I moved to a new state a few years ago and am just getting back into cult after a long hiatus.
Masters mix has always been my go to. Ive found local sources for grain and hardwood pellets at a good price but I can't find any soy hulls due to it not being a very big crop in this state. Currently the best price I can find online after shipping is about $60 for a 50lb bag. Is there any reason I shouldn't be able to replace the soy hull pellets for another variety of pellets with close to the same nutrition content?
Seems like the average DMB (dry matter basis) of soy hulls is:
Crude Protein.. 12.1%
Crude Fat......... 2.1%
Crude Fiber...... 39.0%
In my area I can get Alfalfa pellets for $16 a 50lb bag with DMB:
Crude Protein.. 17.0%
Crude Fat........ 2.0 %
Crude Fiber..... 35.0%
and Bluegrass pellets for $12.50 a 50lb bag with DMB:
Crude Protein.. 10.0%
Crude Fat........ 2.0 %
Crude Fiber..... 25.0%
Im also getting wheat at $13.80 a 50lb bag with DMB:
Crude Protein.. 10.0%
Crude Fat........ 1.5 %
Crude Fiber..... 2.5%
I was considering making up for the lost nutrition by adding extra colonized wheat grain while spawning. Thinking I would just replace 1lb of dry SHP with 1lb of dry grain which would then be prepped, inoculated, and then spawned into bags of the hydrated hardwood pellets. Which would be a significant amount of spawn and would require me to introduce more grain jars and inoculant into my current process.
Also due to the other pellets having a high fiber % they act as a water reservoir along with the wood which the grain alone wouldn't replace, so you would have to make up for that lost moisture with more wood. Seems like this would substantially increase the volume of the fruiting block which would be a hinderance for my fruiting space.
Im thinking of picking up a bag of each the alfalfa and bluegrass pellets and run them head to head against the soy hull pellets while I still have some. Maybe also a mix of the alfalfa and bluegrass to try and get a closer match to the soy hull nutrition and add a bit extra wood to make up for the lower fiber %.
I'm not sure if the DMB values are even useful for mushroom growing, you might need a deeper analysis of nutrients for this to even make sense. I could be overthinking things and need to just go the bran or straw route
March 12thFinally getting around to spawning some bags.
I have 3 mycoquarts of both King blue oyster and Elm oyster, inoculated from the same agar cups. These are cultures from some LCs I purchased. The KBO seems pretty stable and this is my first run of the Elm.
Pressure cooked 4 different substrates for each mushroom today and will spawn in the morning. Bags were prepared as follows:
Masters Mix- 1 pound Hardwood pellets
- 1 pound Soy hull pellets
- 3 pounds water
- Will be spawned with half a mycoquart of grain
Alfalfa Mix- 1 pound Hardwood pellets
- 1 pound Alfalfa pellets
- 3 pounds water
- Will be spawned with half a mycoquart of grain
Bluegrass Mix- 1 pound Hardwood pellets
- 1 pound Bluegrass pellets
- 3 pounds water
- Will be spawned with half a mycoquart of grain
Hardwood Mix- 2 pounds Hardwood pellets
- 3 pounds water
- Will be spawned with 1.5 mycoquarts of grain
Pellets were hydrated with hot water in buckets before loading bags and PCing for 3 hours at 18psi.
Will update when I put them into fruiting.
March 27thWas trying to wait to throw all the bags in the tent at the same time but the KBO that was spawned to the straight HWP had a lot of pinning so I threw it in by itself this morning.
The bluegrass seems to be performing about the same as the soy hulls with colonization rate so far. They’ll probably go into the tent this weekend along with the other HWP bag. the Alfalfa has been the slowest growing so far so they might not get in the tent until mid next week.
April 4thAll bags are in the tent except for the Alfalfa which should be ready in another couple days.
Really liking the speed and pinset on the pure HWP but everything else is chuggin along right behind it.
April 5thGot the first harvests from the pure HWP bags. Pretty minuscule compared to what I’m used to with masters mix.
9.7oz on the king blues and 5.3oz on the Elms.
April 8thHarvested the Masters mix and Bluegrass bags today. King blues on the masters mix put out 14.5oz, the elm did 10.6oz. While the king blues on the bluegrass did 18.7oz and the elm 11.1oz.
First 2 pics are the Masters mix and the second 2 are the Bluegrass
Also noticed some pins on the alfalfa bags today so they finally went in the tent. For whatever reason they were quite a bit slower than all the rest.
April 17thGot the first harvests off the Alfalfa bags this morning. While they were nicely sized fruits the harvest was still a bit small compared to the masters mix and bluegrass mix. The KBO put out 9.5oz and the Elm only 5.5oz
The 2nd flushes are coming in on the KBO HWP, MM, and BG bags while the EO bags haven’t shown any new growth yet.
I’ll be leaving tomorrow for 10 days but have someone to watch the mush and get harvest pictures and weights if needed while I’m gone.
Gotta say bluegrass seems to be shaping up to be my go to from now on. We’ll see what happens on the 2nd flushes and then I’m gonna trash the bags and conclude this experiment so I can get my next run started.
April 26thThe KBO HWP bag only put out 3.5oz on its second flush and the picture of the harvest got lost in the void.
April 27thThe second flush of KBO on Masters mix came out to 5.5oz and the EO 8.6oz. While on the Bluegrass bags we got 4.9oz KBO and 17.9oz EO. These weights seem off to me by just looking at the pictures. The person watching them knows how to use a scale so I’m not sure what happened.
April 28thSecond flush of Elm oyster on the HWP gave 6.7oz
May 5th5.3oz for the second flush of KBO on the Alfalfa mix
May 7thAnd last but not least we got 5.6oz of Elm oyster on the Alfalfa mix
- - - - Harvests - - - - Flush 1 Flush2Pure HWP (KBO) 9.7oz. 3.5oz
Pure HWP (EO) 5.3oz. 6.7oz
Masters Mix (KBO) 14.5oz. 5.5oz
Masters Mix (EO) 10.6oz. 8.6oz
Bluegrass (KBO) 18.7oz. 4.9oz
Bluegrass (EO) 11.1oz. 17.9oz
Alfalfa (KBO) 9.5oz. 5.3oz
Alfalfa (EO) 5.5oz. 5.6oz
ConclusionWhile I was away during the second half of this grow it looks like there may have been some errors in the recording of the harvests. Pair that with harvests being at varying levels of maturity and a fluctuating climate in the Martha I’m finding it hard to make any solid conclusions about this experiment.
Ultimately though I was just looking to see what the general performance of these other pellets were compared to soy hulls. And really the biggest difference I could tell was the morphology of the fruits in the different substrates. I’m sure if I ran this again for multiple flushes and hydrated between flushes the final yields would near each other. I also think the stability of the oyster cultures may have played a roll in the wide range of yields
And while I enjoy the convenience of not having to PC the pure HWP bags I think I’m gonna continue using supplemented blocks since I’m only planning on running bags for 2 flushes. Bluegrass pellets are the cheapest around for me and I like how they did so I’ll be switching to them once my soy hulls are gone
Soooooo to wrap it up, don’t let soy hulls hold your wallet hostage if they’re not readily available in your area and try out some other pellets you can find locally. You might like the results. Thanks for reading ✌️
Ps. I typed this out all on my phone and the flush harvest columns were a little tricky so hopefully the formatting isn’t all fucked up on your side. Here’s a screenshot of that section incase it is:
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