No, I have no idea about kits and stuff.
regarding temperature.
the mycelium will survive in anything above freezing, some will survive that.
there is a growth curve from 70 for tropical mushrooms, into the hundreds.
the curve steepens to the 86 degree mark and then quickly falls. I believe thermal death is 108. But beyond 86 (if I recall tha correctly), the metabolism is disrupted. The mushroom quickly begins to expend energy in staying cool. It will begin to shed water and stop normal functions.
at the other side, because metabolic functions and enzimes work best in a certain temperature window, you probably want to stay as high as you can.
if you are working with pasteurized substrate you also have a contamination window of two weeks REGARDLESS of any temperature above zero. That means you want close to optimal temperatures in order to ensure total colonization before the window closes.
now I suspect you just want me to give you a temperature rather than a long explaination but I can't. Here is why.
mycelium produces lots of heat as a byproduct of consumption. As the colonization progresses more heat is produced, substraits act as insulators and this continues untill full colonization is achieved. Then the temperature falls quickly.
so, if you were to have say, a six inch deep bed of cow manure and you kept the atmospheric temperature at 86, the bed temperature would cross into negative growth territory and possibly into death. A two inch thick bed would not.
that is just colonization and not casing, which is a different story.
keeping that in mind you would like the bed temperature to be in the high seventies or very low eighties.
but when you shift to fruiting, you mist likely want to bring the temp down to sixty for a few days (cold shock is not a requirement but helps in orchestration). After that there are many who hold that superior fruit is had by keeping the temperature below optimum colonization temo. Perhaps as low as seventy. Of course the grow will be slugish.
so, blankets will work for your first stage because of heat production but not when that quits. You can simply do nothing and your grow will continue at a slower rate.
a blanket will also tend to keep carbon dioxide levels up. This is very beneficial up until fruit time (oyster will live comfortably in atmospheres of 10,000 to 15,000 ppm. levels that can endanger human health)
at pin set co2 levels must come down to ambient. This is a trigger for most commercial mushrooms and continued high concentrations have deleterious effects on fruit. Oysters get long fiberous stems and tiny caps.
this is the reason for fresh air exchanges and fanning.
so your blanket will be a detriment to fruiting.
what have we learned?
if you can, test your bed temperature and not the air, they may be very different.
you need not grow at optimum if you have patience.
if you have concerns about your pasteurization window, just add more spawn
at pin set, relax in your cool environment.
oh, and if you are doing direct lighting be mindfull of the heat of your lamp.
I would suggest a bed temp of 78, a casing temp of 80 a shock temp of 65 and fruiting temp of 75.
but that is drawn from experience with a variety of different species.
agericus is lower, coprenus is slightly higher but a colder shock. I have found this shock is imperative for them.
oyster is best with a cold water shock at 60, but that may be only for strain.
get the concept down, think like the organism which responds to environmental changes very rapidly in order to grow as quickly as possible in competition with the hordes of other organisms. It also wishes to bear fruit at such a time when its spores are most likely to germinate anew.
it senses nutrient degredation. It senses that the cold season is on the way, it senses that it is just beneith the surface by co2 content and it knows which way is up by light.
