I just came across these posts and am on my way to starting wine caps in my organic garden. So pleased with all the practical info sharing.
I've taken seminars in raising mushrooms, back around 1991, but never did anything with it. Returning now to improve my garden.
FYI The reason you had critters raiding your spawn was it appears you were using grain-based spawn not sawdust. Mushroom growers usually use grain spawn to expand it into sawdust bags in a lab or other protected area, then plant the sawdust spawn outside. Depending on how many generations out the grain spawn already has grown from the parent petri dish master culture, you may get several generations of expansion from grain into sawdust before fruiting senesces.
