ART
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
CRAFT
CULTURE & HISTORY
ENTERTAINMENT
ENVIRONMENT
FOOD & DRINKS
REVERSE ENGINEERING
SCIENCES
SPORTS
TECHNOLOGY
WEARABLES
Mushroom Grain Spawn: Sterile Wheat Overgrown with Mycelium, Sinden 1932
Spawn used to be composted, washed manure packed into bricks, or into bottles that had to be smashed to get it out. James Sinden of Penn State patented spawn on cooked, sterilised grain instead. Every grain ends up coated in mycelium, the spawn shakes out of its jar, and it can be sown in rows like seed.
Source: J. W. Sinden, US 1,869,517 (1932), written for the field mushroom (Agaricus). The starter is a pure culture, here from the tissue-culture blueprint.
Intermediate
3 weeks
Instructions
1
1
Wet the wheat
Wet the wheat
Put wheat in a jar with just enough water for the grain to swell as it cooks and leave no excess. You can also use excess water and pour it off after sterilising. Sinden prefers the first way.
Materials for this step:
Wheat1 as required
Water1 as requiredTools needed:
Glass Jar2
2
Plug and sterilise
Plug and sterilise
Stopper the jar with cotton so it stays sterile after steaming. Steam it at 15 to 20 lb pressure for no longer than an hour. The cooked grain is then about 71 % water.
Tools needed:
Cotton Wool
Benchtop Autoclave3
3
Inoculate
Inoculate
When the jar is cool, put in a bit of pure mycelium. A few grains shaken from an earlier grain culture also work, with no instrument needed.
Materials for this step:
Pure Mushroom Culture1 as requiredTools needed:
Glass Jar4
4
Incubate and shake
Incubate and shake
Keep the jar at 20 to 25 °C until the mycelium has overgrown the grain. Shake it now and then. Shaking spreads the mycelium and keeps the grains separate.
Tools needed:
Room ThermometerGlass Jar5
5
Shake it out and sow
Shake it out and sow
The spawn is ready when each grain is covered with a mat of mycelium. Shake it out and break up any lumps. Sow it in rows like radish or carrot seed, or in hills, 2 inches (5 cm) deep in the compost.
Tools needed:
Glass JarMaterials
3- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
- 1 as requiredPlaceholder
This blueprint makes
Related Blueprints
These blueprints share knowledge with this one — techniques, materials, or principles that connect them in the learning graph.
CC0 Public Domain
This blueprint is released under CC0. You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, without asking permission.
Support the Maker by purchasing products through their Blueprint where they earn a Maker Commission set by Vendors, or create a new iteration of this Blueprint and include it as a connection in your own Blueprint to share revenue.