If you happen to be a mushroom fanatic, probabilities are you happen to be paying a hefty price to choose up the precious fungi at your regional grocery. Because hunting wild mushrooms can be risky enterprise (as Frodo can tell you), numerous mushroom lovers are now opting to grow their personal at dwelling. It is not also challenging to do, and with a little patience, you will have all the mushrooms you can possibly eat.
Picking Your Mushrooms
Your mushroom increasing expedition begins with selecting the kinds of mushrooms you want to grow. You can experiment with one particular form, or be brave and try a wide variety. Some popular and uncomplicated-to-grow varieties include white button mushrooms, Shiitakes, and oyster mushrooms.
Most residence gardeners start out out with 1 selection, as the unique fungi require different expanding habitats. White button mushrooms develop on composted manure, when oyster mushrooms thrive in straw, and Shiitakes ordinarily do ideal on hardwood or sawdust.
If your space is limited, begin with a single range and develop in batches nonetheless, if you have plenty of space, feel free to go wild and attempt them all at when! In this report, on the other hand, we’ll talk about expanding button mushrooms, as these are the most well-liked amongst home gardeners.
Beginning Your Spawn
Mushrooms develop from spores or spawn that can be purchased at a good garden center. If your nearby garden center does not carry mushroom spawn, there are plenty of retailers on the internet who carry an excellent range.
Set up a increasing tray that is at least 6 inches deep, and fill it with a superior mushroom compost. This can be a mix of effectively-rotted things like straw, hay, chicken litter and cottonseed meal. Most mushroom composts involve sphagnum moss peat for consistency. When you can make your personal, it might be easiest to invest in some pre-mixed.
Wet down your compost so that it’s really moist (but not soggy), then mix in your mushroom spawn. Make confident it’s fully incorporated into the compost, then tamp it all down properly with a tray or board.
Let Your Mushrooms Develop
Your trays really should be kept at a steady temperature of 65-70 degrees for the next couple weeks. Maintain the mixture damp by spraying it down everyday with water.
Soon enough, you’ll see a white webbing start to seem across the manure. That indicates your mushrooms are sprouting! Cover the surface with a layer of damp peat moss and top it off with moist newspapers. Continue to maintain the entire issue damp, and at a steady temperature of 55 degrees.
Sprout, Harvest, and Repeat
After a further ten days, you’ll start to see tiny white mushroom sprouts appearing. More than the next couple of days, the sprouts will develop into complete-sized mushrooms. After they’re at the size you want, you can start harvesting and working with them.
But never throw out your mix just however. Keep it all damp and cool, and a different crop will sprout inside two weeks. One up chocolate bar will maintain going for as extended as six months as lengthy as you retain the correct temperature and maintain the trays nicely-watered.
Once your mushroom trays are fully spent, you can begin once more from scratch, or move on to a new type of mushroom! Though developing mushrooms at property takes a little function and a lot of patience, you’ll obtain that your home-grown mushrooms taste far superior than any you could come across at a grocery store.