Why and When You Should Shake Your Mushroom Spawn Bags (2024)

Mushroom cultivation isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s an intricate process, and there’s nothing like seeing your colony sprout for the first or even 100th time! You can do some special things during the growth process that will dramatically increase your mushroom yield. One of those things is shaking your mushroom spawn bags. We’ll dive intowhy and when to shake your mushroom spawn bagsbelow.

Why You Should Shake the Spawn Bag

Shake and massage your mushroom spawn bag to give the mycelium a fair chance at colonizing your substrate. This allows the fungus to access nutrients and new parts of the grain. Then, the entire colony is grown with mycelium and has a fighting chance against rival fungi like mold, which can easily take over your spawn grain if you’re not careful.

The Right Times To Shake Things Up

You can shake up yourmushroom spawn bagwhen the mycelium has colonized about 40–50 percent of the spawn grain. As mentioned previously, this gives access to non-colonized patches of mycelium. You’ll be surprised by how much this simple 30-second action can help your yield.

Don’t shake the spawn bag too often; otherwise, you’ll throw off the mycelium colonization process. One 30-second massage and a quick shake should do the trick.

How To Do It and What Happens if You Don’t

How do you adequately shake your bag? Lay the bag on a table and gently massage the top like you would knead bread dough for about 10 seconds. Don’t massage too rough, or you’ll disrupt the colonization process. Flip the bag and repeat this action. Finally, take your bag by the top edges and shake it back and forth and up and down, ensuring the grain spawn is mixed thoroughly.

You won’t throw off your mushroom colonization if you don’t shake the grow bag. The fungi can still effectively colonize the substrate without a massage, but they’ll have a much easier time navigating the substrate if you perform this action. It certainly improves the yield, so it's well worth doing! Shop at Midwest Grow Kits if you’re interested in growing your own mushrooms.