Good evening,
I „activated“ my grow kit 15 days ago and the mushroom growth is excellent. However, mushrooms are not only forming on the grow kit, but also inside the grow kit box, pressing against the box. Now I'm wondering whether I should remove the mycelium cake so that the mushrooms can spread in peace, or leave it as it is so that the mushrooms press against the box.
Kind regards
Hello!
If mushrooms are already growing, it may be a bad idea to take the cake out because you can tear off mushrooms in the process.
As the mushrooms grow, the cake contracts and pushes water into the mushrooms, which are then inflated like balloons, automatically creating more space between the box and the cake.
If you see that mushrooms are squashed, then you need to do something because squashed mushrooms attract contamination, but as long as they look squashed but normal, my advice is to just let them grow. It can be useful with the 100% mycelium cake to stand the cake upright before mushrooms start to grow, but ultimately the total amount of mushroom mass depends on the amount of nutrient in the substrate/cake and any kind of manipulation can also create problems, especially if you use gloves or don't wash soap off your hands completely.
Trying to work too sterile is usually worse than touching the cake with dirty hands!
My advice for the first time is to do nothing and then, when it's time to harvest, take the cake out and harvest everything around it. If you have already grown several times and want to try something new, you can also try squatting the cake.
Some people also advise taping up the box or wrapping it in aluminum foil to prevent light from reaching the sides. However, this does not reliably prevent growth at the edges - and it is not fundamentally bad if it happens, on the contrary, the counter-pressure then causes the mushrooms to grow larger at the top. They are living organisms and relationships are not trivial and often not even thoroughly researched... It is bad if you overlook mushrooms at the edge and don't harvest them and they then die and attract contamination...
So, long story short: let them grow and remember to harvest all the mushrooms everywhere, even the smallest ones, even those at the bottom or on the edge, because mushrooms do not grow "on their own" like plants, but are inflated by the cake like water balloons. When the cake stops contracting, all mushroom growth stops and then at the latest everything has to be harvested....
Hey everyone, mine are just starting to grow too and I have a lot coming up on the side and I have been asking myself the same question. Thanks for the detailed description.