As you may or may not know, the UK has experienced the hottest summer on record with temperatures well exceeding 30c for weeks at a time. Ideally, Oysters incubate at 27c and fruit around 23c – 25c depending on the strain. This caused a great deal of annoyance for me as my grow is in 2 wooden sheds in my garden. They’re well insulate so can handle the colder temperatures very easily, however, combating the extraordinary temperatures has been a huge issue for my bags.
Even with my mister running at full whack, the temperature in the shed regularly exceeded 38c and got as high as 45c one day. This has kicked the absolute life out of my grow causing a massive logistical headache. The obvious step was to buy an air conditioning unit, however, with the heatwave came the Air Con shortage and price hike.
The most basic model you can get would ordinarily have been around £180, the high demand rocketed these to £400 putting them well out of my league. Over all, it’s been a very poor summer and something I will be planning for in the next 12 months of growth. I do have plans for expansion as you can see from my design below.
For now, I will be transitioning to a straw based grow to start shifting some volume quickly before getting back to sterile bags, my reasons for doing this will be highlighted in my up an coming blog about ‘Transitioning To A Straw Grow’ which I will finish up once I’ve finished the move.
However, to deal with your heat it is an entirely custom situation. If you’re in a house, chances are the house is cooler than a wooden shed, make sure you have a place for the hot air to leave and the cool air to draw in (image your house like a chimney, hot air rising drawing in cooler air), follow this principle as best you can through your grow room/incubation room and you should be able to avoid the catastrophe that I’ve had.
It’s worth remembering that mycelium generate their own heat too so keeping them as cool as they need to be is essential if you don’t want to run into the same problems I’ve been having. I can see my myc are struggling because they’re forming Sclerotia, a sign that the myc is going dormant to wait for more favourable growing conditions i.e. the cooler months, poor buggers.
In the meantime, good luck with your growing guys and if you have any questions that need help, please contact me and I’ll be more than happy.
I feel your pain, I had 24XL bags of blue oyster and 6XL bags of king oyster and they all ended up on the compost pile. The heat absolutely destroyed them as well as wiping out all my spawn the only thing that was safe was the master slants in the fridge. Love your website, so good to see another brit giving this a try, most of the available information on the net is American which makes sourcing materials very hard (on a small scale)
You lost 30 bags? That makes my loss seem almost nothing! You must of been livid! At least you had your masters in the fridge eh? Cheers mate, i’m trying to keep regular with posting! If you’re keen on talking about growing mushrooms search ‘Mushroom Growing UK’ on Facebook groups and join us there!
I have my greenhouse outside , I don’t have any electricity , how can I cool it down. Any thoughts ? Thanks
Hi there! Thanks for your comment. Since heat rises and cold air sinks you can open a vent at the top and bottom to create a naturally passive ‘draw’ effect. You could invest in solar panels and batteries too so you have a forced air system with a fan. If none of these work, consider hotter clime mushrooms like Pinks or certain strains of Blue/Grey’s that have been selected for hotter environments!
Best of luck!
Cheers!