🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Great piece of kit, highly recommended
Was this helpful?
Home / Mushroom Cultivation / Mushroom Grow Kits / MonoBox™ Grow Kit
EZ-Replacement 
1 / 14
1 / 14
MonoBox™ Grow Kit
4.90
355 ratings
£31.50 – £35.00
An XXL sterile mushroom grow kit which supports almost any mushroom species. Beginner-friendly.
Choose your kit
MonoBox Mushroom Grow Kit (XXL)
This is the UK's best mushroom grow kit.
Simple to use. Hard to contaminate. Fast. And delivers between 500g and 1000g of your favourite mushrooms.
What's Included (MonoBOX):
- 1L Sterile Rye SpawnTub (HEPA-Filterred with Injection Port)
- MycoWavable Coir Substrate (Expands to 2L of Substrate after adding 850ml)
- Humidity Fruiting Tent with Filter Material (Rated at 100% Humidity)
- 3.1L MonoBox (Microwavable)
- 1 x Chlorhexidine Alcohol Wipe
- 1 x Sterile Needle (a spare for your syringe)
- 2 x Hand Wipes
- 1 x Facemask
- 1 Pack of Sterile Gloves
How Easy?
Growing mushrooms is easy. You only challenge is injecting the SpawnTub without contaminating it, and that's why we make sure it's ultra clean for you. We sterilise all SpawnTubs in an electric autoclavebefore unpacking them in ISO4-filtered air. Our products are as clean as they can get. Now it's just down to you, your syringe and mother nature. After that part, you are almost certain to get mushrooms with this kit.
But what if something goes wrong?
Get in touch with us and we'll help you. If something is confusing or you think something needs replaced, we'll cover the affected parts ONCE for 3 months. It's all part of the price you pay for the kit because we want you to have a good time with our grow kit, we wouldn't be here still doing this if it weren't for the vibes of positivity we get from happy customers.
What's the Full Process
Injecting SpawnTub
Our SpawnTubs are sterile tubs containing 1000mL of Rye Grain. We package these SpawnTubs into special clean bags so that you can open them and know that the entire surface of the tub is clean - there's no dust, no bacteria. The injection port on top doesn't technically need to be cleaned before you inject it with your gourmet spore syringe or lc syringe - but we include the gear to do it.
You will want to inject 2ml of a standard syringe, do not go over this amount as you don't want water pooling - the less water you add, the better but the less gourmet spores you use the slower colonisation will be.
We find it best to inject around the sides of the tub, with a little in the middle. This helps to see mycelium faster - because we are impatient people!
Put the bag it came in over the top of it, that will allow the mycelium to breath at the same time as keeping it clean.
If you are wondering what the tape is around the SpawnTub, it's micropore and the main reason we use it is to protect the rim of the lid being an easy place for contaminants getting while you handle it. It also works as a good way to stop people trying to open the lid before it's colonised.
Now place the SpawnTub somewhere warm. In around a week or two, you will notice mycelium growing rapidly inside over the grains. Mycelium is beautiful. We used to tell customers to wait and then shake the spawn around to spread the mycelium around further, but with our newer larger SpawnTubs we now produce - we fill them to the top so you can't try that little trick anymore.
Don't use heat mats. They don't work in for this hobby.
Preparing MycoWavable Coir Substrate
Coco coir is ground down coconut husk, and it turns out to be a fantastic substrate ingredient for mushrooms because not only will it hold lots of water but its quite nutritious to mushrooms too.
Once your 1L SpawnTub has finished colonising with healthy white mushroom mycelium, you will need to prepare your coir substrate by adding water and microwaving it then allowing it to cool to room temp.
"I Don't Have A Microwave"
It really surprised us when first selling the MonoBox Grow Kit just how many folk didn't have a microwave, y'know that lab tool invention that went mainstream in most homes since the 80's - there's even a song about them. You can prepare your coir substrate a dozen different ways... Use a Sous Vide? Ok, perfect - why not try proper pasteurisation then - add 850ml water to coir, mix it, put it into a PP5 bag that you already have for your Sous Vide and set your water temp to a proper pasteurisation temp for a couple of hours. Just a have an oven? Ok.. Set your oven to 70-75C then pour your dry substrate onto aluminium foil, fold it into a parcel and leave it there for an hour or so. Then just mix in fresh water, 850ml. Oven broken and you just have a hob? Jeezo, ok so fire the coir and water into a pan, lid on and crank up the heat for 10mins and then leave it to cool. Too much water lost? just pour in some fresh, or squeeze some out - you don't need to recook it either. There are so many different ways to do this. We just say to use a microwave because it's the least work if you already have one.
Field Consistency
This is one of the most annoying terms in mushroom cultivation, but it means when you take a hand full of substrate and squeeze it hard that you get a tiny short stream of water releasing. A more gentler squeeze can release a few droplets of water. We have calculated our substrate mix to take 850ml of water, which will make it expand to around 2L in volume. Then after microwaving it and cooling it, it gets added to your bag or monobox and mixed with your 1000mL of colonised grain - combining to 3L of mixed substrate. If something goes wrong and our 850ml of water isn't enough or it seems too much, it's simple - to remove water just sweeze a handleful at a time. Squeezed too much out? Well, pour a little back in - it's easy to get right. Stuck?
Mixing Spawn and Substrate
At that point, you will open your SpawnTub and pour the 1L worth of colonised grain over the coir and mix it around thoroughly so the colonised grains are very evenly spread around.
Then leave it somewhere warm for a week to 10 days and you will see the mycelium has totally taken over the coir. At that point, you're ready to move straight on to the fruiting stage because it's time to grow mushrooms!.
Fruiting Tent
There are many ways to fruit this white mycelium cake. Some will want to put it into a dedicated fruiting chamber, but you don't need to do that... the tent is ideal.
Open the tent and sit the MonoTub containing the cake into the tent and fold over the top of the bag - there are some paper clips included to help seal it. But don't totally seal it off, mycelium needs air to breathe! Leave a top corner open and put a some of the filter material in that corner to both hold it open and to help keeping dust out and your humidity in.
Humidity
You are probably wondering how this kit gets the humidity your mushrooms need to fruit. Well, that's why we used coir. Coir stores a whole lot of water in it and that will be your humidity source. Soon, you will see plenty of water build up inside your bag. In fact, with The MonoBox Grow Kit works without you needing to mist your kit repeatedly each day but that doesn't mean you shouldn't as if you want to get the ultimate results from your kit then misting should became part of the process. This kit can work well without you needing to baby sit it 24 hours a day!
Pinning
Eventually you will see some interesting things happen on your colonised cake. And once you do, get the popcorn out because you get to watch those little knots double in size each day to become fully mature mushrooms in the space of 5-7 days.
Harvest
So you've had tonnes of fun watching these mushrooms and taking ten thousand photos of them growing up, but be careful because once you see the mushroom veils begin to be stretched open they are about to sporulate and make an absolute mess. It's fast. But, maybe you could make your very own spore prints?
Harvesting all of your mushrooms fun, but that's not you done. It's time for round 2.
Dunking for Round 2
The first flush of mushrooms will have taken a lot of water out of your substrate. That's why we need to put as much back in as we can. And it's easy.
Pot. Cake. Water. Weight. Wait. In that order!
After 12-24 hours of the cake being submerged in water with a weight to hold it down, it will have taken in as much water as it can hold. For fun, you could weight the leftover water compared with how much you put in and work out how much the cake drank! It's really just a quick rinse at this point and the cake put back into the tent you've given a nice clean.
Then it's, just repeating - using everything you learned from the first round to improve on in the second round.
Round 3+
You can keep going, but eventually you'll likely run into green mold as the mycelium will become so weak. Harvests dwindle and dwindle until there's not much left anymore. It's up to you to decide how many rounds you want to go, we've had customers tell us they've got up to 7 flushes out of the MonoBox Grow Kit before it gave up. Impressive, eh??
You Will Need:
1.5-2ml of syringe solution.
Replacement cover, explained
EZ-Replacement
Covered on this product
- MonoBox, S
- MonoBox, M
- MonoBox, L
- MonoBox, XL
- MonoBox, No Gloves
- MonoBag, S
- MonoBag, M
- MonoBag, L
- MonoBag, XL
- MonoBag, No Gloves
This product is covered if something goes wrong, so we can make sure you get another kit to try again with. The last thing we want is customers abandoning this hobby because of a mistake. So, if something goes wrong within 12 weeks of us dispatching it to you then follow the steps below to get a new kit on the way.
How a claim works
- Open the replacement portal from your logged in account.
- Pick the order and the item. If more than one is affected, say how many.
- The replacement lands in your basket at £0.
- Check out and pay the postage. That is the only thing you pay.
No photos, no explanation, nobody to convince.
We built this shop to be human. When you need a replacement, take it.
What customers say
Reviews
Reviews are back after a long hiatus. We are one of the only businesses who will not offer incentives to review because people only do it for the gifts and rarely from the heart
4.9
Based on 355 reviews
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Well thought out product with covering all needs
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Unfortunately no growth at all this time.
Hi there, don't give up - nature doesn't always want to play ball. Did your grow kit have any smell suggesting contamination?
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
The guides are very well made and the grow kits are made so that you actually understand each stage of the growing process and learn how mycelium actually works. It can take you from 0 to an experienced and knowledgeable grower.
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
A great place to start if you're interested in growing your own medicinal or gourmet mushrooms. Works every time.
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Everything needed to complete the job, I topped this up with a still air box.
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Was this helpful?
🇬🇧
Invited by the shop
Was this helpful?
Invited by the shop
Great gear. Perfect
Was this helpful?
Questions and answers
Can the tubs be reused?
Absolutely :) We will have re-fills available soon too for the Coir.
hi there. I'm a bit over time 17 days at spawning stage 25C but the white mycelium is not fully colonised I would say 75% and there is some green colour(contamination?) on top which I have removed. I have raised the temp slightly. should I keep going or remove to bag or start again? many thanks
Hi Thomas, something doesn't sound right. It should take around 7-10 days to colonise - not 17. It's almost definitely a temperature related issue as the mycelium is growing too slow (too cold or fluctuating non-stable temps are the biggest cause of that, by a country mile). Can you drop us an email through the contact form and we'll have a look at your setup? :)
Currently just started my third flush with this kit and it seems to be going well so far, considering I don’t really know what I’m doing! I was wondering though, I seem to be getting loads and loads of little tiny mushrooms and then a few bigger ones. Is there a way to get them bigger? Also when I harvest do I have to harvest all the mushrooms at the same time or can I harvest just the big ones and let the small ones keep growing?
Hi there, sometimes this happens with the first flush and sometimes it’s just genetics. As long as you are following the guide, you are doing everything you can do. When cropping, do them all at once. And follow the instructions for the second flush - I have my fingers crossed for you getting an insane harvest of all big mushrooms :)
Do you need to keep them at a set temperature when growing in the tent ?
This information is also in the guide, but yes - fruiting temperature for mushrooms is important. If it’s too cold then you are going to struggle growing mushrooms at home. A consistent temp of 20-24c is a typical for many popular species. If you are struggling to meet those temps, take a look at our equipment section - especially the CyLab which is a heated fruiting chamber amongst other things.
In the description it says you need 3ml of spore solution for the XXL kit, however the instructions which come with the kit say 3-4ml for each tub (6-8ml in total). Which is correct?
We temporarily advised 1.5ml, but noticed some customers experiencing slower growth so went back to recommending 3ml.
MONOBOX GROW KIT
INSTRUCTIONS
WHAT'S NEW IN v2.2
- Larger, single SpawnTub container holding 1 litre of sterile grain.
- Enhanced substrate recipe.
- 2L of perlite for greater humidity.
- Custom Cylo Grow Tent.
GOT AN OLDER KIT?
If your kit is slightly different from the latest version, the following guide pretty much identically applies still - we used to give two smaller SpawnTubs with less grain in each, now we provide a single larger SpawnTub with more grain. There are some other differences, but no changes are drastic enough to make following this guide any more difficult.
INOCULATION
We highly recommend working within a SAB (Still-Air Box), but at the very least, work in a small, very clean and draught-free room. Make sure you're freshly showered and in clean clothes, then thoroughly clean your hands and forearms with a blue Clinell wipe and fit your face mask.
Prepare your chosen gourmet mushroom spore or culture syringe by screwing on a new sterile needle.
Carefully take your SpawnTub out of its packaging. It's now exposed to the open air and potential contaminants - this is where working within a SAB will greatly reduce your chances of suffering a contamination.
Use a green Clinell chlorhexidine wipe to clean the grey rubber injection port on the lid of the SpawnTub, then pierce through it to inject 3ml of solution into the grain.
Never inject through the pink filters!
When you pierce the needle through, we recommend aiming it towards the edge and moving it slowly around the full circumference of the SpawnTub as you push down on the syringe plunger to add the 3ml of solution.
Distributing it evenly like this will speed up the colonisation time. It also makes the mycelium growth easier to see, as it starts on the visible edge of the SpawnTub rather than hiding in the centre of the grain where you can't.
COLONISATION OF THE GRAIN
Now keep your SpawnTub somewhere clean and safe. Mycelium is living and needs to breathe, so don't ever store it in an airtight container - the filter strip in the lid provides the clean air exchange it needs.
Temperature is extremely important for good colonisation. Too hot (above 26°C) or too cold (below 18°C) will very likely cause problems like contamination, or slow to no growth.
Aim for 23C (give or take a couple of degrees) if you can, and try to hold steady whatever temperature you're able to achieve - don't let it swing up and down too much.
Avoid heat mats, please! It's a very common mistake. They don't spread the warmth evenly, which can cause excessive condensation and water build-up - an easy pathway for contamination to enter your SpawnTub.
Consider building or buying an incubator if you're struggling to hold these temperatures - it's way cheaper than running your home heating constantly, and gives much better results.
At 23C (give or take a couple of degrees), it will generally take around 2-3 weeks for your SpawnTub to fully colonise - meaning the grains are completely covered in healthy, white mushroom mycelium. That said, it depends on a lot of factors, and nature can simply be unpredictable!
Even once it looks fully covered in mycelium, it's best practice to give the grain an extra few days, to make sure the inside is fully colonised too before you move on.
PREPARING THE MONOBOX™
When you're confident you have full colonisation of the grain inside your SpawnTub, you can begin this step.
It's crucial that you don't open your SpawnTub before full colonisation, as you'll expose uncolonised grains to the open air and hugely risk contamination.
Tip the entire contents of the Substrate Mix bag into a large pot, then add 850ml of boiling water. Pop the lid on and heat it on high for 10 minutes - this helps kill off as many nasties as possible, giving your mycelium the cleanest possible head start.
Once the 10 minutes are up, take the pot off the heat and leave it to cool with the lid still on, all the way down to room temperature. Don't rush this! If you mix the substrate with your colonised grain while it's still warm, you risk damaging the mycelium - remember, it's living. It's ready when the pot feels cool to the touch, not just lukewarm.
Once it's cooled, give your MonoBox™ tub and lid a good clean with hot soapy water, making sure to rinse all the soap off. Now you're ready for Step 4, where you'll mix everything together.
SPAWNING TO SUBSTRATE
When your substrate has cooled and is ready, first clean your hands and forearms - use a blue Clinell wipe again, or wash thoroughly with soap and water. Then take a good handful of the substrate straight from the pot and set it aside for later.
Remove any micropore tape from around the edge of your SpawnTub, then open the lid and tip the colonised grain straight into the pot, on top of the substrate. It'll come out as a solid block that you'll need to break up - it can take a bit of force to get going, so be firm, but careful not to squish any grains.
Take your time breaking the spawn up into individual kernels and mixing them evenly through the substrate. Each kernel is an inoculation point, so the better you spread them, the faster and stronger your colonisation will be!
Once it's all well mixed, transfer everything into your cleaned MonoBox tub.
Turn over for next steps
Finally, take that handful of substrate you set aside earlier and spread it evenly over the top until you can't see any exposed grain. This is called a casing layer.
Secure the lid on the MonoBox and store it somewhere warm. Aim for 23C (give or take a couple of degrees), and getting the temperature right here is absolutely crucial for success - you need colonisation to be quick, or there's a high risk of contamination taking hold. This is the make-or-break stage of your grow.
From around day 5, you can crack one corner of the lid open. Once there's a good amount of mycelium growing, it often wants more fresh air than the filters alone can provide, and giving it that extra air exchange can actually help speed colonisation up.
In the right conditions, full colonisation takes around 7-14 days. As before, once it looks fully colonised, give it a few more days to be sure the centre - where you can't see - has colonised too.
When you're confident the substrate is fully colonised with strong, healthy mushroom mycelium, you're ready to begin fruiting. Don't fully open the MonoBox before then. You now have a colonised block, known as a 'cake'.
PREPARING YOUR CYLO GROW TENT
Push in the bottom corners of the tent and fold in on itself up to the arrow line on the sticker. Put your arm inside the tent and push out the sides.
This creates a gusset in the tent, which allows a flat space in the bottom for sitting your perlite and cake on.
Now you need to hydrate your perlite. Slowly pour it into a strainer (it throws off a lot of dust) and rinse under a tap until it's soaking wet. Shake off some of the excess water and then pour it all into the grow tent. Spread it out into an even layer.
Please cover your mouth and nose when working with perlite and avoid breathing the dust in. If you do breathe some in, move into fresh air and rinse your nose/mouth.
Cut a piece of tin foil slightly larger than your cake and place this on top of the perlite. You don't ever want your cake sitting on the damp perlite, as it can cause contamination.
Remove your cake from the MonoBox™ and place it on the foil. Fold over the top of the tent and secure with clips or tape, so that humidity can build up inside.
Turn over for fruiting steps
THE BEST BIT... FRUITING YOUR MUSHROOMS!
Maintaining a temperature of around 21C (give or take a couple of degrees) for this stage is crucial for best results.
Humidity and FAE (fresh air exchange) are extremely important for pinning and healthy mushroom development, as is temperature and light. They all need to work in harmony.
Humidity will build up inside the grow tent from the damp perlite and your tent has custom airflow holes to allow for fresh air exchange.
The only time you'll open your tent is when you're ready to harvest your mushrooms - peeking even for a few seconds is enough to lose humidity and cause growth defects (aborted pins, caps breaking, etc).
Placing an electric fan somewhere in the room on a low setting will create a gentle air current and help increase the FAE inside the grow tent.
Your mushrooms will need light to grow. Indirect sunlight is fine, but if you want to use grow lights - a 6-7000K LED or flourescent light a couple of feet away is recommended.
If you notice the inside of your grow tent looking dry, there are a few things which can cause this. Your perlite is not damp enough, the fan is too close, or grow lights are too close and hot.
Observe what's happening and adjust your setup as required - fantastic results depend on it.
After around 3-7 days you'll begin to see lots of tiny white dots - these are hyphal knots which will develop into primordia, aka mushroom pins... the exciting part!
At this point, remove the round stickers at the top of your tent to allow more air exchange through these custom airflow holes.
It should then only take 4-5 days for the pins to grow into fully mature mushrooms ready for harvest.
During this time, they'll let you know if something isn't quite right - fuzzy mycelium at the base of the mushrooms and/or thin stems are an indication that more FAE is needed so increasing the fan speed might be something to try.
Don't worry about any mushrooms growing around the sides and bottom of the cake, you'll still be able to harvest them. If you want to give your mushrooms more room to grow next time (although the Cylo Grow Tent should provide plenty of space!), use a fruiting chamber instead of a grow tent. Check out the photos on our CyLab product page for results when growing inside our CyLab fruiting chamber.
When the veil beneath one of your mushroom caps is about to tear off, this is when you should harvest your first flush. If you don't get there quick enough, spores will begin to drop from your mushroom caps and make a mess! It's best to cut the mushrooms off with a clean scalpel or knife, you can also just pull them off but be careful not to damage the substrate too much.
After you've harvested all the mushrooms from your first flush, you can use a method called 'dunking' to get more moisture into your substrate. Simply fill a container with water deep enough to submerge your cake in and then place it in the water. It will float to the top so you need to use something to weigh it down, as you need it to be fully submerged in water at all times.
Place a lid on the container or cover it to keep everything clean. Leave your cake submerged for anything between 6-24 hours.. depending on how much patience you have! But obviously, the longer you leave it, the better your results will be.
It's best to rehydrate your perlite at this point too. Just repeat the previous steps. Always be careful not to have any water pooling in the bottom of your tent though, as it's a contamination risk. You can also replace the tin foil.
When you remove the cake from the water, give it a rinse under the tap and allow excess water to drain away before placing back into your grow tent.
You should continue to dunk your substrate after each flush and rehydrate the perlite at the same time.
If you've taken good care of it, you should achieve multiple flushes of mushrooms from your grow kit before the nutrients are all used up.
HAPPY SHROOMIN'
0-3 working day dispatch or a free gift if we are late (UK-only pledge). Order and pay before 1pm Monday to Friday.
If your parcel does not arrive
Contact us, not Royal Mail. Royal Mail only deal with the sender, which is us:
“If you're the recipient please contact the sender. They will contact us to make enquiries on your behalf.”
Royal Mail: what to do if your item doesn't arrive
When Royal Mail treat an item as missing
Royal Mail will not look at a claim until this much time has passed after the date your item was due. They also say early claims cannot be processed.
- Tracked 24 and Tracked 48: due date plus 7 working days
- Standard and Tracked to Europe: due date plus 20 working days
- Tracked outside Europe: due date plus 25 working days
- Standard outside Europe: due date plus 25 working days
What Royal Mail pay for a lost item
- International Standard and International Economy: the lower of market value or £20
- International Tracked: the lower of market value or £50
Royal Mail: international compensation
That is what Royal Mail pay us. What you get from us is covered by our replacements policy, which does not depend on Royal Mail paying out.
Stopped at customs
In the 9 years we have been running, we have only had a couple of issues with parcels being stopped at customs - if this is the fault of us (USA seized a parcel once because we put a Cadbury's chocolate bar into a parcel as a treat ) then of course we will sort it out and take the hit. But if it's not our fault, then we will not cover any replacement cost. Luckily, this situation has probably happened a few times in all of these years.
Full shipping and dispatch details, including every international price