about cleaning the buckets: one has to avoid that they get dirty in the first place. So, to achieve that, you can use a trick from the packaging industry to reduce plastic waste: they use the layering approach. meaning you need to separate a set of properties (strength, light blockage, reconfiguration for the fruiting location, retaining the humidity) into layers. This is easily achieved. 1. use the buckets for strength. prepare configurable holes, by drilling 3..5 cm holes, and 3d printing of a specialized screw. 2. cover the inside with a thin layer of cellophan film, which is even bio degradable. One can think even of spraying the cellophan film into the bucket. 3. at the end of the lifecycle, one has to remove the cellophan film only. the buckets need not be cleaned thoroughly at all
@@stevenfeil7079 yes but sadly we don't live for millions of years so it's not renewable from a reasonable perspective, since we're depleting the resource way faster than it is regenerating, moreover the carbon footprint of oil exploitation won't just disappear when asked kindly
@@MacinteuchPlus It has actually been shown that wells that were thought to be totally dry just a couple of decades ago are now producing again. I say that KNOWING that you will find some stupid way to counter this fact. Just accept it.
@@stevenfeil7079 I won't just accept it lmao, stop trying to persuade me with this, some wells are flowing again, and? Still doesn't change anything about the fact that crude oil takes millions of years with peculiar temperature and pressure levels to be created.
I'm looking for ways to grow my own mushrooms, so I can do something for myself- disability sucks- and it's great to find a place with instruction on doing things.
This is a really important conversation to have. I am also looking for what we can do with old substrate. I'd love to have a space just to discuss innovations in sustainable mushroom growing. Please do update is about your results growing buckets and bags side by side.
Old substrate gets composted. Your local no-dig market garden will love a continuous supply of compost, as they use quite a lot of the stuff (cubic meters in fact) yearly.
@@aenorist2431 this is important. No dig gardens could benefit from free compost materials and eventually the mushroom industry could supply small scale farms and that way we could mimic the natural cycle of regenerate from decaying matter.
@@aenorist2431 my grandpa used to get used button mushroom compost and just add more manure to it. He grew mushrooms in the crawlspace under his house.
Completely agree. It’s such an intriguing space of innovative ideas. Would be great to have decent system to share and validate growing techniques. Though data capture in farming seems to be a time sink and generally unresolved problem.
Near the end of your video you mention cleaning the buckets, It sounds like a tedious time consuming task. Some thirty years ago, I made beer using carboys, but I also tried to make my own wine in 5 gallon buckets like yours. There was a chemical readily available at the beer and wine equipment store used to cleaning the buckets. I think it was calcium chloride. I only needed a little, 1 tsp per 5 gallons of water. To my recollection, cleaning the buckets was quick work. Of course, this is better for small operations, and may not meet the needs of a mushroom farm with hundreds of buckets. Anyway, it might be worth looking into.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge for free and for caring about the environment. Getting my buckets tomorrow. Peace and love from Ghana
I worked at PALS Mushroom farm (Portland, OR) in 2020 and packed the buckets with the pasteurized substrate and spawn. We cleaned the buckets with a power sprayer and then soaked them in a bleach bath. Stored them in the incubator room and then wiped them down with a bleach cloth before packing. I found that they do become brittle over time and shatter, which can cause cuts to your hands if you are not careful. I am sure that by this time, you have come up with your own way to clean them. I enjoyed the work, even though it was very physical, and we grew beautiful oysters. :) We sold the old substrate as a garden amendment. I did, and we told other to, put the old, well-inoculated, mycelium-laden substrate into a bucket at home, but to replace the center of the mycelium block with fresh straw, cap with a wooden board weighted with a brick (high tech stuff, you know), place in the shade, under a ventilated plastic if needed, water and keep an eye on the humidity and then have another flush. In the summer it would be too hot to do this, but the fall, winter, and spring were great times for growing this way. I have thought about stainless steel, round with sealable holes (we always taped the grow holes on the buckets until we saw signs of growth and moved them to the growing chamber) and some sort of gasketed, sealable/locking top, almost like a pressure cooker lid, with a rubber patch to inoculate through. Pricey, but very durable. Really enjoying your videos. :)
I am going to make it with buckets. Because a friends restaurant normally uses quite a lot of those.. But have you thought about an restaurant dish washer for the bucket cleaning? You can just cycle 6-10 buckets every 2 minutes, and you are able to do stuff in the meantime. Thanks for the video!
Great video, very informative. Could you possibly make a follow up video on the results of buckets vs polybags? You mention trying it out to compare the yields and everything and I'd love to know th results. Thanks for sharing, and for actually talking about the downsides of mush cultivation. Cheers
I love that you're going through your processes and trying to find ways of making them more sustainable! I'm curious, though, if you've considered that the reason for avoiding plastic isn't just because of single-use plastics. It's also that even (especially) in reusable plastic containers, there will be some microparticles that can't help but be absorbed into the soil or substrate -- depending on what's being planted -- and from there, directly into the food you're trying to grow. I've been looking into various alternatives myself, and I think I know what's needed. What I'm hoping to find, or commission, is a cylindrical container made of either ceramic or glass, perforated every 3 inches or so with quarter-inch to half-inch holes along its length. It probably wouldn't be viable for a large commercial concern, but for a home grower, a one-gallon or half-gallon container with a removable lid would be perfectly reasonable, both in terms of finding storage space and in terms of getting it into a dishwasher when it's time to clean it out. I have friends who are potters and I plan to commission such a growing container, once I've demonstrated to my wife that we CAN grow mushrooms in glass jars on our countertop (or in the wine fridge that some relative gave us, thinking that we drink wine). I think it'll work.
That's an excellent idea. You should work on it. And you shouldn't be talking about it like this on open platforms without a non disclosure agreement. Please do file a patent as soon as possible.
ceramics is much worse then plastic buckets as shown - because it's heavy, can break, can't be made in high numbers with injection molding or similar low cost inducing techniques - which means will be much more expensive, since you can't make thousands of pieces per hour, and since is heavy is harder to clean also. The nice thing about it is that is friendly to the environment in a total way - from the extraction to the syntering in the oven - the entire carbon footprint is very very low compared to plastic.
@@atulpj bro its just a clay pot with holes and a lid lol, people just use plastic because its easy to use, ceramic would need cleaning and like with many things its easier to just throw away some plastic afterwards than deal with cleaning something, and a plastic bucket with holes is way cheaper, its not worth the labor or money for larger scale farms
I know a grower who started with buckets but switched over to plastic bags because the labor required was just too much to scale up and become a more profitable business.
I used to work in a brewery and have grown mushrooms at home for a number of years. We used to clean casks with specially designed wash stations where you could essentially fill up a tank with cleaning solution (sodium hydroxide/peracetic acid) and cycle it through the casks via an arm fitted with a spray ball. Maybe you could use a similar system for your plastic grow buckets? Sodium hydroxide isn't the nicest chemical but was used to quickly clean off solid biofilm. Peracetic acid was used to sanitise afterwards, and eventually breaks down into non-toxic compounds (you can put beer straight into a peracetic cleaned tank without needing to rinse). Cycling the liquid cleaning chemicals within the system meant we could do tens of casks with only about 50-100L of each.
This really summarises the whole eco genda: plastics are bad but having to put manual labour (or money into machinery) into cleaning of stuff is worse. No wonder we got nowhere in our fight against waste.
Capitalism puts short term profits over long term sustainability. Especially when the costs of being unsustainable are spent by other people, potentially decades to centuries down the line...
@@ThomasBomb45 I think it's a genuinely bigger problem. With the cost of living we experience in the west it's really hard to even think of producing food at small scale not to mention doing it sustainably. Unfortunately, our current food tech is far from being clean and I doubt that's likely to change any time soon
@@sergefog I think we could afford to make it sustainable, but some big wigs might have to share their wealth a bit... a little investment into sustainable methods would go a long way
You guys are fantastic by the way! you cover the entire process with tips along the way, AND you aren't trying to sell me anything!! How about aluminum baking trays with lids? can stack and heat them, they're cheap disposable or maybe easier to clean. can poke holes on top too.
Lovely courses, I’ve really enjoyed all your free intros and I’m planning to buy your course soon. Having used starch/maize based binliners before, I can totally understand your problem those being too soft. But buying fermented share plums the other day, I was really surprised about the rigidity of the plastic-like wrapping, and it was made of sugar cane syrup, maybe that is something you can look into and try again. Just a thought, maybe it helps. 💕
we've used compostable liners in the past and they don't break down very well unless they go into a commercial composting operation, so wouldn;t work so well with our simple composting of substrate set up
@@GroCycleTV But might this be a viable option if the municipality already collects compostable waste for free? There is an extra cost simply by adding fully compostable, plant based liners to the system, but could this be worth the saved time, effort and energy in cleaning?
Well since margarine is one molecule from being plastic yet considered consumable as a butter substitute, lets try growing in that 🤔, I know jokingly...but really I know glass seems like a crazy solution, BUT it recycles and sustains cleaning, well forever. It’s formable to any shape/size, can withstand far more than any plastic! I really appreciate your efforts, all of us need to take these into consideration no matter what scale of farming.
To properly compare bags with buckets it’s worth calculating how many times you’d need to reuse each bucket to account for the extra plastic/energy used in its production. Like those cotton tote bags that produce ~150 times more emissions than the disposable plastic bags they were replacing.
Very informative... Much appreciated. Am about to venture into mashrooom farming. Am from Kenya. Hope to get the opportunity to get gather more information from you and your team
How about using hot steam to sterilize the buckets right before adding the new substrate? This way, the cleaning process after removing the spent substrate might not have to be as thorough.
Hello Adam! There are "real" biodegradable plastics available on the market but they have a much higher price than conventional plastics. The other point is the tensile strength of the material what you mentioned basically about starch bags. Here a small list of the material which are biodegradable and can be produced bio-based: PHAs (Polyhydroxyalkoates): group of plastics produced by some microorganisms as energy storage when the supply of nitrogen or phosphorus is not sufficient and the supply of carbon is in excess. Means the palstics is produced in the bacterial cells in fermentation tanks and has to be extracted from the cells mostly by destroying the cells. The main component is hydroxybutyrate in polymerized form (PolyHydroxyButyrate) and a lot of other molecules can be incoorparated, too. All depending on the bacterial strain, process conditions, substrate composition, additives and so on. A sustainable way to produce PHAs is the use of agricultural wastes as substrate. A lot of research is going on this field. PLA (Polylactic acid ) is a other biodegradable plastic which is produced by polimerization of lactic acid. It is probably most common biodegradable plastic but the properties are not very suitable for producing foil bags. It is used for production of biodegradle plastic trays and cultery. The material itself is known to be brittle what makes a lot of things very difficult. PBS (Polybutylene succinate) is a other biodegradbale plastic what can be produced bio-based means without the use of fossil raw material but the production from bio-based material is far too expensive for now. PCL (Polycaprolactone) is a fossil based palstics but it is biodegradable by microorganisms and without any additives. PBAT (Polybutylene adipate terephtlate) is also fossil based plastics what is biodegradable, too like PCL. But for all plastics there should be some microorganisms in the soil which have the appropriate enzymes and the overall conditions for degradation should be given. For example there are lot of reports that PLA needs 50-60°C for initiation of degradation what given in industrial composting plants.
Thank you for the direct, informative style. The videos with the endless, boring personal preambles (tenable in some cultures?) have put me off RUclips. Anyway, I liked this approach. One mushroom question (from a friend with an Italian restaurant) can one farm with porcini mushrooms? Is there a reliable source to put me on that track for a small farm?
you have such amazing content. wow. sorry my brain does not work well enough for me to have a better comment but i was really blown away by your content. impressive work👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
What about a compressed coconut fiber bucket? Something like the nursery pots. They may not be autoclavable but could work with low tech farming. Along the lines of 5gl buckets I've thought about large diameter pvc pipes in 6ft lengths to replace the number of buckets used at once. Or maybe a wax lined compressed large diameter cardboard shipping tubes... or stainless steel tubes/tanks to go completely plastic free.
Could the cleaning buckets issue be achieved in a similar way to cleaning pint glasses in some pubs? - An upside down (pointing up) spinning brush with some kind of water/cleaner jets. Stick an upside-down bucket over the spinning brush and water jets, move it up and down, et voila. Just a thought 💭
Guessing the issue is not the cleaning itself rather than keeping them clean and sterile until reused again and how to actually make them sterile since most big buckets will not be fitting in non industrial pressure cookers
@@twitchclips8588 With oysters (and straw/coffee) sterility isn’t an issue. Pasteurising is actually better. A quick wipe with iso would mostly be sufficient for a properly washed/cleaned bucket. The issue, as I saw it, was efficient cleaning of the bucket between cycles - removing all the previous substrate in a quick effective way to streamline the process. Washing buckets in a commercial setting is crazy labour/time intensive and therefore expensive.
@@JustAnotherMaker ofc and agreed. but the topic is to remove the use of plastic waste and single use.. which this does for oyster etc where as how to approach it when you need the sterility and cleanness for bucket growing other types and strains of mushrooms
What do you think of ceramic jars, like the terra cotta pots for large potted plants, for reusable containers? They're heat resistant so you can just heat them in a kiln to sterilise quickly & easily all at once.
What about having a sterilization chamber/part of your shipping container space where you have to wash your buckets first, but afterwards you put them in the chamber and pump in a mist of hydrogen peroxide? The kind of Hydrogen peroxide that is used for wound care is 3% and is used in some microbiology labs to kill pathogens. It's relatively cheap and environmentally friendly, doesn't need heat or electricity to work?
I wonder if anyone's tried using a commercial restaurant style dishwasher. They're basically just a tunnel you pass things through. They use very hot water. It may work on bucket tek.
I enjoyed listening to your presentation very much. At the end I recalled having seen a footage about how they produce very stable bricks from processed mycelia, would that be a possible idea for growing mushrooms in such a material?
I was just thinking the same thing. It would be very strong and resistant to any further growth. But probably not so good with long term exposure to water and humidity, as the myco-structures I've seen are all compostable. Maybe using the light weight compostable plastic along with some type of rigid outer structure to give it more strength would work. Then there would still be the benefit of having something disposable (so less time spent on cleaning), but it would be reasonably sustainable
Hi, Why is it important to clean the container between uses? If you are growing the same mushroom again surely you want parts of the old substrate left in, which you can use as the inoculation for the new substrate. Or am I missing something fundamental?
@@GroCycleTV Somehow open-able maybe? So you get two half tubes for easy cleaning. And you probably want longer ones then the standard bucket. However, printing large objects is expensive too..
Have you tried growing mushrooms in cardboard boxes? All retailers get weekly deliveries of products in cardboard boxes. These get broken down and recycled. May of them are the same size and shape. Even if it decomposes (which it would), it would give a season of harvest before returning to the earth. Your thoughts? One thing that hasn't been mentioned here or on any other gardening channel making use of plastic is that plastic breaks down over time into microplastic, which is taken up by plants and then into our bodies. Microplastics have been found in 100% of people whose blood has been tested for it. I don't know what it does to us, but I know we did not develop to have plastic coursing though our bodies. This is something new.
this is probably one of the top things searched, simply because like-minded people who care for the environment look to grow their own food. for people who live in places that mushrooms cant grow on logs or gardens
Rather than using plastic jars couldn't you use large mouth glass jars? You can empty the substrate and put it into a compost bin, wash the jars(by hand or dishwasher), then fill them with substrate, run them through a cycle either in a home pressure canner or instant pot to bring them up to temp and pressure. Finally you introduce the span and cap them with reusable plastic lids, that you save, wash and sterilize between grows.
Question, would stainless steel drums work? Durable, temperature and moisture proof, easy to clean out. The holes can be shut on hinges. Obviously much more of an investment, but should be a one-time investment too, no? For visibility one could install a strip of clear perspex (or the like) down the side of a tube, or just open up the holes / have the hole-covers be clear. Bonus is that steel is much hardier than even high grade plastics, meaning you can clean much more agressivly (in terms of chemicals or physical action, being a layman I have no idea what you'd use, but chances are steel can take it)
Interesting situation. So on a very large sale it is doable, and on a very small scale it is doable, but that intermediate size mushroom farm hasn't really figured it out. Maybe the solution is just manpower. hire a local high school student to come in for a few hours every weekend to clean the buckets.
great video - the plastic film is the obvious downside of gourmet mushroom production. Alot of small scale production seems also to use substrates that come in single use plastics - eg wood pellets etc.
Perhaps Aspergillus tubingensis or a similarly-capable species could be used on-site at a fairly large scale to break down the single-use plastic bags.
So i'm guessing the downside of buckets is not being able to to spot contaminates correct? I'm getting into growing mushrooms and Micro greens on my apartment porch and using the utility room for the micro greens. Yall's video are very educational and Inspiring I have found them very useful. Yall keep doing what y'all are doing, great stuff! I'll be using the bucket method... I already have a plan for cleaning buckets..... The kids here will need some money to make in the summer and I can have them clean buckets for some Cashola. =) *Cheers*
i'm picking up 2 racks of those BPA bottles to use in my micro grow . . . the racks i've seen are designed for 16 bottles, 2 racks will give me 32 to play with in the space i've allotted, from all the read'n and research'n and watch'n i've been doin those seem to be the most enduring of the options with the smallest foot print on the back side.
At the farm I worked at we used a power sprayer and then a soak in a bleach bath, then a wipe out before we used them later. The only problem with a power sprayer is that if the buckets had any contamination, the sprayer will spray it all over, so you have to make sure your grow areas have a way to filter that out. The farm I worked on had high efficiency filters on all its chambers.
I happened too notice a small steam cleaner on TV once upon a time that seems like it would be economical in cleaning the buckets as far as sterilizing goes after hand clean or low pressure...pressure washing. I don't know in actuality it would be practical or not. The one on tv was used to clean surfaces in bathroom and kitchen. Inside is a must almost cause of insects.to grow shrooms...fire ants.....worms.....etc....love the substrate of shrooms . I bought 2 kits lately of which one I had luck with via instructions. The non producing log kit I buried outside....then it started to grow a few king oyster mushrooms and lo and behold ants and worms helped me to eat them. I've inoculated trees here or put the plugs or wood dowels, but it's a waiting game with that and hoping the chicken of the woods mushroom will work out and spraying with water twice a day in a shady spot so as to keep enough humidity going...might pay off in long run. . I did drill the holes slightly oversize..which I hope that don't make a big problem. The drill bit I wanted to use was too dull to drill a hole with...so I decided one a little bigger, which was all I had. I melted candle wax to apply over holes. Just hope the chicken of the woods type mushrooms will produce?
Hey I have a question about buckets... It seems that theres a couple problems. (1) Wouldnt contam be really bad, if it happened? Cause a whole bucket could be contaminated and you wouldn't know it? (2) What about on 2nd and 3rd flush... Wouldn't it shrink, and start fruiting inside the bucket? How would you prevent that? Thanks
@@greenspanfx Contamination issues: when seen, you 1) tape over the hole, depriving it of light and slowing the spread of the contamination spore. You check all the holes on the bucket and make sure there is no more contamination. You also check all the buckets in the incubation chamber or grow chamber. If you are checking on a daily basis, you should be able to catch problems before they get really bad. In the end, it is possible to grow or let the already-present mushrooms mature before you remove the bucket. Also, buckets on the farm I worked on usually had some degree of contamination by their 3rd flush, and after their harvest they were removed.
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about cleaning the buckets: one has to avoid that they get dirty in the first place. So, to achieve that, you can use a trick from the packaging industry to reduce plastic waste: they use the layering approach. meaning you need to separate a set of properties (strength, light blockage, reconfiguration for the fruiting location, retaining the humidity) into layers. This is easily achieved.
1. use the buckets for strength. prepare configurable holes, by drilling 3..5 cm holes, and 3d printing of a specialized screw. 2. cover the inside with a thin layer of cellophan film, which is even bio degradable. One can think even of spraying the cellophan film into the bucket. 3. at the end of the lifecycle, one has to remove the cellophan film only. the buckets need not be cleaned thoroughly at all
I find it really heartening that you are asking these hard questions about sustainability for the planet vs ease and sustainability for a business
It is a little known fact that crude oil is a sustainable resource. The Earth continues to make oil.
@@stevenfeil7079 yes but sadly we don't live for millions of years so it's not renewable from a reasonable perspective, since we're depleting the resource way faster than it is regenerating, moreover the carbon footprint of oil exploitation won't just disappear when asked kindly
@@MacinteuchPlus It has actually been shown that wells that were thought to be totally dry just a couple of decades ago are now producing again.
I say that KNOWING that you will find some stupid way to counter this fact. Just accept it.
@@stevenfeil7079 I won't just accept it lmao, stop trying to persuade me with this, some wells are flowing again, and? Still doesn't change anything about the fact that crude oil takes millions of years with peculiar temperature and pressure levels to be created.
Im old enough to remember being told the oil will run out soon every 10 years LOL.
such quality content -- this is like a masterclass/presentation style which is refreshing for YT
Problem I have encountered washing a bucket or a large stock pot is fitting it in the sink. How about an improvised large sink?
No one would think to try clay flower pot for obvious reasons ?
This channel will grow because it offers alternatives to people, education , and alternatives, show them ways to go
Didn't expect to find such a guide! I was just thinking about searching how to see how to grow without plastic and this video appeared. Thanks a lot!
I'm looking for ways to grow my own mushrooms, so I can do something for myself- disability sucks- and it's great to find a place with instruction on doing things.
This is a really important conversation to have. I am also looking for what we can do with old substrate. I'd love to have a space just to discuss innovations in sustainable mushroom growing. Please do update is about your results growing buckets and bags side by side.
Old substrate gets composted. Your local no-dig market garden will love a continuous supply of compost, as they use quite a lot of the stuff (cubic meters in fact) yearly.
@@aenorist2431 this is important. No dig gardens could benefit from free compost materials and eventually the mushroom industry could supply small scale farms and that way we could mimic the natural cycle of regenerate from decaying matter.
Market gardeners would probably love the eventual fruit they get too
@@aenorist2431 my grandpa used to get used button mushroom compost and just add more manure to it. He grew mushrooms in the crawlspace under his house.
Completely agree. It’s such an intriguing space of innovative ideas. Would be great to have decent system to share and validate growing techniques. Though data capture in farming seems to be a time sink and generally unresolved problem.
precisely what i have been looking for(:
Woah, what's going on with your profile picture? When I scroll up and down on my phone it leaves a cool comet tail behind it. How did you do that?
whatcha think about hemp plastic?
Near the end of your video you mention cleaning the buckets, It sounds like a tedious time consuming task. Some thirty years ago, I made beer using carboys, but I also tried to make my own wine in 5 gallon buckets like yours. There was a chemical readily available at the beer and wine equipment store used to cleaning the buckets. I think it was calcium chloride. I only needed a little, 1 tsp per 5 gallons of water. To my recollection, cleaning the buckets was quick work. Of course, this is better for small operations, and may not meet the needs of a mushroom farm with hundreds of buckets. Anyway, it might be worth looking into.
Amazing video!!!
The plastic that's been saved because of this video makes a difference!!! You rock!!!
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge for free and for caring about the environment.
Getting my buckets tomorrow.
Peace and love from Ghana
I think hemp plastics are the future once it starts getting used more and becomes readily available.
Plastic is plastic
Not true at least yet.
I worked at PALS Mushroom farm (Portland, OR) in 2020 and packed the buckets with the pasteurized substrate and spawn. We cleaned the buckets with a power sprayer and then soaked them in a bleach bath. Stored them in the incubator room and then wiped them down with a bleach cloth before packing. I found that they do become brittle over time and shatter, which can cause cuts to your hands if you are not careful. I am sure that by this time, you have come up with your own way to clean them. I enjoyed the work, even though it was very physical, and we grew beautiful oysters. :)
We sold the old substrate as a garden amendment. I did, and we told other to, put the old, well-inoculated, mycelium-laden substrate into a bucket at home, but to replace the center of the mycelium block with fresh straw, cap with a wooden board weighted with a brick (high tech stuff, you know), place in the shade, under a ventilated plastic if needed, water and keep an eye on the humidity and then have another flush. In the summer it would be too hot to do this, but the fall, winter, and spring were great times for growing this way.
I have thought about stainless steel, round with sealable holes (we always taped the grow holes on the buckets until we saw signs of growth and moved them to the growing chamber) and some sort of gasketed, sealable/locking top, almost like a pressure cooker lid, with a rubber patch to inoculate through. Pricey, but very durable.
Really enjoying your videos. :)
I am going to make it with buckets. Because a friends restaurant normally uses quite a lot of those.. But have you thought about an restaurant dish washer for the bucket cleaning? You can just cycle 6-10 buckets every 2 minutes, and you are able to do stuff in the meantime. Thanks for the video!
How can you fit 6-10 buckets into them? Most of them are 60x60 cm So you could fit 4 x 30 cm diameter buckets in there.
Another idea could be using Zerotol and an IBC system
Coming up with reusable containers and techniques are a step forward. A step that most othe you tubers are not providing content for. Bravo.
As always gents, another cracking look at mushroom growing. Great stuff!
Great video, very informative. Could you possibly make a follow up video on the results of buckets vs polybags? You mention trying it out to compare the yields and everything and I'd love to know th results. Thanks for sharing, and for actually talking about the downsides of mush cultivation. Cheers
I love that you're going through your processes and trying to find ways of making them more sustainable! I'm curious, though, if you've considered that the reason for avoiding plastic isn't just because of single-use plastics. It's also that even (especially) in reusable plastic containers, there will be some microparticles that can't help but be absorbed into the soil or substrate -- depending on what's being planted -- and from there, directly into the food you're trying to grow.
I've been looking into various alternatives myself, and I think I know what's needed. What I'm hoping to find, or commission, is a cylindrical container made of either ceramic or glass, perforated every 3 inches or so with quarter-inch to half-inch holes along its length. It probably wouldn't be viable for a large commercial concern, but for a home grower, a one-gallon or half-gallon container with a removable lid would be perfectly reasonable, both in terms of finding storage space and in terms of getting it into a dishwasher when it's time to clean it out.
I have friends who are potters and I plan to commission such a growing container, once I've demonstrated to my wife that we CAN grow mushrooms in glass jars on our countertop (or in the wine fridge that some relative gave us, thinking that we drink wine). I think it'll work.
That's an excellent idea. You should work on it. And you shouldn't be talking about it like this on open platforms without a non disclosure agreement. Please do file a patent as soon as possible.
ceramics is much worse then plastic buckets as shown - because it's heavy, can break, can't be made in high numbers with injection molding or similar low cost inducing techniques - which means will be much more expensive, since you can't make thousands of pieces per hour, and since is heavy is harder to clean also. The nice thing about it is that is friendly to the environment in a total way - from the extraction to the syntering in the oven - the entire carbon footprint is very very low compared to plastic.
@@atulpj bro its just a clay pot with holes and a lid lol, people just use plastic because its easy to use, ceramic would need cleaning and like with many things its easier to just throw away some plastic afterwards than deal with cleaning something, and a plastic bucket with holes is way cheaper, its not worth the labor or money for larger scale farms
@@aion2177 yeah, its perfect for home growers, but not large scale farms
@@___echo___ i just meant that it was a good idea for domestic production without the plastic leaching off of it and getting into the mushroom.
Amazing videos. The more I know your channel the more I find answers to question I do not even knew I had yet.
what about glass jars (that can fit in a dishwasher) with hole/holes in the lid for the mushroom to grow out of?
low yielding for substrate use but excellent for making grain spawn small scale
Not practical for commercial scale because it breaks and is dangerous.
Enjoying all GrowCycle's videos----thank you for sharing your knowledge!!
I will be following this comparison between bags and buckets closely 👍
What I like about about bucket is that you can stack them vertically 👌
I know a grower who started with buckets but switched over to plastic bags because the labor required was just too much to scale up and become a more profitable business.
Hello there, interesting how is that grower doing now? Just to have an advice before I start from a tested source.
I used to work in a brewery and have grown mushrooms at home for a number of years. We used to clean casks with specially designed wash stations where you could essentially fill up a tank with cleaning solution (sodium hydroxide/peracetic acid) and cycle it through the casks via an arm fitted with a spray ball. Maybe you could use a similar system for your plastic grow buckets?
Sodium hydroxide isn't the nicest chemical but was used to quickly clean off solid biofilm. Peracetic acid was used to sanitise afterwards, and eventually breaks down into non-toxic compounds (you can put beer straight into a peracetic cleaned tank without needing to rinse). Cycling the liquid cleaning chemicals within the system meant we could do tens of casks with only about 50-100L of each.
Many thanks. I hope someday you're approached for a TV show
This really summarises the whole eco genda: plastics are bad but having to put manual labour (or money into machinery) into cleaning of stuff is worse. No wonder we got nowhere in our fight against waste.
Capitalism puts short term profits over long term sustainability. Especially when the costs of being unsustainable are spent by other people, potentially decades to centuries down the line...
@@ThomasBomb45 I think it's a genuinely bigger problem. With the cost of living we experience in the west it's really hard to even think of producing food at small scale not to mention doing it sustainably. Unfortunately, our current food tech is far from being clean and I doubt that's likely to change any time soon
@@sergefog I think we could afford to make it sustainable, but some big wigs might have to share their wealth a bit... a little investment into sustainable methods would go a long way
Foldable box out of stainless steel :) Heavy front investment tough.
You guys are fantastic by the way! you cover the entire process with tips along the way, AND you aren't trying to sell me anything!!
How about aluminum baking trays with lids? can stack and heat them, they're cheap disposable or maybe easier to clean. can poke holes on top too.
You are not dumb , thanks to inspire me to do the bucket tek , keep us updated on your bucket setup!
Been so busy now back to a bit of normally. A year late but still valid.
Excellent information lads.
Many thanks 🙏🌹💯
Great content only halfway in and it’s packed with information thank you 🙏🏽
My local ice cream shop just throws away their bins. They are happy to give them to me for free. They know me now.
Lovely courses, I’ve really enjoyed all your free intros and I’m planning to buy your course soon. Having used starch/maize based binliners before, I can totally understand your problem those being too soft. But buying fermented share plums the other day, I was really surprised about the rigidity of the plastic-like wrapping, and it was made of sugar cane syrup, maybe that is something you can look into and try again. Just a thought, maybe it helps. 💕
Awesome videos mate. Really finding your way of explaining things easy to follow and interesting.
What about a compostable liner in a bucket? Pull out the liner clean bucket🤔
we've used compostable liners in the past and they don't break down very well unless they go into a commercial composting operation, so wouldn;t work so well with our simple composting of substrate set up
@@GroCycleTV But might this be a viable option if the municipality already collects compostable waste for free? There is an extra cost simply by adding fully compostable, plant based liners to the system, but could this be worth the saved time, effort and energy in cleaning?
Awesome. You guys are doing great work.
Well since margarine is one molecule from being plastic yet considered consumable as a butter substitute, lets try growing in that 🤔, I know jokingly...but really I know glass seems like a crazy solution, BUT it recycles and sustains cleaning, well forever. It’s formable to any shape/size, can withstand far more than any plastic! I really appreciate your efforts, all of us need to take these into consideration no matter what scale of farming.
Only thing is, glass breaks! So hard to utilize for farm scale when moving around lots
To properly compare bags with buckets it’s worth calculating how many times you’d need to reuse each bucket to account for the extra plastic/energy used in its production. Like those cotton tote bags that produce ~150 times more emissions than the disposable plastic bags they were replacing.
I’ve been glued to these videos for a while now and I’ve just brought my own kit (from you) so ready to get started on this, hobby now found.
it inspire me , for spawn i wil use re-usable jars, and for fruiting stage, i will use re'usable buckets, thank you very mush
Thank you! The info is excellent!
informative and well presented! thank you!
Thank you for excellent content!!!!!from Stockholm Sweden 🌷🌸🌻
Very informative... Much appreciated. Am about to venture into mashrooom farming. Am from Kenya. Hope to get the opportunity to get gather more information from you and your team
Well done, thanks for the quick overview.
How about using hot steam to sterilize the buckets right before adding the new substrate? This way, the cleaning process after removing the spent substrate might not have to be as thorough.
Hello Adam!
There are "real" biodegradable plastics available on the market but they have a much higher price than conventional plastics. The other point is the tensile strength of the material what you mentioned basically about starch bags.
Here a small list of the material which are biodegradable and can be produced bio-based:
PHAs (Polyhydroxyalkoates): group of plastics produced by some microorganisms as energy storage when the supply of nitrogen or phosphorus is not sufficient and the supply of carbon is in excess. Means the palstics is produced in the bacterial cells in fermentation tanks and has to be extracted from the cells mostly by destroying the cells. The main component is hydroxybutyrate in polymerized form (PolyHydroxyButyrate) and a lot of other molecules can be incoorparated, too. All depending on the bacterial strain, process conditions, substrate composition, additives and so on. A sustainable way to produce PHAs is the use of agricultural wastes as substrate. A lot of research is going on this field.
PLA (Polylactic acid ) is a other biodegradable plastic which is produced by polimerization of lactic acid. It is probably most common biodegradable plastic but the properties are not very suitable for producing foil bags. It is used for production of biodegradle plastic trays and cultery. The material itself is known to be brittle what makes a lot of things very difficult.
PBS (Polybutylene succinate) is a other biodegradbale plastic what can be produced bio-based means without the use of fossil raw material but the production from bio-based material is far too expensive for now.
PCL (Polycaprolactone) is a fossil based palstics but it is biodegradable by microorganisms and without any additives.
PBAT (Polybutylene adipate terephtlate) is also fossil based plastics what is biodegradable, too like PCL. But for all plastics there should be some microorganisms in the soil which have the appropriate enzymes and the overall conditions for degradation should be given. For example there are lot of reports that PLA needs 50-60°C for initiation of degradation what given in industrial composting plants.
Excellent video - thanks!
Thank you
Great content and inspiring comments!
Thank you for the direct, informative style. The videos with the endless, boring personal preambles (tenable in some cultures?) have put me off RUclips. Anyway, I liked this approach. One mushroom question (from a friend with an Italian restaurant) can one farm with porcini mushrooms? Is there a reliable source to put me on that track for a small farm?
Really interested to know how the comparison between the buckets and disposal plastic went side by side
Great thoughts brother. Way to go
What about growing mushrooms in large bottle gourds and dipping them in beeswax to seal them?!
I think the mushrooms might start to decay and feed upon the gourd. Have you experimented with this type of growing?
You mentioned cornstarch bags being too weak - have you attempted using them as liners with netting or buckets for support?
I've been thinking about the same. Could reusable buckets ble lined with cornstarch bags to skip the difficult cleaning?
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Im a microgreens farmer
Looking into combining mushroom ms in my farm too 🤪
you have such amazing content. wow. sorry my brain does not work well enough for me to have a better comment but i was really blown away by your content. impressive work👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
in portugal we have a big farm with no plastic , they plant shitakes in oak and eucalyptus logs
Is plastic free mushroom farming possible.... you then detail two plastic containers. BRILLIANT!
you got any better ideas?
What about a compressed coconut fiber bucket? Something like the nursery pots. They may not be autoclavable but could work with low tech farming. Along the lines of 5gl buckets I've thought about large diameter pvc pipes in 6ft lengths to replace the number of buckets used at once. Or maybe a wax lined compressed large diameter cardboard shipping tubes... or stainless steel tubes/tanks to go completely plastic free.
Could the cleaning buckets issue be achieved in a similar way to cleaning pint glasses in some pubs? - An upside down (pointing up) spinning brush with some kind of water/cleaner jets. Stick an upside-down bucket over the spinning brush and water jets, move it up and down, et voila. Just a thought 💭
Guessing the issue is not the cleaning itself rather than keeping them clean and sterile until reused again and how to actually make them sterile since most big buckets will not be fitting in non industrial pressure cookers
@@twitchclips8588 With oysters (and straw/coffee) sterility isn’t an issue. Pasteurising is actually better. A quick wipe with iso would mostly be sufficient for a properly washed/cleaned bucket. The issue, as I saw it, was efficient cleaning of the bucket between cycles - removing all the previous substrate in a quick effective way to streamline the process. Washing buckets in a commercial setting is crazy labour/time intensive and therefore expensive.
@@JustAnotherMaker ofc and agreed. but the topic is to remove the use of plastic waste and single use.. which this does for oyster etc where as how to approach it when you need the sterility and cleanness for bucket growing other types and strains of mushrooms
Love this 🔐🔓💎💎💎💎💎 glad I found this
silicone tubes?
What do you think of ceramic jars, like the terra cotta pots for large potted plants, for reusable containers? They're heat resistant so you can just heat them in a kiln to sterilise quickly & easily all at once.
I like this idea! Id love to hear more of if anyone tries it. If it was glazed it would hold moisture too!
Thank you so much for this video! Any updat on how the second cycle went and how to clean the plastic containers? Love from India
What about having a sterilization chamber/part of your shipping container space where you have to wash your buckets first, but afterwards you put them in the chamber and pump in a mist of hydrogen peroxide? The kind of Hydrogen peroxide that is used for wound care is 3% and is used in some microbiology labs to kill pathogens. It's relatively cheap and environmentally friendly, doesn't need heat or electricity to work?
Interested in the results!
This is the reason i went with mason jar grows.
Unlimited uses... unless it breaks of course.
Rất hữu ích
I wonder if anyone's tried using a commercial restaurant style dishwasher. They're basically just a tunnel you pass things through. They use very hot water. It may work on bucket tek.
I enjoyed listening to your presentation very much. At the end I recalled having seen a footage about how they produce very stable bricks from processed mycelia, would that be a possible idea for growing mushrooms in such a material?
I was just thinking the same thing. It would be very strong and resistant to any further growth. But probably not so good with long term exposure to water and humidity, as the myco-structures I've seen are all compostable.
Maybe using the light weight compostable plastic along with some type of rigid outer structure to give it more strength would work. Then there would still be the benefit of having something disposable (so less time spent on cleaning), but it would be reasonably sustainable
Hi, Why is it important to clean the container between uses? If you are growing the same mushroom again surely you want parts of the old substrate left in, which you can use as the inoculation for the new substrate. Or am I missing something fundamental?
When time comes will try bamboo sections and roasted banana leaves in baskets... If any of those work they'll be easy to compost or turn into biochar.
FINALLY !!!!!! ❤❤❤❤👏👏👏👏 (love your accent)
to clean buckets, Brush on a drill. Then use dish detergent. at the end wipe them with thymol based solution or alcohol.
Concerning buckets, the fruiting holes appear to greatly restrict the possible yields. Is this impression incorrect?
How about 3D-printing containers explicitly designed for mushroom growing and easy cleaning?
Sounds good, but how would they be different from a bucket or storage box? Easy cleaning would be the innovation needed somehow
@@GroCycleTV Somehow open-able maybe? So you get two half tubes for easy cleaning. And you probably want longer ones then the standard bucket.
However, printing large objects is expensive too..
How about cutting drainage-pipes in half and open close mechanism onto them.
In Asia they grow in automated reusable bottle systems.
Have you tried growing mushrooms in cardboard boxes? All retailers get weekly deliveries of products in cardboard boxes. These get broken down and recycled. May of them are the same size and shape. Even if it decomposes (which it would), it would give a season of harvest before returning to the earth. Your thoughts?
One thing that hasn't been mentioned here or on any other gardening channel making use of plastic is that plastic breaks down over time into microplastic, which is taken up by plants and then into our bodies. Microplastics have been found in 100% of people whose blood has been tested for it. I don't know what it does to us, but I know we did not develop to have plastic coursing though our bodies. This is something new.
this is probably one of the top things searched, simply because like-minded people who care for the environment look to grow their own food. for people who live in places that mushrooms cant grow on logs or gardens
How about holding biodegradable bags at the bottom instead of hanging them at the top?
Bit of a problem with hair continuity at 4:47, haha! Seriously, though, good info, thanks.
Might want to look into plastics again. They are more green than paper for single use.
Thanks, inspiring, i was also not agree to by plastic bags tothrow it awy, its money u know.. yes very good idea to use re-usable items ! Thanks !
I am very interested about your trial with the buckets.
Thanks bro..
A commercial dishwasher would make maintaining a buck farm easy. The type with a conveyor belt that uses hot high power jets.
Rather than using plastic jars couldn't you use large mouth glass jars? You can empty the substrate and put it into a compost bin, wash the jars(by hand or dishwasher), then fill them with substrate, run them through a cycle either in a home pressure canner or instant pot to bring them up to temp and pressure. Finally you introduce the span and cap them with reusable plastic lids, that you save, wash and sterilize between grows.
That was my exact question. I'm sure they could at least replace the plastic bottles that were shown. Likely for small production only though.
Question, would stainless steel drums work?
Durable, temperature and moisture proof, easy to clean out. The holes can be shut on hinges.
Obviously much more of an investment, but should be a one-time investment too, no?
For visibility one could install a strip of clear perspex (or the like) down the side of a tube, or just open up the holes / have the hole-covers be clear.
Bonus is that steel is much hardier than even high grade plastics, meaning you can clean much more agressivly (in terms of chemicals or physical action, being a layman I have no idea what you'd use, but chances are steel can take it)
Interesting situation. So on a very large sale it is doable, and on a very small scale it is doable, but that intermediate size mushroom farm hasn't really figured it out. Maybe the solution is just manpower. hire a local high school student to come in for a few hours every weekend to clean the buckets.
great video - the plastic film is the obvious downside of gourmet mushroom production. Alot of small scale production seems also to use substrates that come in single use plastics - eg wood pellets etc.
You could always use a cornstarch bag and wrap organic rope around it!
Perhaps Aspergillus tubingensis or a similarly-capable species could be used on-site at a fairly large scale to break down the single-use plastic bags.
What about recycling old plastic soda bottles? I also thought on recycling used large pvc pipes. Would these ideas work?
So i'm guessing the downside of buckets is not being able to to spot contaminates correct? I'm getting into growing mushrooms and Micro greens on my apartment porch and using the utility room for the micro greens. Yall's video are very educational and Inspiring I have found them very useful. Yall keep doing what y'all are doing, great stuff! I'll be using the bucket method... I already have a plan for cleaning buckets..... The kids here will need some money to make in the summer and I can have them clean buckets for some Cashola. =) *Cheers*
There are transparent buckets as well.
i'm picking up 2 racks of those BPA bottles to use in my micro grow . . . the racks i've seen are designed for 16 bottles, 2 racks will give me 32 to play with in the space i've allotted, from all the read'n and research'n and watch'n i've been doin those seem to be the most enduring of the options with the smallest foot print on the back side.
I would think a power washer with bleach and hot water would work quite well to clean buckets even alot of them.
Bleach is not the most eco-friendly answer to an eco-friendly question in my opinion.
Reckoning power wash with soap, and then spray with alcohol would be good enough.
At the farm I worked at we used a power sprayer and then a soak in a bleach bath, then a wipe out before we used them later. The only problem with a power sprayer is that if the buckets had any contamination, the sprayer will spray it all over, so you have to make sure your grow areas have a way to filter that out. The farm I worked on had high efficiency filters on all its chambers.
Perhaps a soak in Lime Water and then using a 'Drill Toilet Brush' will reduce the time required for cleaning Buckets.
I happened too notice a small steam cleaner on TV once upon a time that seems like it would be economical in cleaning the buckets as far as sterilizing goes after hand clean or low pressure...pressure washing. I don't know in actuality it would be practical or not. The one on tv was used to clean surfaces in bathroom and kitchen. Inside is a must almost cause of insects.to grow shrooms...fire ants.....worms.....etc....love the substrate of shrooms . I bought 2 kits lately of which one I had luck with via instructions. The non producing log kit I buried outside....then it started to grow a few king oyster mushrooms and lo and behold ants and worms helped me to eat them. I've inoculated trees here or put the plugs or wood dowels, but it's a waiting game with that and hoping the chicken of the woods mushroom will work out and spraying with water twice a day in a shady spot so as to keep enough humidity going...might pay off in long run. . I did drill the holes slightly oversize..which I hope that don't make a big problem. The drill bit I wanted to use was too dull to drill a hole with...so I decided one a little bigger, which was all I had. I melted candle wax to apply over holes. Just hope the chicken of the woods type mushrooms will produce?
Micro plastics are a concern as well
Hey I have a question about buckets... It seems that theres a couple problems.
(1) Wouldnt contam be really bad, if it happened? Cause a whole bucket could be contaminated and you wouldn't know it?
(2) What about on 2nd and 3rd flush... Wouldn't it shrink, and start fruiting inside the bucket? How would you prevent that?
Thanks
1) yes transparent plastic is way better but hard to get by transparent large buckets.
2) true
@@greenspanfx Contamination issues: when seen, you 1) tape over the hole, depriving it of light and slowing the spread of the contamination spore. You check all the holes on the bucket and make sure there is no more contamination. You also check all the buckets in the incubation chamber or grow chamber. If you are checking on a daily basis, you should be able to catch problems before they get really bad. In the end, it is possible to grow or let the already-present mushrooms mature before you remove the bucket. Also, buckets on the farm I worked on usually had some degree of contamination by their 3rd flush, and after their harvest they were removed.
How did they grow mushrooms before the invention of plastic?