What's a spawn jar and how to make it?

Grow your own mushrooms! Part 2

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For a home grower the "Mason Jar" is a useful and flexible tool that serves many purposes. The usual choice for colonizing grain, creating Liquid Culture, and sterilizing agar is a half-pint regular mouth jar. This series will teach you about PF Tek or BRF Tek, which uses dry vermiculite as a filter/buffer for your spawn. When making these jars, it's crucial to use a nail with a diameter of at least 16 gauge (1.6mm) to make the necessary holes for syringes/fresh air exchange. For video click on the link.

To create the jars, you will need the following materials:

• Half-pint regular mouth mason jars

• Permanent marker

• Hammer

• Punch or Nail at least 16G

Step 1: Using the permanent marker, draw four dots about 3mm from the inner edge of the canning ring.

Step 2: Carefully, hammer the punch/nail to make between 4 holes on the disc to create ventilation/injection ports. The lid doesn’t require much force to penetrate and too much may break the glass jar. So, If you don’t feel comfortable you can alternately remove the lid and place the disc portion on top of the ring and create the holes that way.

Make sure to clean and disinfect the jars before using them. The next step is to make brown rice flour (BRF) spawn jars for colonization.