How to Grow Mushrooms
Learning how to grow mushrooms isn’t extremely difficult, but it also is not as easy as putting a seed or a plant into the ground and watching it grow. Mushrooms are fungi. So, learning to grow mushrooms is really all about learning how to grow fungi, which is not at all the same as growing a green plant. In fact, fungi or mushrooms can grow with no light at all.
The easiest way to learn how to grow mushrooms is to buy a kit. In a kit all the different the steps have been done for you except the actual growing. The kits come with complete instructions but generally what is left for you to do is to keep the substance moist and expose it to warm and then cold temperatures to start the mushrooms growing. Buying a kit would help you determine if you really liked growing mushrooms or not, and thus whether you would want to go through the entire process from beginning to end.
If you decide you really want to learn how to grow mushrooms from scratch, you would be best advised to buy spawn from a greenhouse. Spawn is more or less a starter for the mushrooms and to produce it requires just the right combination of sterility, moisture and temperature. Once you have acquired your spawn, you need to prepare the substrate. The substrate is the organic material out of which the mushrooms will grow. Good choices are sawdust, straw, logs, wood chips or compost. Compost is harder to prepare and is generally only to grow button-type mushrooms.
Mushrooms usually grown by home growers include such types as Reishi, Oregon Polypore, Lion’s Mane, Pearl Oyster, Maitake, Conifer Coral, Phoenix Oyster, and shiitake. Next, the spawn is introduced into the substrate to produce what is called mushroom mycelium, a word more or less meaning the mushroom roots. One of the most popular methods of doing this is to cut 4-5 foot hardwood logs--this has to be done at just the right temperature usually in mid-fall. The logs lie dormant in the winter. Then in the spring holes are drilled into the wood log--spaced in a diamond shape so that each log has 48 holes.
In this case the log is the substrate. Then spawn dowels are placed in the drilled holes. Next the logs are laid in the yard and where they have to be kept at a 30% moisture content. That means they have to be watered for several hours at least once a week. The best way is to use a sprinkler system. By the time fall arrives you should have your first few mushrooms. In one year they should be producing a good crop on each log. The logs will continue to produce mushrooms from 2-5 years.
Once you have eaten your own mushrooms you will probably be reluctant to go back to store-bought mushrooms. However, mushrooms do take time and patience to grow and it is usual to get varying results with home-grown mushrooms despite the hard work. Still, you have something unique to show visitors as most people have never seen how mushrooms grow out of a log.