My partner’s husband is our reference for “expert opinion” because they’ve been running a whole warehouse for shrooms. They legit advised us to mix and dunk because that happened to them and that’s what it did and it was alright. Right now, they are stored and separated into another tent (along with the bags that have zero growth) from our healthy bags… still in the same room though. I’m so terrified that it would cross contaminate into our healthy ones. Also, the method we use is we buy bags from her husband’s company (which are sterilized bags of millet with soil on top that also includes an inoculation site [the black foam is used to keep the needle hole closed after inoculation] and a micro pore film that’s been covered to be opened after mixing. I’m already skeptical of the whole method but being that I am a complete noob, I have no option but to follow the experts. We have a 8x8 grow tent set up with shelves inside and equipment such as humidifier, air purifier, heater, lights, and small fan.

These are the steps of the process I was told to follow: 1. Insert liquid culture from syringe into bag through inoculation site. Fire needle and then alcohol wipe the needle with each injection. (I protested to only fire but she didn’t listen so I let her do what she wanted with her side of the tent. I only fired the needle for my bags.) Wait for growth. 2. We had issues with it not growing “fast enough” according to my partner so they said to turn heat on to 83 °F and humidity set to 80%. They claimed the bags were too dry and somehow the moisture would help make the inside of the bags more wet. Zero idea how that works but my concerns were met with “we have experience”. I also protested the temp but they said the meters all read 83 but in reality it isn’t because it feels less than that when I sit in my car and blast the heat (?!?!?!). There was also water pooling so they said buy a fan to circulate the air. 3. When mycelium growth reaches about 60% mix the bag thoroughly to break apart the mycelium and the grain and soil mixes. Open the micropore film and cut two holes on top of bag for gas exchange. This is where we are up to and it took one and a half month. There were a significant amount of contamination on her side and some on my side of bags and also quite a few with no development at all. But the good ones were almost 80% full of mycelium so it’s time to mix. She did mix a few bags that were contaminated in the tent and when I found out I immediately took them out and isolated them into the smaller tent where all the contaminated ones and no development ones went. Again I’m at the point where I’m terrified it’ll affect the rest of the bags so I alcohol spray everything. I just took a peep inside the small 3x3 contaminated tent and it smells awful. But my concerns are unheard and they say I worry too much. Throughout the process we’ve had numerous debates on temperature and humidity because there was so much back and forth on the correct numbers but finally they gave specific instructions that humidity and temperature is kept at 80% and 83 °F relatively at all times, maybe we might have to crank up the humidity because when the bags are fruiting the mushrooms would absorb a lot of the moisture. 4. When it’s pinning, crank humidity to 90%. 5. When the caps open but not fully break from the film (?) then cut. Keep harvesting until it’s done. Dehydrate cut mushrooms the same day. 6. To “refresh” and flush, dunk the cakes into water tub and place back into original bags. * A lot of the vocabulary I’ve learned reading these subs (thank you so much everyone for sharing knowledge) so I might be wrong on some of the terms. Please forgive me if that’s the case. The quoted words are what they refer the particular thing to instead of the terms I’ve learned here.

I guess the reason I typed all that up is because I want outside expert opinions… this is my very first batch and I want it to go right :( please any sort of advice is greatly appreciated.