The mycelium snuck up on me.
Getting used to growing again with fast-growing Lion's Mane.
Lion's Mane grows fast. I inoculated my five-pound bags of oak substrate with grain spawn on November 4, and by the 15th, the bags were already starting to fruit. This worried me because I forgot to push out the air from the top of the bags about a week into the process. When exposed to more oxygen, aggressive mycelium will begin fruiting, even if the bag isn't fully colonized.
On the same day I saw this, I broke up the substrate by squeezing and shaking it. This process mixed clumps of raw substrate with mycelium and aerated some of the least exposed parts of the substrate.
After examining the results, I thought I messed up. Mini-fruiting bodies were scattered among clumps of wispy white mycelium and dark, uncolonized oak. I worried that I had interrupted a sensitive stage in the colonization process.
A couple of days have passed, and the mycelium is fusing everything back together. What a relief! However, the small fruiting bodies have grown larger, so it was now or never. I had to cut open the bags and see what would happen. I compressed the air out of the top and folded it down. Then, I cut X-shapes on the front side of each bag.
Stronger Lion’s Mane varieties take a bit under 2 weeks to colonize before getting read to fruit. I’ve always viewed the timeline be around 3 weeks between mixing in grain spawn to (sanctioned) fruits growing from the cuts in the bag. However, it’s been about 6 months since I could last grow Lion’s Mane, so I was thrown by the speed.
I’ll be inoculating more grain spawn in the next few days. I’m looking to grow at least 24 bags of Lion’s Mane before the holiday season, where I’ll be taking a couple week break from the operation.