Before the detail, look at the whole road. Two separate lines of work run at the same time, and they meet at a single point.
This is the substrate: sawdust mixed with nutrients, left to break down, packed into plastic, and cooked. This becomes the mushroom's food. It takes a long time — there are weeks of waiting — but it is not delicate work.
This is the spawn: sorghum grain washed, cooked, bottled, and sterilised. It is then inoculated with mushroom culture and left until it fills with white mycelium.
It is shorter than Line A but far more delicate. Almost every beginner's failure happens here.
Only when both lines are ready — the cooked fruiting bag cooled down, the spawn bottle gone solid white — are they brought together. This is called inoculation, or planting the spawn.
From there it is a single road: incubation, opening, fruiting, and harvest.
The common mistake: doing the substrate first and only then thinking about spawn. Do that and you run out of road — the bags are ready but you have no spawn, and a bag cannot sit and wait for long.
Start Line B earlier than Line A. The exact gap is in the calendar in Appendix A.
How many days before the substrate the spawn should be started.
The whole explanation as a PDF you can print and carry out to the farm — and the full course with it, for one payment.
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Mushy Deli