Grain Spawn Experiment FULL: Finding the best type of grains for mushroom farming

Fresh from the Farm Fungi's Gary dives deep into grain spawn exploration. This video covers the full comparison between millet, wheat, rye, oats and pop corn grains used as grain spawn! The race is on and yields are on the line in this exciting Myco-experiment MUSHLOVE
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[@alexv259]

OK here is the deal: For the last 4-5 years, I have been watching so many and many videos related to mushroom growing, so I can learn about this science, in terms of doing the most with the least amount of work and expenses. If I had my own Oscar award organization, I would have given this video the TOP AWARD in lots of categories. The first one would be: you truly took the time in PLANNING the topic you wanted to present. The second category, lets call it STAGING, you generously set the stage for all different grains for benefit of your viewers! That means you CARE and have EMPATHY for viewers like me from Missouri so you went the extra mile for creating small size grain containers. Also an award for executing your research plan for extended number of days. Keep up the good work!

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

thanks for watching! 🙏🏻🍄❤️

[@whitefordpipeshandmadebymi7238]

I agree 💯% , very informative video, I love experiments like this ! Plus this guy seems like a nice person and authentic, anywho take care! Peace ☮️ from Welland Ontario Canada 🇨🇦

[@raymondgoldie6162]

Would have liked brown rice tested. It is used all over the world and is available. The ones tested are often not available... I'm in Philippines...thanks.

[@bozzigmupp510]

But he did not explain anything about the bulk substrate 😕

[@mushlove69420]

​@@bozzigmupp510 that wasn't the topic of the video. So that makes sense. He covered the topic of the video very thoroughly I thought.

[@MycoDogs]

best mycology channel on youtube

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

thanks!

[@MissBlackMetal]

20:18 REALLY good to learn that you can still send a stalled grain spawn to bulk and it can still continue myceliating and spring back into action!!! Seems like the yield may have been lower due to the stall, but "lower yield" is infinitely better than "no yield" 😁 Thanks, Gary!!! 🤘🏻

[@michaelhansen6977]

Great video, I love that it wasn't a series, but rather a full start to finish video. I am ready to start growing and your videos have helped a lot.

[@rustyvessel5086]

Dude get tf outta here with that shit. This is KZbin

[@allendanco5406]

Potential nark alert

[@emiliordache-hobby]

I am from Romania and I am happy to follow you. The problem is that I don't know the language and google doesn't translate well. However, I understand something with the help of images. I'm a beginner in the field. I think it's a fun hobby. Thanks for all the tips!

[@buttonmushroomsspawn3108]

Hello

[@ImproveMushroomCultivation]

Hey Gary, what a great experiment, and thanks for sharing it with us. The so-called porosity is another factor that can be used to determine if the grains tend to be more on the dryer side or the wet site. Here, Oats are more on the dryer side, and corn on the wet side. Wheat, millet, and rye are in between. Congrats on the new book.

[@bryamuuareme329]

Gary, this video was genuinely awesome! I especially enjoyed being shocked on which grains cane out on top for times and weights. Thank you SOO MUCH for sharing the journey with us on this!!

[@GM-rs2fv]

So stoked to watch this. Thanks for documenting your grain experiments!

[@rorysoley2945]

Thank you so much for this experiment, we loved it. Keep them coming

[@erikdutch6268]

Thanks for asking questions, finding answers and sharing the process. Love your content.

[@thinkingmushrooms2943]

Love this video. Thank you for sharing your work and passing along this knowledge.

[@SparkyHelper]

Absolutely great experiment! Thanks so much for sharing.

[@toddwmac]

Thanks for the great info Gary. Looking forward to getting your book. Enjoyed your contributions on 90sm live stream.

[@RenegadeMushrooms]

Great experiment, not the result I was expecting. Thanks for the vid 👍

[@mckeeverspruck3406]

Such a dope video. Really cool to watch the experiment process!

[@jaymeventers6249]

Epic video! By far the most educational, start to finish, thorough KZbin video I've ever seen. Well done!👏

[@rickkishka4347]

I will say, your workshop was incredible. Thank you

[@abgoldate]

Thanks for all your informative videos Sir.

[@kevinfromcali7062]

Absolutely fabulous video very helpful and super informative very well done thank you!!!!

[@elizabethr2908]

Great video! Thank you so much for running that experiment! What beautiful mushrooms . I’m a year late discovering your videos but I’m learning so much from your channel ❤

[@DuneNobleman]

Gary, always a pleasure. Been following you since the beginning. I like your rubber band trick for side fruiting prevention. Mush Luv Dude!

[@jasminha9785]

Thanks so much for this complete video.

[@SubFlow22]

Great video, you can tell a lot of thought and effort went into this. Really appreciate it.

[@erndog64]

Gary.... you did an excellent job on this video. Thank you for showing people how fast millet gets the mushrooms growing! Keep up the good work!

[@BenBSeattle]

Great video I appreciate you showing the progression

[@steve-o6937]

Great video, keep up the awesome work! I love to shake and break my grain spawn 24 hours before I run it on bulk. Gives it a extra boost with the head start. Mushlove

[@Sidebranches]

Thank you so much for sharing this information with us all.

[@danushkajayasooriya574]

Thanks Gary for sharing knowledge

[@kemaltasyurek]

Thank you for sharing this valuable video

[@pamelawillis9714]

Excellent! As always.

[@mchaney2003]

Best mycology video I've seen on KZbin. Thank you for sharing so much information with us!

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

thanks! 🍄❤️

[@dalesteiner150]

Awesome videos.....your teaching.....I'm learning ....thanx for the great videos!!!!!!!!!

[@deco1976]

Excellent video. Great info 👍

[@nerdoutreachprogram5358]

Milo (sorghum) grain is my preferred spawn. It’s excellent.

[@claytonpike8247]

Super grateful that you posted your experiment here. I’m did a mix of rye and millet at a 7/30 ratio and it worked spectacular. Shortly after my first break and shake it was full colonized within days

[@Johnny-ur2st]

I've been testing on barley. Seems to be fine. A 50lb bag for 12.50 from a farm store. Wild bird feed works also it has a mixture of everything.

[@whitefordpipeshandmadebymi7238]

Excellent presentation! I learned a lot and was fun to watch . Thanks 👍 take care! Peace ☮️ from Welland Ontario Canada 🇨🇦

[@jktriple_g_129]

That is a big ass flo Hood

[@ronnierowe6764]

Amazing man. A well thought out experiment with a well executed video. Love that it was all one video and I didn't have to search for parts. Keep up the good work and I always look forward to you on 90s lives.

[@liambay4636]

Great video keep it up man.

[@bitlifter]

Excellent experiment, I really appreciate you sharing this information. I’d love to see a ‘grow-off’ between wheat, millet, and sorghum/mylo ❤

[@sakunthalabandara1807]

Great ..Excellent Experiment Process....n Clear Presentation any Lament can Folow easily...

[@wingnut4200]

Very nice. You obviously thought a lot about this and the delivery was great. I also think at current pricing Oats is the sweet spot. But I would never have really known it unless you ran that experiment. Great job.

[@Curkri]

Really helpful experiment. It's great to finish with what really matters, it's whatever you can get cheap! And that's going to vary based on Time, Location, etc

[@pyrocircus129]

I really enjoy the videos, you seem to break things down into layman's terms! Keep them coming

[@rsandilands]

What a great video - compelling viewing! The suspense was killing me! Well done.

[@mariob.6418]

Thanks a lot for the work and Info. Regards from Germany

[@JuryDutySummons]

I wonder how a millet/popcorn blend would work. The millet could fill in the gaps around the popcorn, letting you pack in more calories.

[@helxis]

I think an experiment like this would be best performed over a long term, recording averages. Otherwise a single instance like this is going to be anecdotal at best. Run solely corn for a few months. Measure the performance like you did here, but average it across many, many bags. See how it performs with different species. See how different levels of moisture affect the performance, etc. Then repeat for the different grains. I suspect there a lot more variables here affecting the results than what grains were used, personally. The good news is this: all the selected grains produced mushrooms! So for newbies, the key lesson here should be to "just start!". Don't be afraid. Buy whatever is cheap and easy to get, and use it.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes my own experiences are reflected in this video but once I have more data I will revisit this

[@emisaelortega]

Thanks man really helped me out!

[@walterkennison802]

good work great information thank you

[@DolemiteSammich]

awesome video. thanks for the info!

[@18Hands]

Millet is awesome, although with prices as they are, Whole Oats is the cheapest, best option for my grows. It was 16 bucks for a 50 lb bag of whole oats and now it is up to 26 bucks. Millet is 42 bucks for a 50 lb bag.

[@leedoolan1893]

Great video by the way.

[@Sludge73]

Been waiting for this one. Thorough work. Very cool seeing the progress and outcomes in one video. Outstanding as always. Thanks for sharing.

[@Chris-uh3cm]

Super awesome video thanks !

[@devilette]

Hey neighbor, I'm here in Denver too. Very cool experiment, just getting into cultivating gourmet mushrooms and I'm finding the process and engineering to be some of the most fun parts. I'd love to see a rundown of your equipment and setup (if you haven't posted something like that already). I've hella gotten way ahead of myself while waiting for my spawn to colonize, I'm attempting to design and build an embedded control system to monitor and handle FAE and humidity automatically in the fruiting phase. Mostly for fun, I'm sure it's extremely impractical. But it's been an incredible learning experience as I have done several "dry runs" with a kind of mock bulk substrate to test the system. Your videos have helped me a ton, so thank you! I'd love to take a class if you start doing those again.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

cool! Check out our farm tour video here - kzbin.info/www/bejne/hYTFqoZ_lpqfeKc There is definitely a need for this in the market space right now I use inkbirds amzn.to/3wPjfle but they do not have a CO2 sensor so it took a bit to dial in and still continues to drift now and again. If you could manage that and keep the price point reasonable Id be interested for sure! Also, check out the video on air exchange explained in breaks down the environmentals more

[@karmacharmer]

Awesome information, thank you😊

[@8legs9]

Great analysis

[@mikejeannotte6642]

Awesome vid, dude.

[@cheebacheeo5876]

Thank you for love!

[@jakealomani]

This video was awesome!!!

[@MartynasShnaresys]

I did similar test, considered combination of their hydration capacity, size, nutritional value and price. Rye is almost pure winner in my book, especially when i pay 1$ per 10lbs*. *Buying directly from small farmer, which doesn't use any fungicides, pesticides or herbicides. They aren't the most pretty ones and cleanest, but washing and separating floaters solves the problem. Floaters are amazingly well accepted as spawn run by Ganoderma btw, so nothing goes waste.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

cool thanks for the ideas!

[@tomykottackal4180]

Amazing Great job, thank you Sir.

[@metalheady5632]

love the head to head comparison, but would have been nice to have seen my favorite grain milo in there too!

[@britpopification]

Yes milo is a great spawn

[@johnwinger7504]

I have been running tests using popcorn, with another grain that I used with 'Sillies' - Brown Rice. I also put coffee grains in there. Hydrate the grains separately, and combine. Imagine how many thousands of inoculation you end up with. Plus, the coffee is a good source of nitrogen. Humans like coffee, too.

[@m.a.9052]

Its great to learn from ure experiments. Love this channel. I will experiment in near future with mycelium for product design in my studies, so its nice have people like u, who share their knowledge. 💚 Maybe an inspiration for u. I thought about starch und glucose based hydrogel, if crunched could be a good spawn material. It could be a more controlled medium. Anyway Go ahead 👍😁 and greetings from germany.

[@gregorybiggs2068]

Especially corn may benefit from a few pulses in a blender. Very interesting work - Thanks!

[@diegoramosg]

Great content!

[@robertcoulson483]

As popcorn has a very hard outer layer, consider using cracked field corn ? Whole corn fed to cattle passes through their digestive tack and come out whole. Pigs eat the cattle's manure and can digest most of the corn. Chickens pick through the pig's manure to get the remaining corn. Gross, but breaking the grains hard coating it the answer to higher feed conversion.

[@thematrixcentre]

Very informative. Just love you channel. Like to know your opinion regarding brown rice for making spawn. Thank you.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

it works but it can get very sticky and is easy to overcook - but if it’s cheap and accessible it can be a great option

[@HolisticMotion]

Great content bro. I’m also here in denver.

[@bro3162003]

Great information, great work, 100% A+++

[@ravitejaind]

Great tutorial !! Can you make a video on how to create spores before inoculating into the glass jars.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes we have one here kzbin.info/www/bejne/q4TYpYR8gtaiZsU

[@MnyrlindseyTV]

Great video

[@CheesieGamer]

I was in Colorado a couple of times ❤

[@ivanangelototola2472]

Excelente seu vídeo. Você pode explicar como esterelizar os grãos? Obrigado. Brasil/ES

[@vincentwu2848]

Thanks for the great video, it's really nice to see properly documented experiments. It would have been pretty neat to see how these grains compare to your previous procedure of inoculating onto sawdust. You had mentioned that your previous procedure involved spawning to sawdust to save on costs -- have you noticed any major benefits from switching to grain spawn? It seems like sawdust would beat out all the grains in terms of surface area, so there must be some drawback I'm missing. I've also heard that mycelium "remember" what they are fed and adapt; for example if they are inoculated in oak dust, they will colonize an oak based substrate more quickly. Have you observed anything that would tend to confirm this phenomenon? If so, maybe a mix of grain and sawdust might perform even better for multiple reasons. Thanks again for the great presentation!

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes the grains hold more water so the yields are higher - with space as the bottle neck I had to switch over but I may revisit this 🙏🏻

[@dhaval4570]

wow you really went ALL in

[@philipm3173]

Wish you did brown rice as well but good job

[@AzimuthAviation]

Gary, your videos and sharing of mycology are first tier here on KZbin. What prevented you from testing brown rice here and what are your thoughts of using it as a grain substrate? I see you used rice in your cordyceps project 2.0 and I'm considering using it being easily obtained and inexpensive. Thanks!!!

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

thanks for watching and following along! I think rice gets too sticky for grain spawn - it can be done but it’s easy to overcook

[@syberphish]

One of my other issues, even with wide mouth, is using quart jars; because the jar is still more wide than the opening. With the 1pint wide mouths, the opening and the jar are the same ID, so the stuff slides right out. Quarts are ok if you have a long transfer needle, but otherwise the 1pint wide mouth are great for both spawn and lc's; it's really the only size you need with jars.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes this is true but I like how many fit inside a pressure cooker especially doing test batches 👍

[@William_Asston]

im astonished by the differences in yeild. maybe it's just probability or the later flushes will equalize them, but from the data, i'd think its definitely worth to look deeper into what makes a little bit of millet move the needle that much

[@spoot8835]

cool experiment.

[@laddcraner4170]

great study, tyvm

[@cool7654321]

Thank you for this info

[@ranjanty]

Very well done as usual. I'm curious to know for a first timer and home use only grower do you suggest to use half pint jars or quart jars for making spawn? I'm assuming you used half pint just for the experiment but use quarts for production? Thanks Gary

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

I like half pints for breeding and testing and then I use 5lb bags for production 👍 quart jars would work too though they have their place - If I was doing 10lb bags Id consider

[@johnstamos4629]

@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Should I NOT use a full Qt spawn jar for a 5 Lb bag? I have 36 fully colonized, FULL, Qt jars ready to go. I'm just waiting one week for my apartment inspection before rebuilding my living room/walk-in chamber.

[@cheeselord8153]

My dream is to one day just do expirements like this but on a massive scale, like 30 bottles of each and averaging together all the data, and repeating and all that to truly determine stuff like this

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

I’d love to be able to finance these efforts as well - Give me about 10 years to grow the business and I can hire you for R&D

[@pheresy1367]

Spoiler alert!!! Wow! so the pop corn caught up in the end.

[@raymondgoldie6162]

Can you do one on bulk substrates

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes I will explore that Ive been experimenting with wood chips and masters mix

[@HAUSAKINGDOMTV]

be careful as some are not edible. I got good recommendations and guideline on psychedelic from mycozabo 🆙⬆️👆. He sells and also grows.

[@jmt__]

Great video. Where is the Wild Bird Seed at? That’s all I use. Easiest of all to get.

[@hm6174]

Please make a video about chanterelle grain spawn and in Petri dishes.

[@magnumjgjg]

Brown rice is a fantastic grain to use for starting spawn

[@JohnLight1]

I would be interested to know the results of a mix of grains. For example one part millet to four parts oats.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

I did one jar but it got contammed - I think it isn’t worth the extra steps hydrating multiple grain types but I haven’t explored the benefits completely- it might be worth it at a larger scale

[@mattnsim]

I found corn very interesting. It always seemed to lag behind but always came back with a vengeance.

[@isaaccutlip5815]

I only use corn after using wild bird seed

[@mattnsim]

@@isaaccutlip5815 it’s often the cheapest grain too. I use wheat on my farm.

[@isaaccutlip5815]

@@mattnsimyea if I just want to make 3 quarts of spawn I buy a bag of popcorn for like $1.50. I hear wheat berries are the best but I've never tried them. Do you grow it yourself on your farm? Or is it just a mushroom farm?. My dad planted some feed corn this year so I might crack some and try that.

[@gomezfriesen]

Very cool experiment! I love the cost analysis at the end. Follow up question: Oat prices have more than doubled this last year for me. Is it still your go to grain spawn?

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

yes it only went up about 10-15% for me so it’s still by far the cheapest

[@pauloantunes8826]

Hey Gary! Great video as always! Why did you stop using sawdust spawn?

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

mostly because it was getting harder to source and store. but also yields, speed of growth and consistency between batches improved when I switched to grains

[@hughseless220]

Great video. Do you usually have good luck with syringe filters on grain jars? I just ran quarts with them and I'm pretty sure they choked out. I know that syringe filters stop the vacuum in LC jars and suck in filtered air but not sure how good they are at allowing for passive GE.

[@FreshfromtheFarmFungi]

they work great for me with these half pint jars and I like it for pressure cooking I don’t have to worry about loose lids

[@Gorkilein]

I used rye all time and always shook it up. I've never seen mycelium stop growing afterwards. I lately decided changing over to millet.

[@SeanMc8181]

Cool video. I’d love to see a pt 2 where you test Milo, Brown rice, deer corn, wild bird seed, and grass seed. Awesome content Gary

[@aig9672]

Millet and Milo are interchangeable

[@aig9672]

Wild birdseed contains millet and corn, for the most part along with sunflower seeds

[@aig9672]

Depending on the type of grass, such as rye, which is the gold standard, it would be suitable

[@SeanMc8181]

@@aig9672 Millet and Milo are similar but not interchangeable and I’m aware what’s in wild bird seed. I wasn’t referring to rye grass. Don’t be so dense bro

[@DavidTheHappenings]

@@aig9672 Millet and Milo are completely different grains. Milo is a type of Sorghum. Not millet.