Home / Mushroom Cultivation / Spawn & Substrates / Lion's Mane SpawnJar™
Spawn & Substrates
A jar of live lion's mane mycelium grown through sterilised grain, ready to mix into bulk substrate so you can fruit your own Hericium erinaceus at home.
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Living culture. Use soon after delivery or refrigerate.
The short version
This is a jar of grain fully colonised by lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus) mycelium. The grain is the living culture. You mix it into a larger batch of sterilised or pasteurised substrate, let the mycelium spread through it, then fruit it for fresh mushrooms.
It is a working ingredient for cultivation, not a ready-to-eat product and not an all-in-one fruiting kit. You provide the bulk substrate and the fruiting conditions.
What it is
Grain spawn is whole grain that has been sterilised and then grown through with mushroom mycelium. The white growth across the grain is living lion's mane (Hericium erinaceus). It is active and ready to spread onto fresh substrate.
This is mycelium on grain, not spores. Spores are for microscopy and for starting cultures on agar. Grain spawn is the next stage on from that: an active culture bulked up onto grain so it can carry the mushroom into a larger growing medium. Use it to inoculate bulk substrate, or to make more spawn by grain to grain transfer.
| Species | Hericium erinaceus (lion's mane) |
|---|---|
| Also called | Monkey head, bearded tooth, bearded hedgehog, yamabushitake |
| Form | Colonised grain (living mycelium) |
| Use | Inoculating bulk substrate for fruiting, or grain to grain expansion |
| Not for | Eating, fruiting on its own, log inoculation |
How to use it
Lion's mane fruits well from supplemented hardwood, for example hardwood sawdust or hardwood pellets with a bran addition, or a fifty fifty mix of hardwood and soya hulls. It gives poor yields on plain straw. Work clean: wipe down surfaces and hands, and ideally mix in front of a still air box or flow hood to keep contamination down.
Shake the jar to break the colonised grain apart. Loose grains spread through the substrate more evenly and colonise faster. If the spawn came chilled, let it warm to room temperature first so the mycelium is not cold shocked.
Tip the grain into your prepared substrate and mix it through evenly. On a fully sterilised substrate a spawn rate of about 1 to 3 percent by weight is enough. On a pasteurised or less clean substrate use more, around 5 to 20 percent. A higher rate colonises quicker and competes better against contamination.
Keep the inoculated substrate dark with a little fresh air exchange, around 21 to 24 C. Full colonisation usually takes two to three weeks. The block is ready when it is evenly white with no bare patches.
Move the colonised block to fruiting conditions: 15 to 24 C, high humidity around 85 to 90 percent, fresh air, and some light. Lion's mane usually pins within about a week, then takes another 5 to 10 days to reach harvest size.
A little spawn goes a long way. On a sterilised substrate at a few percent spawn rate, a kilo of colonised grain can inoculate twenty kilos or more of substrate, so you do not need much per block.
Storage
This is a living thing and it is at its most vigorous when fresh. Use it soon after delivery if you can. If you need to hold it, keep it in the fridge, around 2 to 6 C, where grain spawn stays viable for two to three months and often longer. Vigour drops the longer it is held. Bring it back to room temperature before use, and check it still looks evenly white and smells clean and fresh, with no off colours, no green or black patches and no sour smell, before mixing it into substrate.
Good to know
It is not a meal. Do not eat the grain. It is not a complete grow kit either: it has no bulk substrate and no fruiting chamber, so you supply those. It is not for inoculating logs, and it is not a spore product for microscopy. If you want to fruit straight out of the box, choose one of our all in one kits instead.
Common questions
Live mycelium grown through grain. It is an active culture ready to expand onto substrate, not a spore product.
No. The grain is a growing ingredient, not food. You eat the mushrooms it eventually fruits.
Supplemented hardwood works best, such as hardwood sawdust or hardwood pellets with bran, or a fifty fifty hardwood and soya hull mix. Lion's mane gives poor yields on plain straw.
It depends on your spawn rate. On sterilised substrate 1 to 3 percent by weight is plenty, so a single jar spawns many times its own weight in substrate.
No. This is spawn only. You provide the bulk substrate and fruiting conditions, or use one of our all in one kits.
Use it fresh for best results, or refrigerate it at 2 to 6 C for two to three months. Bring it to room temperature, then check it smells clean and looks evenly white before use.
Cold shock slows the mycelium and can stall colonisation. Let the jar warm to room temperature first.
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Ask the community
Can we open the jar to use part of the spawn, and then close the lid, put the jar back to the fridge, and wait e.g. one more month before spawning the rest? or it will get contaminated?
You could. Only open within a SAB or in front of a flow hood to limit the chance of anything creeping it’s way in.
May you please describe how to grow Lyon´s mane using your oak sawdust logs? Thanks
We do not have the time right now to show how it’s done, all we provide are the tools to do it. A little bit of research on your favourite video streaming site has plenty of examples though :)
How many flushes would this produce?
Em.. It’s spawn so you can make as much more of it as you want. Thousands of flushes I suppose. Or just one. Up to you :)
Supplied as a living culture for legal gourmet mushroom cultivation in the UK. Not for human consumption in this form.
We work hard to keep this information accurate and to cite reputable sources, but the occasional mistake can still slip through. Always check the product label and a current reference before relying on any figure for something important.
