As a rule in general, the less sterile you are, the more you want to increase your spawn to substrate ratio. I did an experiment where I took three 5-gallon buckets with un-pasteurized straw and purposely was messy with the whole process, each bucket got a different ratio of spawn. The one with the most spawn produced handsomely while the other two did little. Granted the one that produced eventually got eaten by
maggots (oyster mushrooms might as well be a dying carcass to flies), but that was expected. I just wanted to see how the buckets did outdoors with no protection. Good luck with your oyster shroom future! I'm trying to create a business with them by growing them in a bus on my off-grid spread. Lot's of interesting challenges to come indeed.
When money is the end, organisms become the tool, when organisms are the end, money becomes the tool