Growing mushroom

Growing mushrooms is a project for the most dedicated gardener who has one foot in the garden and one hand in the kitchen. They require a lot of special care but reward you with deliciousness.

Steps:
1)Set up a growth room for mushroom cultivation. A small plastic tent in which you set up tables and can control humidity and temperature in not necessary but makes cultivation much easier. The temperature should range between 55 and 70 degrees and not vary more than 10 degrees once it has been set. The growing tables should be made of plastic that can be cleaned between crops. The floor, ideally, should be concrete for the same reason.

2)Use a home vaporizer to provide humidity. These devices are portable, electric and work from a reservoir of water. 95% humidity is necessary for mushrooms to develop.

3)Place a small electric fan in the growth room to circulate the air. Unless mushrooms get the necessary air circulation, the chance of fungus disease is increased.

4)Place a fluorescent light a few feet over the growing tables. Indirect sunlight is also an excellent alternative. No direct sun, please.

5)Place clean wheat straw that has been cut into 3 inch pieces into clean cotton pillow cases. Soak the straw-filled pillow cases in hot water.

6)Wipe down work areas and wash all surfaces and equipment with a 10% bleach solution as the straw bags soak.

7)Remove the straw filled bags from the hot water bath and allow to drain in a clean sink for several hours.

8)Remove the damp straw from the pillow cases and transfer to clean, clear plastic bags.

9)Add mushroom spawn (purchased from a reputable supplier) to the straw filled plastic bags. Close the bag and shake vigorously to incorporate the spawn throughout the growing medium.

10)Pack the straw down inside the bags as tightly as possible to create a brick, or block. Once the block has been formed, seal the bag tightly.

11)Puncture the plastic bag 25 - 50 times with a sterilized nail to allow air to penetrate. The nail should be sterilized with the bleach solution between puncturing each individual block.

12)Place the prepared blocks in total darkness, or cover loosely with black garbage bags. The temperature in the growing room should be set at 68 degrees. The fan should be running and the vaporizer activated.

13)Remove the light-inhibiting garbage bags and open the clear plastic bags after two weeks. Reduce the temperature of the bags by placing them on the floor.

14)Carefully remove the clear plastic bags when you begin to see small bumpy growth appear on the blocks. The warts will soon develop into hundreds of button mushrooms! Harvest and enjoy!

Tips:
Mushroom spawn in many varieties can be purchased via the Internet. You also can buy already prepared blocks to eliminate the mess.

After harvest, place the spent blocks into loose plastic bags to rest in a warm (68 degrees), dark location.

A single mushroom block may produce as many as six harvests. Soak the blocks between harvest to keep them producing.

Warnings:
Some varieties wild mushrooms are deadly. Buy spawn only from reputable sources

mushroom

Types of mushrooms

Types of mushrooms

Mushrooms are often dried in order to preserve them for use in cooking.

The main types of mushrooms are agarics (including the button mushroom, the most common mushroom eaten in the U.S.), boletes, chanterelles, tooth fungi, polypores, puffballs, jelly fungi, coral fungi, bracket fungi, stinkhorns, and cup fungi. Mushrooms and other fungi are studied by mycologists. The "true" mushrooms are classified as Basidiomycota (also known as "club fungi"). A few mushrooms are classified by mycologists as Ascomycota (or "sac fungi"), the morel and truffle being good examples. Thus, the term mushroom is more one of common application to macroscopic fungal fruiting bodies than one having precise taxonomic meaning.

Mushrooms
Edible mushrooms are used extensively in cooking, in many cuisines. Though commonly thought to contain little nutritional value, many varieties of mushrooms are high in fiber and protein, and provide vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, biotin, B₁₂ and ascorbic acid, and minerals including iron, selenium, potassium and phosphorus. However, a number of species of mushrooms are poisonous, and these may resemble edible varieties, although eating them could be fatal. Picking mushrooms in the wild is risky — riskier than gathering edible plants — and a practice not to be undertaken by amateurs. The problem is due to the fact that separating edible from poisonous species is dependent upon the application of only a few easily recognizable traits. People who collect mushrooms for consumption are known as mushroom hunters, and the act of collecting them as such is called mushroom hunting.

production mushroom at home

Gourmet mushrooms like Shiitake, Oyster & Enoki mushrooms are growing in popularity but the retail price for many of these delicacies can often be out of range for many people. Mushroom lovers on a budget have another option - growing mushrooms at home.

Mushroom production might seem complicated but there are many kits on the market that make growing mushrooms easy. These kits provide the substrate, pre-inoculated with mushroom mycelia and simple instructions.

Mushrooms
When we think of mushrooms, we often think of the soft caps & stems that we see in the grocery store. Hidden underground, however, is the vast majority of the mushroom mass itself- the network of feathery mycelia. These mycelia, often seen when turning over compost, are what the mushroom uses to absorb food & moisture. The cap & stem that we commonly eat is just the fruiting body.

To grow, mycelia require an uncontaminated food source, free from other microorganisms, moisture, and temperatures between 60-80F. The food source can vary, depending on the species of mushroom, from sawdust & shavings to manure or compost. Once mycelia have colonized a food source, they begin to produce fruiting bodies, commonly referred to as pins. As the pins mature, they develop into recognizable mushrooms.

Kits

Most commercially available kits range in price from $20-$30. Most kits will start fruiting within a week and you can expect a harvest of 1-2 pounds of mushrooms per flush. Commonly, each kit will provide 2-3 flushes of mushrooms before the food supply is spent. Finished kits can then be placed on the compost pile where you can sometimes get a bonus flush of edibles.

Mushroom

Mushroom for beginners

The process of growing mushrooms can be divided roughly into four steps:
1) Acquiring and maintaining a culture of mushroom tissue (called mycelium) of the mushroom strain you want. (A tissue culture is somewhat like a cutting of a plant. Starting with a tissue culture assures that you have a mushroom strain genetically identical to the one you want. Some growers start with spores, which are more like seeds. Spores may or may not give you a mushroom strain with the fruiting properties of the parent. Since spores cannot be grown in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, I always work with a tissue culture of mycelium. Tissue cultures--also called agar cultures or test tube cultures--of various species of mushroom can be purchased from commercial suppliers or they can be started from fresh mushrooms).

2) Using a bit of the tissue culture to begin some spawn (a kind of mushroom starter), which is usually grown on a small quantity of sterilized grain or sawdust.

3) Using the spawn to introduce mushroom mycelium into an organic material (substrate) chosen to support the formation of mushrooms.

4) Getting the actual mushrooms to form and grow once the substrate has been completely colonized by mushroom mycelium.

Starting with a kit
If you buy a mushroom kit, you are generally starting at step four. The commercial mushroom grower has already completed the earlier steps for you, and provided you with the mushroom culture ready to form mushrooms. You provide a proper environment, usually cool and moist. Getting mushrooms to form can be easy or hard, depending on the mushroom strain you are growing. Oyster-style mushrooms of the Pleurotus and Hypsizygus families are among the easiest to fruit. Lions Mane (Hericium erinaceus) is also quite easy. Maitake (Grifola frondosa) and Morels (Morachella species) are among the most difficult to get to form mushrooms. Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) falls somewhere in the middle. Button mushrooms are easy if you can keep the temperature steady around 65 degrees F.

Starting with purchased spawn
It is also possible to start at step three, by purchasing the "starter" (spawn) from a supplier and using that to introduce the growing fungus into an organic material that you have prepared yourself. There are a variety of possible substrates: straw, compost, logs, wood chips, and sawdust are common ones, but people have also used things like newspaper, cardboard, sterilized grain, coffee grounds, etc. depending on the mushroom species they want to grow.

Kinds of mushrooms and the substrates they prefer
In general, there are two broad classes of cultivated mushrooms: those that prefer to grow on compost, and those that prefer to grow on woody material. The common button mushroom and other Agaricus species fall into the first class, growing readily on compost, but they will also grow on straw. Oyster mushrooms, shiitake, reishi, maitake, and Lions Mane, all prefer woody materials such as sawdust, wood chips, or sometimes straw.

Compost
Each organic material requires a different procedure to render it free of competing organisms. Compost is the most time-consuming material to prepare, requiring a couple of weeks to mature. It needs to be allowed to heat to a temperature that neutralizes harmful species, without letting it get so hot that it kills beneficial microbes. The compost is not allowed to go completely through its natural cycle. Instead it is harvested somewhat early, when it is full of white actinomycetes bacteria that provide the nutrients that mushrooms love. The grower cools the compost, adds some gypsum (calcium sulfate) and mixes in the mushroom spawn.

Woody materials
Woody materials and straw can be prepared much more quickly than compost. Traditionally, these materials required a heat treatment, such as pressure sterilization, steam pasteurization, or hot water steeping, to eliminate competing organisms. The peroxide method has now added ways to prepare some substrates without heating. It can also prevent later contamination by airborne molds and bacteria, so using a material that is compatible with hydrogen peroxide addition can save a lot of trouble. For wood-decomposing mushrooms, wood pellet fuel, which disintegrates into sawdust when treated with boiling water, works very well in this regard, and so does wheat straw.

Getting Mushrooms to Form
The compost-loving species require a different procedure from the wood-loving mushrooms when it comes time to get the mushrooms to form. The compost-lovers usually need to have a soil-like layer called "casing," applied to the top of the culture, once the mushroom tissue has fully colonized the compost. The soil-like layer provides a reservoir of moisture, and it creates a low-nutrient zone (compared to the compost), signaling the mushroom tissue to start forming the fruiting bodies. The tiny mushroom buttons then begin to form in the casing layer. The grower keeps the casing moist by lightly watering it as the mushrooms enlarge.

With wood-loving species, the procedure for getting mushrooms to form varies a bit from one species to another, but it usually involves a shift in environmental conditions such as a drop in temperature, an increase in air circulation, and/or an increase in light levels.

The whole nine yards?
Once you have tried growing mushrooms from a kit and from spawn you've purchased, you will have a better idea whether you want to get involved in keeping agar cultures and growing your own spawn. These procedures require somewhat more commitment and attention to detail. Before the invention of the peroxide technique, it was generally only possible to keep agar cultures and grow spawn if you constructed a sterile work space, such as a glove box at the very least. With peroxide, it becomes possible to perform these steps in an ordinary kitchen, and grow the cultures just about anywhere that an appropriate temperature and light level can be provided. You still need to learn some basic "sterile technique"--simple procedures for handling cultures to keep them pure. But you won't need a sterile facility or a spotless house.

Mushroom