How To Grow Lions Mane Mushroom From Start To Finish

in this video we're gonna be talking all about growing lion's mane mushroom now we just did another video about all of the medicinal benefits of lion's mane so if you're interested in that then this is better video for you to watch but if you just wanna know how to grow lion's mane mushroom think you're gonna find lot of value out of this video so let's jump right into it now talk about this mushroom lot on this channel but since it's video about growing lion's mane should probably just take quick second and explain exactly what it is lion's mane also known as heresy marinasis is saprophytic gourmet medicinal mushroom it grows in snowball like formation has teeth instead of gills and cooked rate tastes little bit like lobster i've also probably mentioned one too many times that it's pretty easy to grow but it really is one of the most beginner friendly mushrooms so even if you've never grown mushrooms before you shouldn't hesitate to start with good old lion's mane it's not too picky about its conditions it grows really fast and it produces these giant delicious fruiting bodies that are sure to impress the general step-by-step process for growing lion's mane is really no different than any other gourmet or medicinal mushroom with few tweaks along the way so let's jump into step-by-step process for how to grow lion's mane the first step is to grow the lion's mane culture out on plate aka putting the mycelium on some agar and letting it grow out now lion's mane mycelium is kind of fluffy it's kind of wispy and if you leave it long enough it will form these really long spindly looking teeth right on the agar plate if you're familiar with lab techniques and working with agar then this culture can simply be stored on plate and kept in the refrigerator and then anytime you want to grow lion's mane you can just cut wedge of the mycelium out and further expand it you can also get lion's mane culture in liquid culture which can be purchased online so you can either get just liquid culture and grow it out on agar or get wedge and grow it out on agar and have limitless supply of lion's mane mycelium or you can get the liquid culture from reputable supplier step two in the growing process is to expand that culture out on sterilized grain otherwise known as making grain spawn again you don't have to start with wedge of mycelium on agar you can also start with liquid culture but the process is basically the same all you want to do is add the mycelium to sterilized grain the mycelium will then take over that sterilized grain and make grain spawn lion's mane does really well on rye grain which is what typically make my linesman grandspawn with but you can also use wheat berries you can use millet i've even seen people use popcorn so pretty much any kind of cereal grain will work well as base for lion's mane grain spawn lion's mane is pretty fast growing and it won't take long before your inoculated grain will be fully colonized and ready to use so here is some lion's mane grain spawn and you can see how there are already lots of little fruiting bodies on the grain and some people will worry about this but it really isn't problem at all because all you have to do is just shake it up and add it to your substrate those fruiting bodies won't decay or anything like that it will basically turn back into maycelium and will just continue growing through the substrate after they're added of course if you're not into making your own spawn that's not problem at all you can skip this step entirely and just buy some pre-made lion's mane grain spawn so step three is adding your lion's mane grain spawn to substrate now lion's mane is separate mushroom which means it grows on dead or dying logs and when you see in the wild that's exactly what it's doing it's growing on dead or dying logs so it makes you think that really good substrate for lion's mane is something like hardwood which is true like to grow lion's mane mushroom on hardwood sawdust that has been supplemented with bit of bran the sawdust provides the main nutrition for the lion's mane mushroom and the brand just provides little extra nutrition which helps it fruit bigger and produce some bigger yields the recipe use for lion's mane is for every five pound fruiting block use about five cups of hardwood fuel pellets use about cup and quarter of bran just wheat bran and use about 1.4 liters of water this whole mix just gets mixed up and then pressure sterilized for two and half hours at 15 psi lion's mane can also be grown on the masters mix which i'll go over in another video based all about substrates but the masters mix is just basically 50 50 mix of hardwood fuel pellets and soy haul pellets which will also work really well for lion's mane of course if you don't have pressure sterilizer and you want to do lower tech method lot of people will ask if lion's mane will work with the bucket technique in another video showed how you can grow oyster mushrooms in five gallon bucket by simply adding pasteurized wood chips and drilling bunch of holes in it will this work for lion's mane haven't done it myself but can say pretty convincingly that absolutely yes it will work for lion's mane know that other people have done it and it will basically be the exact same process as did for the oyster mushrooms but instead of growing oyster mushrooms you'll be growing lion's mane mushroom and the process really isn't different at all so step four is colonization and fruiting so after you've inoculated your substrate with the grain spawn the mycelium will start to work its way through that substrate and eventually fruit now lion's mane is pretty fast growing mushroom so you will see the mycelium going through the substrate pretty quickly but it does look little bit different than lot of other mushrooms one of the reasons is because the mycelium is kind of wispy and kind of thin and sometimes it will look like the block or your substrate isn't fully colonized when in fact it is and this will become super obvious when you start to see little tiny fruiting bodies growing underneath the bag or growing on the substrate you'll know that it's basically fully colonized and it's ready to fruit now lion's mane does this in my opinion more than any other mushroom where you start to see little fruiting bodies forming on top of the substrate so if you're growing in mushroom grow bag there's couple different options here one of the options obviously is to just cut little bit of the bag where the fruiting bodies are already forming and the mushroom will grow right through that hole but you don't really need to do this at all lion's mane is one of those mushrooms that will just fruit wherever and wherever it has the opportunity so what like to do is just simply fold the bag over and then either cut slit right across the top of the bag or cut little x's on the bag and inevitably within few days or so lion's mane mushrooms will start to form through those exes now another way to fruit mushrooms in mushroom grow bag is something called top fruiting where you basically just cut the top of the bag open and mushrooms will grow off the top of the block now although this can work really well for things like pink oyster mushrooms and other types of oyster mushrooms or king oyster mushrooms it doesn't really work that well for lion's mane just because of the way lion's mane is it'll form these kind of really weird fruits and it's just not an efficient way to grow lion's mane mushrooms so again if you're using mushroom grow bag the best way to do it is just to fold over the top of the bag and cut some x's wherever you want the lines made to grow did mention that lion's mane is not picky at all about its conditions which is true but if it did have the choice it would choose cooler conditions because lion's mane is cool weather mushroom so if you can get it kind of below room temperature lion's mane will grow great somewhere between 16 and 18 degrees celsius but it will grow fine at room temperature and it's not too picky about humidity either so lion's mane mushroom does prefer higher humidity like 90 to 90 or so like most mushrooms but it will grow quite nicely in lower humidity i've had lion's mane growing in just ambient conditions at somewhere between 50 and 60 relative humidity and it grows perfectly fine so if you can get the ideal conditions i.e little bit cooler so somewhere between 16 and 18 degrees celsius and super humid and that's gonna be amazing but if you don't have perfect conditions don't worry about it too much because lion's mane will find way to grow either way lion's mane also doesn't need ton of fresh air something like an oyster mushroom if it doesn't get enough fresh air we'll grow these really weird spindly looking things but lion's mane can do pretty okay in high co2 environment but you will notice differences in what the fruiting body looks like so lion's mane has these long teeth or spines and the lower the fresh air or the higher the co2 then the longer those spines are going to be so if you grow it in conditions where it doesn't get lot of fresh air you might start to see it grows out in these branches and it will almost look like different species so if you look at something like hericium coralloidase it will grow in these branches instead of these snowball-like formations and if your co2 is way too high you will get lot more of these branches but really this isn't something you have to worry about unless you're growing lines made completely in something that is enclosed or maybe like shotgun fruiting chamber that's not getting enough fresh air maybe then you'll have to worry about it but in general the fresh air requirement is not as important with lion's mane mushroom but again to bring this all home if you want to grow the perfect looking lion's mane mushroom try to have lower temperatures high humidity and lot of fresh air and you're gonna get those big beautiful snowball-like formations with just nice little teeth and they're gonna look great and they're gonna last long time as well after you harvest them after you've grown your lion's mane it's time to enjoy the fruits of your labor and harvest the mushrooms now harvesting lion's mane is super easy you basically just grab the whole fruiting body and you can kind of twist it right off the block now you do want to be little bit careful in how you handle them especially if you want them to last long time in the fridge or last long time after you harvest them but they're not as delicate as they look and you know i've had lines made mushroom that after harvesting if you put them in bowl and leave them in the fridge they can look good for 10 days or more and they are one of the more resilient mushrooms in my opinion in terms of shelf life of course after you harvest them it's not over you can get multiple flushes from block of lion's mane getting up to three flushes or three harvests from your block is pretty typical so after you harvest the mushroom you can either just leave it where it is or put it right back into fruiting conditions and it should grow again right out of the same initial holes or slits that you had cut in your fruiting block of course what's the point of growing all these mushrooms if you're not going to enjoy the fruits of your labor so what about cooking lines made mushroom and how do you actually use it i'm not cook or very good in the kitchen myself so asked tegan and here's what she told me one of the best ways to cook lion's mane is to simply slice the fruiting bodies and maybe quarter to half inch thick and then just fry them in some oil with some nice spices it has really nice texture almost kind of like meat or lobster and it's just really delicious unique mushroom another way to do this and actually got this idea from five-year-old that was over and that she grabbed partially dehydrated lion's mane and just started shredding it up into big pile and was just kind of playing with it but then looked at it and noticed that those shreds looked like little shreds of meat or like pulled pork or something and we actually tried to do this afterwards we took lion's mane and we shredded it all up and we cooked it with some barbecue sauce and it was really really really good so another way to do lion's mane is just to kind of shred it into pieces and fry it with some sauces and make like pulled pork replacement of course you can also dehydrate your lion's mane and here where live in alberta it's pretty easy to do basically just harvest the mushroom and put it on shelf because it's dry enough here that it will dry out without having to worry about it too much but if you live in more humid climate you might have to slice it up and put it in dehydrator before it will dehydrate properly so that it doesn't just go bad on your shelf i'm not sure how good it is when it's rehydrated but most people who dehydrate lion's mane mushroom want to save it and maybe kind of use it for supplementation but you got to remember in order to get the most benefit out of dehydrated lions made fruiting body you still need to perform an extraction so if you're going to dehydrate it and make powder make sure you're eventually using it to make tea or something like that to actually pull out those beneficial compounds from the fruiting body so should you grow lion's mane mushroom in my opinion that's 100 yes it's an easy mushroom to grow it tastes delicious it has all these great benefits and it's just really really fun and you don't have to start through the whole process of starting from agar and going all the way to fruiting it you can start with kit which would be the easiest way to do it you can start with pre-made commercial grain spawn so basically no matter what your skill level is there's an easy way to jump in and start growing lion's mane mushrooms so hope that was helpful hope you go lots and lots of lion's mane i'm tony from freshcap.com and i'll see you in the next video you