant increase as growth rate can be exponential, especially after shaking,

Our Milo grain promotes rapid colonization, leaving contaminants with less opportunity to gain a foothold in your substrate.

We use it ourselves!

We use this product to make many of our oyster grow kits. We mix the colonized milo into shredded, hydrated and pasteurized straw, using just one pound of spawn for every fifty pounds of prepared straw. That means that your three pound bag can inoculate, at a two percent spawn ratio, one hundred and fifty pounds of prepared substrate, which can yield fifty pounds of oyster mushrooms! Many other mushrooms have a similar spawn ratio, though not all.

Technical specifications

The technical info below are approximations good enough for most mushroom grow operations.

Filter patch: 0.2 micron
Bag size: 5x4x19
Seal: Bag is sealed twice with a double sided heat sealer that is 10mm wide, yielding a total of 20mm (~0.8 inches) wide seal strip.
Moisture content: ~55%
Approximate protein content: ~5%
Grain: Red Milo Seeds (Sorghum bicolor, 615 grams)
Water: Municipal, 748mls
Additives: Gypsum, small quantities of pulverized coco coir, peat moss, sawdust, and straw.
LC/Spore Tolerance: Each bag can receive as much as 12ml of liquid culture or spore suspension without any issues. This assumes you allow the bag to expand and that it is shaken after inoculation. We recommend 0.5 to 3ml of liquid inoculate, but if time is an issue, more can speed up colonization rates.
Sterilization Method: 15 PSI for a minimum of 90 minutes.
Number of seeds (inoculation points) per bag: Average is approximately 17,000 seeds, but range is 15,990 to 18,750 seeds depending on grain size and weight added to bag

Volume including air gaps: ~1800ml - This volume is approximately 2.5 quart jars that are filled 75% full of grain.
Actual volume: 1300ml
The actual volume is useful for figuring out the volume when adding to substrate that is made of small particles such as coco coir, coffee grounds, or sawdust as the particles fill the gaps between the grain. In this case, adding 1800ml of the shaken grain to a fine particle substrate is likely to only increase the volume by 1250ml to 1350ml. If your bulk substrate is large and has gaps greater than the grain, such as is often the case with straw, the addition of grain may not cause a volume increase.