instructables
Growing Mushrooms With Rice!
by ei2o
Mushrooms are fantastic! They’re bizarre (Cordyceps, a parasite that grows in insects), great for your health (Lion’s Mane,
a popular nutraceutical), and good to eat (Maitake, AKA “ Hen of the Woods ”).
In this instructable, we present an easy way to grow mushrooms directly from cooked organic rice bowlsthat you
get from your grocery store!
The pictures of mushrooms shown in this tutorial are mostly Oyster variants, but a wide variety of mushrooms can be
grown using the approach described in this instructable. We’ll take you through the steps that will transform your
brown rice into a mushroom harvest!
Let’s grow!
Supplies:
There are two parts to growing mushrooms from rice.
1. Colonize the rice with mycelium.
2. Grow mushrooms from the mycelium.
This section describes what you'll need for the rst part.
Supplies Needed to Convert your Rice into Mycelium
You’ll need the following items to introduce the mushroom spores to the rice:
1 cooked rice bowl (Nishiki or Minsley brand)
1 mushroom liquid culture syringe
1 wood dowel ( ½“ diameter / 2“ length)
1 upholstery tack
1 candle or lighter
1 synthetic filter
Isopropyl alcohol wipes as needed
You probably have most of these items around the house except for the lter. You can replace the lter with Micropore
tape, available at your local pharmacy or at Amazon. Here's an Amazon shopping list for the parts listed.
Mini Task. Push the upholstery tack into one end of the wood dowel. Voila! You’ve built a hot stamp that you’ll use in
the next step.
For your convenience, we’ve put together a Starter Kit that includes all of the items listed above, including a rice bowl,
an Oyster mushroom live culture and an assembled hot stamp. You can get the Starter Kit on Amazon here. You can also
get the Complete Mushroom Growing Kit on Amazon, which includes the Grow Chamber discussed in Part 3.
For mushroom live cultures, there are many vendors online that o er hundreds of mushroom varieties. Typically they
are provided in 10ml syringes. Here are some sites you might try:
North Spore, Southwest Mushrooms, MillyWyco
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Note that mushrooms have near-in nite variety and di ering requirements to grow properly. If you start with Oyster
mushrooms, you’ll probably be ok, and we encourage citizen scientists to explore di erent varieties with this system.
Supplies Needed to Convert your Mycelium into Mushrooms
Please skip to Step 3 to pick the path you want to take for this nal step. Each path requires di erent supplies. You can
go ahead and complete Step 1, if you like though. Step 2 will take a while, which will give you time to decide what you
want to do in Step 3.
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Step 1: Add Mushroom Live Culture to Rice
Place the rice bowl, the live culture syringe, an alcohol wipe, the hot stamp you made, and a candle or lighter on a
clean, at surface, preferably away from air currents. Your kitchen counter or table should be ne.
Follow these steps:
1. Place the rice bowl in front of you. Orient the position of the transparent window to the right side.
2. Use an alcohol wipe to clean o the opposite side of the bowl.
3. Heat your hot stamp and apply it to the rice bowl lid to stamp a hole on the cleaned area. Place the
alcohol wipe on top of the hole to keep it sanitized.
4. Remove the stopper from the mushroom syringe and place the tip of the syringe into the hole you
made in the lid of the rice bowl (move the alcohol wipe out of the way rst). Some vendors include a
needle with the live culture syringe for di erent protocols. You don't need it.
5. Using the syringe, inject 3mL of the live culture into the rice. Remove the syringe and wipe the tip o
with the alcohol wipe. Put the stopper back into the syringe and place the alcohol wipe back over the
hole.
6. Remove one synthetic lter, wipe it with the alcohol wipe, and place it over the hole.
7. You're done! Put your hot stamp and candle or lighter away. You should clean the syringe - you'll be
using it later. The easiest way to clean your syringe is to put the tip into clean water and draw and plunge
it a few times.
-Great job!
Place the rice bowl out of direct sunlight and not too close to a radiator or other heat source. Some good places are a
shelf in your kitchen, or on your desk.
On to Step 2. Colonizing Rice with Mycelium.
https://youtu.be/qFSwgJkvVys
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Step 2: Colonizing Rice With Mycelium
In this step, the mushroom live culture converts the brown rice in the bowl into mycelium – a solid block of white
material that enables mushrooms to “fruit” or grow . This phase is called colonization.
Finishing colonization takes as little as one or two weeks for some varieties (oysters are a good example) to a month or
more (e.g., reishi).
During colonization, the major hazard to your mushrooms is doing too much. You don’t need to water or fertilize the
bowl, or put it into the sunlight, like plants need. In order to prepare for the next step, you need to learn how to tell
when your rice bowl has completely colonized.
Examine the bowl’s transparent window every few days. Initially, you’ll see brown rice, but as the rice is colonized, it will
turn white and you won’t be able to see individual grains any more.
Try this: hold the bowl in both hands and gently push down on the top of the lid with your thumbs (don’t push down
where you put the hole, though). At the beginning, you should feel a squishy sensation that ts what cooked brown rice
will feel like. Generally, in a week or so, that sensation should rm up and resist the pressure of your thumbs.
Once the rice you can see in the substrate pod display window turns totally white, and the bowl strongly resists the
pressure wherever you apply it, your bowl should be ready for the next step: fruiting.
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NOTE: Colonization speed is dependent on many factors, including the temperature inside your home. Most mushrooms
are comfortable colonizing around 75 degrees, but some varieties may prefer signi cantly higher or lower temperatures.
For more information, see Paul Stamet’s book in the References Section.
ALERT: Step 2 is going to take over a week, so read Step 3 - you’ll need to make a decision about how to take the nal
step in “fruiting” your mushrooms. The decision will a ect the supplies that you’ll need for fruiting.
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Step 3: Fruiting Mushrooms in Mycelium
Picking your Path
Things should be going pretty smoothly at this point. You have a rice bowl colonizing somewhere in your home, cheerily
converting the rice into a block of mycelium. The next stop, fruiting mushrooms from the mycelium block that you’re
creating, has two paths.
PF Tek has been in use for many years. It can be a reliable way to grow mushrooms at home. It also, generally, will grow
more mushrooms than Path 2.
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ei2o Tek is a new approach to fruiting mushrooms that is designed to work with rice bowls. It is generally faster and
easier to use ei2o than PF Tek , although it may not grow as many mushrooms.
Path 1: PF Tek
There is a featured instructable on PF Tek by that shows you how to fruit mushrooms from mycelium:
https://www.instructables.com/Growing-Mushrooms:-PF-Tek/
If you choose this path, just start at Step 10. The Fruiting Chamber. You’ll need the following supplies:
perlite
a Tupperware container (as the fruiting chamber)
Alternatively, you might use FreshCap's PF Tek guide on YouTube . You'll need:
a large tote for making the fruiting chamber
coarse perlite
a spray bottle for water
repti-fogger (optional)
Either way, you'll be using a reliable way to grow mushrooms with the bowl of rice that you just colonized.
Path 2: ei2o Tek
The second path is to use a purpose-made growing chamber and procedure with ei2o Tek .
Use this Amazon link if you want the Complete Mushroom Growing System
This instructable will continue with ei2o Tek in Step 4.
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Step 4: Move Your Bowl of Mycelium to the Grow Chamber
If you followed the instructions in the previous section, you converted the rice in the rice bowl to mycelium. Before we
move to the next step, check how complete the process is:
Carefully remove your rice bowl lid. You should see a solid or nearly solid white surface of mycelium. If you don’t, skip to
the step titled What If? to gure out what you need to do next.
Get out your Mycelerator. You’ll need the casing panel, the substrate ring and the fruiting chamber for this step.
1. Place the casing panel into the bowl, on top of the mycelial surface. It should seat rmly within the bowl.
2. Next, snap the substrate ring on top of the bowl by gently pressing down on the sides of the substrate
ring. The casing panel and substrate ring will interlock.
3. Add perlite to the casing panel. Spread it to cover the ring surrounding your mycelium.
4. Finally, screw the fruiting chamber into the substrate ring.
5. You’re ready for the nal phase – fruiting!
The mycelium may require daily watering between colonization and fruiting for the mushroom varieties we have
tested. Please go to Step 5 for more details.
https://youtu.be/dGExH5TAj_k
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Step 5: Preparing for Your Mushrooms!
Next Steps
At this stage you might be just a couple of days from fruiting, but the mycelium may take longer to fruit, or it may refuse
to fruit inde nitely, if the environment in the fruiting chamber isn’t correct.
Here’s how to maximize your chances that your mycelium fruits.
Supplies Needed (comes with the Mycelerator):
1. Perlite
2. Spray bottle
You’ll also need some way to water your mycelium. In the video, we use the syringe from Step 2. You can also use a
teaspoon or eyedropper.
Here’s what you need to do to keep your mycelium going:
Water and mist the mycelium in your Mycelerator (daily or as needed):
1. Unscrew the fruiting chamber from the substrate ring.
2. Remove perlite if it has fallen into the mycelium.
3. Water the perlite with the syringe or a spoon. -- Don’t water the mycelium directly!-- It will take
approximately 10mL of ltered water for the perlite to ll to capacity with water. As soon as water forms
beneath the perlite, stop watering it.
4. Fill the spray bottle with ltered water. Spray across the top of the substrate ring (not into the
mycelium). This will cause a mist to fall into the mycelium.
5. Put the fruiting chamber back on the substrate ring.
6. Con rm that the vent (the "dial" on the top) on the fruiting chamber is closed.
If the Mycelerator’s humidity stays in the 90s, you should be in good shape.
In a few days, you should see tiny bumps on the top of the mycelial layer. That's known as pinning. Once visible, you
may be just a few days away from your rst harvest.
https://youtu.be/cXdIFuCxdcg
Step 6: Fruiting and Havesting
This step is the fun part.
Continue the watering and misting process described in the previous step. As soon as you see signi cant pinning
(those tiny bumps on the surface), you should open the vent at the top of the fruiting chamber.
When your mushrooms look healthy, it's time to harvest! Remove the fruiting chamber and pull o mushrooms one at a
time. You may nd that twisting them as you pull may be more e ective. Alternatively, you can use scissors to cut each
mushroom at their base.
When you’ve picked them all, you should disassemble the Mycelerator and clean each piece with an alcohol wipe.
Then, you’ll be ready for the next rice bowl.
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Now that you have a harvest, you can make yourself an omelet, dehydrate them for tea or supplements and make
tinctures.
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Step 7: Congratulations
Congratulations for nishing this instructable! Live long and prosper.
If you have any questions or suggestions about this instructable, you can add suggestions on this page, or email us at
support@ei2o.com.
Let’s Grow!
Step 8: References
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1. Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms, by Paul Stamets. Available at
https://fungi.com/products/growing-gourmet-and-medicinal-mushrooms.
2. Growing Mushrooms: PF Tek, by Nak. Instructable here: https://www.instructables.com/GrowingMushrooms:-PF-Tek/
3. Mushroom Terminology. North Spore. Article here: https://northspore.com/pages/mushrooms101
4. AI-based Mushroom shown above courtesy this instructable: Making Art in 60 Seconds With AI: a Short
Tutorial for Di usionBee
Step 9: What If?
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“…but I also can’t prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.” ~ Daniel Dennett
1. What if my colonization didn’t happen/looks weird?
Colonization never started. This usually means that the live culture you used had a problem with it. One common
problem is that live culture has a de nite shelf life (you can extend it to at least a few months by putting it in a
refrigerator). If this occurs, contact your liquid culture vendor and they should send you a replacement syringe. Stu
happens.
Colonization started, but the rice is contaminated. If you have green or black areas in your bowl, it has been
contaminated by bacteria or other fungi. If their areas are small, you can carefully remove them from the bowl and
continue the fruiting process. There is no guarantee this will work, however. It may be best to throw out the bowl and
start again, with additional attention paid to use the alcohol wipe to sanitize anything that is used around the hole you
make with the hot stamp.
Colonization completed, but there are small growths on top of the mycelium.This is good news! Your bowl is
aggressively moving toward fruiting. Continue from Step 4: Move Your Bowl Of Mycelium To The Grow Chamber.
Make sure not to leave it open in your house or something. It isn't good for you if you breathe in
the spores too much.
Great Instructable, very unique! A fine job you did with this tutorial, indeed!
Thank you Wuvie! Love your penny wind chimes. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-MakePressed-Penny-Wind-Chimes/
Growing Mushrooms With Rice!: Page 27
Excellent instructable!
my one question is why do u have people trash the mycelium after picking? Shouldn't they
produce more mushrooms after a short while of rest?
thanks again
Quite right! We'll add a section that talks about what you can do with the mycelium for a second
or third fruiting.
Two questions. Will this method work for morels?
And also, I read in the other guide, of a person who had their colonization step turning pink,
instead of white and someone suggested that it is penicillin. What happens then? I'm uneducated
on it, but I think penicillin is/was a base for an antibiotic, and if that is true, is there any danger in
handling it? Or is it just ruined?
It is more likely the pink growth is Pseudomonas, a common bacterial contaminant. Toss it!
I recall reading that Morels are extremely difficult or impossible to grow. That was around 30
years ago. Truffles would be nice.
>Will this method work for morels?
We haven't tested morels in this system yet. There are some reports that brown rice will work, but
morels are generally considered hard to grow. We'll be testing a broad variety of mushrooms at
ei2o next year and we should have a better answer then.
>...colonization step turning pink, instead of white and someone suggested that it is penicillin.
The color of mycelium isn't always white. Pink Oysters, for example, will often display pink areas
during colonization. Having said that, a different color can often indicate contamination. You might
post a picture of your mycelium in a reddit or discord mushroom group - perhaps
https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology
The link for the Basic Chamber is missing the ending:
https://ei2o.square.site/product/mycelerator-basic...
Thanks for checking!
The Instructables site adds ellipses when the site link is too long. The link will work fine.
It gave me a 404 error.
hm. Can you try https://ei2o.square.site ? If that works, click on the button at the middle of the
page to see all of the grow kits and chambers. Not sure why the original link is tempermental sorry!
I cleaned that section up as well. Maybe it will work better for you.
Clearest process of fruiting mushrooms I have seen.
I am growing a range of mycelium at present, as an amateur gardener that is a great article.
I am fortunate enough to have a garden producing mushrooms naturally. I will use or adjust this
method to reproduce interesting shrooms I find.
Am glad you liked our instructable! Growing mushrooms outside is a great experience, let us
know how it works out!
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This was really interesting to read. I've always been fascinated by mushrooms and it's an area I
wish I knew more about.
Do you recommend any particular resources to get started?
Glad you enjoyed it!
If you want to grow mushrooms, this instructable and the links in it are a good start.
If you're interested in foraging, this site might be helpful:
https://www.mushroomthejournal.com/learning-about-...
If you want to go deeper into mycology, consider Paul Stamets' books on the subject. This is a
link to his collected works: https://fungi.com/collections/books-by-paul-stamet...
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much for the links about foraging. I like to walk a lot in forests and of course I see
so many mushrooms, but I never know what they are called. This is going to help me a lot, thank
you.
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