Your ShroomBag isn't done. Here's how to get a second, third, and tenth flush, outside.
There's a moment most first-time growers reach where they look at the bag on the counter, the one that produced a beautiful flush two weeks ago and has been sitting there limp ever since, and think I guess that's it. Into the trash it goes.
That bag wasn't done. That bag was barely getting started.
A ShroomBag is a fully colonized block of Appalachian hardwood that has been completely run through with live mycelium. The first flush you ate is the tip of the iceberg, what came out of the cut you made. Underneath, the network is still alive. With a little patience (and eventually, a little dirt), it can keep producing for a very long time.
Flush two, indoors
After your first harvest:
- Mist the cut surface lightly and lay the flap of the bag back down over it.
- Put the bag in the same spot it lived during the first flush, indirect light, room temperature, not in front of a heater or AC vent.
- Mist twice a day, same as before.
- Wait. The block needs to recover. Pinning usually restarts in 7 to 14 days. Sometimes longer.
The second flush is almost always smaller than the first, maybe 40 to 60% the weight. Same flavor, same texture. We've had Lion's Mane bags throw a third flush indoors. Pink Oyster is usually two-and-done indoors before the block dries out.
The block tells you when it's done indoors: it gets light, the surface stays dry no matter how much you mist, and no pins form for three weeks. That's your cue to take it outside.
Outdoor expansion: where the bag actually shines
This is the part of the manifesto. We make a grow kit, but what we're really sending you is a starter colony. The ShroomBag is portable mycelium, pre-grown, pre-funded, ready to plant.
The basic outdoor plant:
- Pick a spot that stays shaded and damp. North side of a building, under a hardwood tree, the woodsy corner of the yard, behind a shed. Avoid full sun and avoid anywhere that bakes dry in summer.
- Dig a shallow depression, maybe 4 inches deep, big enough for the block.
- Tear the plastic off completely. Crumble the block into the depression, don't keep it as a brick. The smaller the pieces, the faster it colonizes new wood.
- Cover with 2 to 3 inches of damp wood chips (hardwood, not cedar, cedar fights fungi). Then a layer of leaf litter on top to hold moisture.
- Water it during dry spells the first month. After that, let the weather do the work.
Pink and Blue Oyster will fruit outdoors in cooler shoulder seasons, spring and fall in most of the country. Lion's Mane prefers fall. Don't expect anything in the dead heat of summer or the freeze of winter; the mycelium is alive but dormant.
What "ten flushes" actually means
The headline isn't a metaphor. We've seen outdoor ShroomBag plants fruit five, six, ten times across a season, pin, flush, rest, repeat, and then go dormant for winter and come back the following spring.
The mycelium isn't bound to the original block. Once it's in contact with fresh wood chips and leaf litter, it starts colonizing those too. The first outdoor flush comes from the block. The second comes from the chips. By the third, the colony has spread out from where you planted it and is fruiting in a wider patch than you started with.
This is what mushrooms do. We just made it easy to start.
The ethics part
We don't think it's right to sell a $30 grow kit that produces $4 worth of mushrooms and then becomes garbage. That's the model most of this industry runs on, and it bothers us. So we don't run it.
Every ShroomBag you buy from us is a living thing that, with the smallest amount of care, becomes part of your yard. It feeds you. It feeds the soil. It outlives the box it came in.
That is the most efficient food production we know of: one bag, indefinite return.
Maya is a two-person farm in Buckhannon, West Virginia. Questions about expanding your bag outdoors? Email grow@mayamushroom.com.