darin maas

Ok guys I seem to have my grain turning black on the straw problem taken care of but my next issue is sterilizing my own grain.....I have found a local health food store that I can get wheat berries at 1.00 a pound, which i got, my problem is I go thru the process of cleaning and soaking and boiling the berries and then letting them semi dry so I can bag them up. I have the proper bags for pressure cooking and Fold the bag twice so the filter is up and i pressure cook for 1.5 hours and I let my pressure cooker cool completely, but my problem is that im getting moisture in the bags, so much moisture that it beads down inside the bags.  What am i doing wrong?  Too much water in my cooker?  Should the water level not touch the bottom of the bags?   PLEASE HELP!

Yes im doing cold water pasteurizing and im soaking for about 14 to 16 hrs. I am using pickling lime becouse I cant seem to find lime with very low Magnesium content around here. I let my straw drain for about 30 min on a plastic sheet, it it is still pretty damp but not dripping at all. I just made two small logs two days ago but i raised the temp in the room to about 71 to 72 degrees where before it was around 64 so im hoping that might fix my problem as well.

Could my PH in the water be too high. Its not easy getting it around 12 to 13.  im getting new test strips that will hopefully be easier to read.

Hey guys, I need some help. I am new to growing oyster mushrooms at home in my basement and I have had one case of success with 3 bags of elm oysters but now I have tried pink oyster mushrooms and all of my bags the grain turns to black mold. I am cold pasteurizing my straw with a PH of around 12 to 13 for at least 12 hours if not 14hrs. I thought my straw was still to wet even after letting it drain really well so I let it drain the next time for even longer. After about 4 days of hanging the grain starts to turn black. I keep the temp in my room around 63 to 65 degrees and humidity is about 50% and no direct sunlight.  Could the temp be to cool at first? Am i not pasteurizing it long enough? Is there too much humidity in the air?   Any help would be greatly appreciated

Hey guys, I am new to growing mushrooms at home but thought it sounded fun to try. Right now I am growing oyster mushrooms in straw and things seem to be going good with those, my logs are almost fully covered in mycellium, but I want to try my hand at growing lions mane. Now my problem is, after watching I dont know how many videos is pasteurizing grain in the pressure cooker. To save money I thought I would try it myself. I have gone thru all the steps of soaking and then boiling and then putting the grain in bags and loading the pressure cooker and packing towels around the bags to take up the extra space but after the 90 min of pasteurizing and letting cool overnight, my bags are expanded and not tight around the grain like I have seen in videos.  Any ideas of what im doing wrong becouse I have to do the same thing when i make my sawdust bags for the lions mane,  PLEASE HELP....

I am new to growing mushrooms at home and indoors, I am trying my hand at White Button mushrooms and have read a lot of different How To Instructions but I was wondering if anybody knows Why my mycellium is grown downwards in substrate and not upwards to the top? Is this a normal process and i just need to be more patient?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Do i have to use wheat straw or can I use just straw for oyster mushrooms?

Can I use just regular straw or is wheat straw the best for oyster mushrooms?