Interested in how to grow your own mushrooms? Then you’ve come to the right place. We go through a variety of mushroom cultivation methods
How to grow your own mushrooms can be a rewarding process. Not only do you get to watch the growing process from start to finish, but you also get to reap the rewards by eating the delicious bounty.
To help share this information accordingly, I have compiled some of our top articles on mushroom cultivation so you can get a diverse array of information on growing your own mushrooms at home. Let’s take a look.
How to grow your own mushrooms: Popular methods to try
When I am considering the overall process of growing mushrooms, I like to think of the 7 stages of cultivation as laid out by Tradd Cotter in his book
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation. There are many different methods of growing gourmet mushrooms and these steps apply to all of them.
- Media preparation
- Inoculation
- Incubation
- Full Inhabitation
- Pinning
- Fruiting
- Rest
Learn more about these methods in detail
here.
Growing mushrooms indoors requires certain parameters: Growing your own mushrooms indoors involves these big four components to growing mushrooms:
- CO2-below 800 ppm, depending on species
- Humidity–above 80%
- Lighting—Enough to comfortably read a book
- Temperature–is ideally between 55 and 75 degrees depending on the species
Now if you are doing a small grow in your house, it is not necessary to measure these parameters. In fact, my favorite way to tell if these are in the right range is looking at the mushrooms. The mushrooms and how they are fruiting should really be the main factor that you watch to adjust environmental controls. If the substrate or pins are drying out or slightly browning you need to increase humidity. If the mushrooms have long stems and little caps, it’s likely that they either have too high CO2 or not enough light. If bacterial growth is proliferating, it is likely too hot for the mushroom to properly fruit. To create a really nice area for growing mushrooms indoors, place the fruiting substrate into a plastic bin, fish tank, or 18 gallon tote with the top on at a diagonal. Mist inside the bin twice a day and watch the mushrooms to see how they look. You may be able completely leave the top off, increasing CO2 and light levels, depending on the moisture content in your house.
Learn more about this process now...
How to grow mushrooms outside with the log inoculation process: The most common method of growing mushrooms outside is on hardwood logs. This method of cultivation is one of the first methods discovered and was perfected in Japan over the last 800 years. Log cultivation is slow but requires little start up capital and maintenance. When starting mushroom cultivation, log cultivation is a great method to learn how to grow mushrooms outside.
Some of the most important tips for growing mushrooms on logs involves knowing:
- Tree species and timing for inoculation
- How to cut and handle logs
- Spawn and strain selection
- How to manage logs after inoculation
Learn about each of these in more detail, and discover
the full process for log inoculation here.
How to cultivate oyster mushrooms at home using coffee grounds: One of the easier methods to start growing mushrooms at home is with oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds. Coffee is a common staple in many homes and it can be easily used to grow oyster mushrooms. This process is fairly straightforward and simplistic, with only four steps to follow.
The materials you need include a plastic container with a lid and several holes poked in the bottom of the container, oyster mushroom spawn, and a household of coffee drinkers. Let’s dive into the process now:
- First, brew the coffee. Once the boiling water has run through the grounds and filter, place the coffee grounds into the small plastic bucket/container.
- Next, add your oyster spawn spawn on top of the freshly brewed coffee and filter. Close the lid.
- Repeat daily or throughout the day, layering oyster mushroom spawn and spent coffee grounds. Keep the mushroom spawn in the fridge between uses.
- Once the container is full, allow it to sit for 2-3 weeks. Poke 4-5 holes in the side of the container and mist once daily. Mushrooms will begin fruiting within a week of misting.
Interested in making a mushroom raft?
Who wouldn’t want a mushroom raft? Willie details the process of making your very own mushroom raft
in this article. There is an accompanying video in that article as well, so you can see the process as well as read about it.
All of these methods of growing mushrooms require mushroom spawn. For growing on wood chips and logs, we offer high-quality, contaminant-free
sawdust spawn. For growing on straw, coffee grounds or supplemented sawdust, we have high-quality, contaminant-free
grain spawn. Also for growing on logs we have plug spawn. Get what you need today so you can start your mushroom growing as soon as possible.