Growing Mushrooms: Using Spent Blocks 

In one of his books, Paul stamets mentioned using mushrooms to indirectly feed his fish. After they became infested with larvae, he put them into the water. The fish learned to nudge the mushroom and out would come a tasty snack. ...Paul will not rest until mushrooms are capable of doing everything. Lol

15:00 Need ideas? Use a small wood chipper to reduce the blocks into powder. Bag it as "Shroom compost", sell it to your local independent garden center as premium garden amendment. If I was a kid in your area, I would love to built a small company around that idea!

I grew some lemon kush in mycelium last year, just threw the seeds out. They grew to 16 feet, and six plants produced 17 pounds......mycelium works!

I use blocks for my garden too! Also to fill in holes that the dog dug. if you miss a bug in the mushrooms its just extra protein :)

Noticed this myself, had a bag turn green, buried it in the back garden on a garden bed that is resting for the winter, week later.. Blue oyster mushrooms... It is 2 degrees Celsius out there... and the damn things are richer, more colourful and better looking than my perfect green house.

Only 4 minutes in, so idk if you mention this, but if you feed the spent blocks to worms you can generate tons of worm castings. The bacteria in the gut of the worms will make the compost bacterially dominant, which is preferred for amending annuals and herbs! Fungally dominated composts will have nitrogen in the form of ammonia, which is what perennials prefer, but bacterially dominated composts will have the nitrogen in the nitrate form, which is what most garden plants desire!

Till them into wood chips and cover with a tarp. I have a mushroom patch now and it's pretty awesome.

Great video Andrew! Your videos have saved me tons of time and money and have really helped the success of my business. Thanks for sharing all your amazing insight!

Love to watch your videos. Useful information from start to finish. Keep it up.

I can't believe you mentioned BSFL; that makes me very happy! I have been doing a ton of research on processing food waste and raising black soldier fly larva over the last several months as well as studying growing mushrooms but I had no idea they would eat spent blocks. I thought they were too high in cellulose / lignin / woody material for BSFL - Maybe they'll eat Oyster blocks but not Shiitake or Reshi? It would be awesome if they will eat everything... I emailed Fungi Perfecti awhile back and they told me red wriggler worms used in composting bins love oyster mushroom mycelium. I have envisioned, and been working towards, a system where I can deal with every part of the web of life. BSFL can process all foodwaste and fecal matter, mushrooms can process all the woody material, the leftovers from both of those processes go into rearing red wriggler worms and generating compost. BSFL and worms can both be used as fishfood / supplemental chicken feed. I HAVE EVEN thought about taking the BSFL, 35% protein / 35% fat / 5% calcium, and crushing them up and using them as a supplement in mushroom blocks. Definitely worth a shot at some point. Here is some info I have found to be invaluable for learning about BSFL: This is a link to a very useful 100 page PDF published by the, 'Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology' titled Black Soldier Fly Biowaste Processing - A Step-by-Step Guide www.eawag.ch/fileadmin/Domain1/Abteilungen/sandec/publikationen/SWM/BSF/BSF_Biowaste_Processing_LR.pdf And a very short video (5½ minutes) from the same group. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5M6u9ZX5ecE.html&t Made me lol when you cut to the music. Sounds like the 80's. Another idea for blocks is to get some straw and make outdoor mushroom beds in the spring and fall. Maybe you could let people come pick their own? Just tossin out thoughts. Around here there are orchards / farms where you can go and pay to pick your own strawberries, etc.

Will they charcoal?

Thank you- jolly decent of you, in educating the public so that they may save some money, and hopefully put this info. to good use.!- Australia

I really enjoy the way you convey information in a simplified and quick way. I've learned liquid culture using your lab videos and Im very impressed. Id like to talk to you about the value of your spent blocks. I've learned alot from reading on Indian, Chinese, and European methods which I beleive can be scaled to a farm of your size. Ill happily fill you in on my research and Id gladly see you implement it. I'm running trials want my thesis hIjacked. It may be patentable, but Its best to share the information. some marketable species can be grown in symbyosis with oysters and be grown on contaminated and/or spent substrates in many configurations. Please reply to this comment if youre interested. It wont take much time to summarize, I just wanna see you guys keep on rockin out.

You give good vibes and great information bro! Peace out!! :)

Hi! Thanks for the great video and for the suggestions on composting - especially for adding charcoal. The benefits of the charcoal is incredible - to "activate" it as a long-time fertilizer i add fine rock flour and liquid manure from stinging nettles.

This video is pure gold, thank you man!

Man!! I was diggin the jams! 🤣.. I discovered that plant nurseries will package and resale spent blocks specifically for gardening.

Idea: adding waste cardboard and straw or other good waste, and fill molds. After the mycelium has grown into the mold forms then dry in an oven and sell for packaging to replace polystyrene packaging. It's a win win win 😊 💕

Its been forever since the last video... Thank you for sharing the knowledge 👽🤘

If you're growing primary saprotrophs (Oyster mushrooms) you can break up, rehydrate, and resterilize your blocks, and use them for a secondary saprotroph mushroom (dung-loving).

Excellent stuff, subbed!

Hi, thanks for your videos ! Stropharia Rugosoannulata loved spends blocks ;) if you want to put them in a garden bed, there are really beneficial for plants.

Great video! Thanks.

Thanks for the information 👍

Do you try to keep your garden bed blocks separated by mushroom type? Or do you let the mycelium fight it out. If it is a battle, what variety most often wins?

Man is it great to see the many useful ways to recycle the spent blocks. This was for years ago and now your business has grown and your worker count is down so I wonder if your blocks are piling up again. Hopefully you guys get a reprieve sometime soon

You guys are great! Thanks for being so real about everything. I am just in the planning phase of my mushroom adventure and have a question. I hear that those spent block not only attract flies but STINK to the high heaven! I see that your neighbors aren't too far away, is there an odor issue?

Nice Video, thanks!

Do you have a routine or clothing specific for disposing of blocks with contams? I worry about bringing trich back in and wait until right before a shower

Just found your channel, and saw your fish. As you know they feed on alge. Im wondering if you pump you co2 rich grow room air through your tanks (bubbling). It should cause the alge to grow big time. Just a thought from an ethanol producing boom I read some time ago. Maybe another stream from one process that would make some other process thrive. Keep up the awesome work!!!! Well done Sir.

Dude.... what do you not grow? Mushrooms. Fish. Veggies. FLIES!? lol i love it. Do you have an aquaponics setup? Ive always wanted to do that. I love your income streams. I think i have a market for spent blocks easily here. Ive been dumping them in my in laws garden, but maybe thats best? I love the BSF. Another critter i wanted to play with. Ive used blocks for my worms, but the poor bastards died before i could really see them work the blocks. Thanks for the great videos!

I'll take some to help prep my field's soil for my hemp next year.

question. can you not take a chunk of spent block break it up and say put in a bucket of pasteurized straw or sawdust and start a whole new colony? I guess my question is that are the mycelium in the spent blocks dead or will they continue to grow indefinitely.

This is fantastic! How do you easily strip the bags?

Super great video - I've been curious about spent blocks for a business scale mushroom operation. When selling to restaurants, what do they pay per pound of oyster?

If you plant a mushroom block in something like manure soil will it grow mushrooms?

Glad I'm not the only one. Once, many many years ago I had mice set up a winter wonderland next to a bag of wild bird food tucked away in the back of a closet. *NIGHTMARE!!!* Now, all my grow media is stored in sealed containers with silica gel packets. I do not want to go through that again.

Ferment and feed to a rumiant. Best upcycle there is

johnson su bioreactor. That's what we use right now. The bsfl has me thinking too

Hello sir i have a question and hope your be gracious enough to give me an answer what i was wondering is is it possible to rehydrate dried mushrooms and then clone them in a liquid culture i like sugar in water or corn syrup in water the reason why i'm asking this i live in the tropics and for someone to ship me liquids for cultures would take months and months so i was just thinking of getting my hands on dried mushrooms in making my own liquid cultures can this be done thank you very much hope to hear from you soon

If you trip and listen to that montage music that’s cool bro 😎

You mentioned you were going to implement the blackthorn bug’s frass as a food for the fish?

I’m about to harvest my very first Lion’s Mane from a box grow. With that said, I have a sizable elm stump in my backyard, which North Spore suggests to be a good host for LM. Do you think a carefully buried (abutting the trunk below soil) LM block would take hold and grow into the stump?

I heard of people using colonized substrate to make solid objects, for packaging or building bricks. Although this has to be considered early in the cultivation process.

You should get some barn cats, there also pretty dope too

Hey Andrew, good info.. I was wondering how many ounces of spawn do you put in a 12 lb bag of substrate... thanks! Also, is spent blocks good enough to grow good tomatoes or do I need to add stuff to it?

How do you dispose of the bags?

Hello ... pls any successful story ( or any link ) that does witness the old wheat straw mushroom blocks is used as a food for a black flying soldiers ? Thx

What is the temperature of the grow room

Why would you not want it to keep growing? And harvesting?

ty for ur sharing

Ah! I know what to do. Srry i didn't see this earlier... You should grow pill bugs for your fish, and maybe chickens. Pill bugs, potato bugs, Wood Lice... they have allot of names. They are a little land shrimp (they're literally related to copepods) that is a great feed for fish and chickens. They're high in calcium and protein. People have eaten them too, but they say they taste like urine, so.. i decided to take their word for it.

I've been composting my old blocks....but what about the plastic waste?

so the mushrooms free growing in your raised bed , do you ever eat them?

you can make activated charcoal soap Thank you, from Denver where mushrooms are decriminalized up to 4 grams ...I think that's what I heard. from reading google .. they never said anything on our news here

I have just started to grow mushrooms and my first shoe box success (5 failures) had two small flushes and as a experiment I took the (maybe not totally) spent 1 inch thick mat soaked it and put fresh coco, worm castings, gypsum, brown rice flour and vermiculite (I let a couple BRF tech dry out before I got a chance to inoculate) and it has almost fully colonized and ready to put into fruiting conditions! I plan on fruiting till it seems used up and will try the same again, maybe adding some soaked sterile grain as well since the brown rice flour won't be added... or will it lol Can you see any down fall to carrying on like this? Like once the block gets big, split it in two and now I have two bin and so on? I know each time increase risk of contamination taking over but is there anything else like say deterioration of the genetics?

you can burn them to power a generator and use the ashes to sterilize mulch with water raising the ph lvl over a night

How can i get in contact with u for grow advice!?

What about sterilizing it again and then inoculating the block again? Just wondering, I am new to growing mushrooms.

Maybe mix the broken blocks of mycelium with compost , and produce a mushroom compost after its well broken down in big piles if you got room the. Bag it up , we have such things like that in Australia in our garden centres , bags of mushroom compost , people buy it for gardens , I think it’s a no brainer but depends on what you want to do , the other evel in the room is what do you do with all that plastic bags wasted , that’s a problem mushroom growers creat even worse sadly.

Thanks you save my day. I just wanted to hear you saying that the black soldier flies munch it up in no time.

What can we do Mr Moss????? Thanks as always

Do you know of anyone who has tried feeding spent blocks to worms? Worms and castings are both valuable! Especially to organic cannabis growers, they love the castings!

Do you know where I can buy the Spawn? I live in California. Thanks👍

NOTILT Gardeining no tilt needed in fact it destroys the new grown mycel network. ;)

I’d like to get my hands on a big bag of those blocks, for my garden. Do you dry them and milk them to use in gardens? I would definitely buy big bags of mushroom compost.

What temperatures were the outdoors flushes at?

You can make good money by properly composting it and selling it bagged as mushroom compost. Like 5 bucks per cubic foot of compost easy

Superfast dig mode!

Time ago I wanted to make a black soldier fly composter, the one that also harvest the mature larvae, but now I don't have chickens anymore, so I don't see me producing biodiesel or worm meal... I have made an earthworm composter, and works perfect for turning spent blocks into rich humus (solid and also liquid), but it is too small for the scale i'm doing now. I plan to make a big one (raised bed style) like one earthworm farm I saw time ago. It would be a nice way to turn some volume of the spent blocks into valuable fertilizer. Have you consider making a big earthworm composter?

Thanks for your reality, maybe you can use them as smokers for your slow bbq

add waste decomposer and cow dung manure ..it becomes organic compost fertilizer for farming

Biochar!

Loved this video man! very permaculturish We have been using our spent blocks in a similar way. We live at a farm, so there is infinite demand for spent substrate. Did i hear you also grow fish? I have been thinking bout doing it myself, growing fish to eat, it would be nice to see a little video on this subject if possible. One thing that troubles me a bit, with my mushrooms, is the plastic. Have you ever tried growing in buckets? is it worth considering in your opinion? And i know this is out of subject for this video, so please excuse me for asking, but have you ever tried growing button mushrooms? The thing is that where i live, it is very small demand for oysters, but everybody eats button mushrooms. I suppose that oysters are more feasible for the home grower than button mushrooms, but i am curious if you have any opinion here. Thanks for sharing man! Keep spawning videos :D

Wait i dont understand you said oyster mushroom kill living plants when planted in soil together? But i looked it up and its not parasitic so wouldnt it make plant grow better by holding bettet water content in soil etc.. ? Let us know please bud know u got a busy schedule

80s karate montage music love it

Wood chipper?

I want to start a mushroom farm and bsf farm. Can you use the frass on its own as a substrate for mushrooms? What substrate do you use?

Music part was the dopest

I'm on the opposite end, I LOVE to weed eat and would do it hours a day if I could get away with it. It is my alone time. Just myself and my headphones and the smell of fresh cut grass!

What word were you using? Your summer job. Weed heeding?

If the blocks attracts insects you could have chickens, carnivorous plants, lizard, fish, ...

Music?

What an incredible music, what is it ?

How can I get some substrate from you?

Dry them out and use them as firewood.

did my man just say he "grows" fish?

the title is 'growing mushrooms using spent blocks' and is that possible or advisable? you describe all the many uses for spent blocks but growing, why this title? Did I miss it?

Any luck with morels?

#1non stalker fan

Grow your own flies, then grow your own fish!

use spent blocks to make a Make a Biogas Generator to power a future hot tub... lol

They let off heat as they rot to I bet the rats loved it

Operation Aqua Thunder

This song could have been in the Karate Kid movies

Charcoal will become biochar in time...compost it.

Get a Jack Russel Terroir for rat problems

those rats were probably stone out of their mind

Stick to the subject mate