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.