Production Thoughts

To get to a run rate of 300 lbs a week, one should be conservative and assume a BE of 100% and not 100 - 150% as is the case with more experienced growers - although I hold onto the hope that I become intimately acquainted enough within the next month such that I do achieve optimal yields.

Anyways, sticking to our conservative estimate of 100% yields, we would need to produce ~100, 10-lb blocks, with each containing about 3.5 lbs of dry substrate and 6.5 lbs of water (so ~65% hydration ratio). Although this works out to about 350 lbs dry, we should account for some degree of crop failure.

100, 10-lb blocks is a pretty reasonable target and should be able to be sterilized in at most two if not one steam sterilization cycle using two, 120 gallon troughs from home depot and the 55 gallon jar as the steamer. An 8 - 10 hour cycle should suffice for sterilization (or should it be called pasteurization).

Assuming we are able to set up the colonization and fruiting schedules properly, the labor necessary to reach a run rate of 300 lbs/week is actually minimal.

Obviously, spawn production, cleaning, harvesting, and potentially soaking for second flushes may account for a large amount of other labor.