When I was a kid, the thought of eating mushrooms was repulsive. How in the world anyone liked mushrooms was beyond me. My husband was the same way. Now we are totally into eating mushrooms with our meals as a yummy side or in dishes.
Trying out new things is a fun hobby of my husbands. Especially when it comes to gardening which luckily for me is totally in my benefit!
So, our latest experiment has been to grow our own mushrooms.
When you look up mushrooms to grow at home, oyster mushrooms are usually said to
be the easiest to grow ( Never try growing mushrooms that you just find in your backyard or in the forest unless you have a lot more knowledge about mushrooms than us).
Mushrooms grow from spores. A mushroom spore is a unicellular organism responsible for the reproductive processes in mushroom producing fungi. The way we are doing it isn’t from spores (It is a whole extra step to grow mushrooms from spores and quite difficult to do, also hard to find). We are going to start the process from mycelium.
Mycelium- the part of the body of a fungus that does not reproduce and usually consists of a ma
ss of hyphae that are often growing in something else (as soil, organic matter, or the tissues of a plant or animal host) . You can recognize mycelium by looking for white almost furry, thread like fibers along the stalk of your mushrooms.
So today we are growing store bought mushrooms from the mycelium found along the stalk.
When trying to find mushrooms to grow we looked in the organic section at the stores for oyster mushrooms that were attached to one stalk. Then you look for the most mycelium.
Take it home and here we go!
How to Grow Your Own Mushrooms
What you need:
1) Oyster mushrooms with stalk and nice mycelium.
2) Cellulose material (aka bedding).
3) Water without chlorine (spring or distilled water).
4) 4 Small brown paper bags.
5) Bowl .
6) Container to place your mushroom start in.
Now this is the first step. We let it sit for three months. The next step is simple. We will do a post on it when we have it mastered! So start your mushrooms now and look for the next step when yours is ready 🙂 Hope you enjoyed it and happy mushroom growing!!
what’s the next step？
We are waiting for our mushrooms to be ready for the next step, then we will share. We promise! 🙂
hi , thank you for your introduce. I would like to know the next step. Can U tell me?
I will be doing a post on it this month. In a week or so.
Have you heard of anyone trying this with morel mushrooms?
I haven’t heard of anyone doing it with the morel mushroom. I know you can do all sorts of mushrooms but they are different methods and you would most likely have to order the spawn. (preferably from an organic/reliable source)
I recommend packing the wood shavings ( preferably oak, or other hardwood – never black walnut) into plastic ziplock bags. Pack it tight with small pieces of the innoculant throughout. Once the bag is packed and sealed, then cut + shaped cuts around the bag every 2-3 inches. Then, most importantly, place in a very dark closet at room temperature for at least 4 weeks. You should see lots of white mycelium wgrowth throughout th the bags if a you peek. I also put the sealed
Bags into black plastic garbage bags to keep the moisture in and light out.
When it’s been at least 4 and up to 6 weeks of inoculating, take the sealed bags out and set them in a room temp area in full, but not direct sunlight. The light and warmth triggers the growth of the oyster mushroom. Soon, little stalks with black pinheads ( in fact, they are called pins) poke out of the slits you made in the bag. Soon after that, they bloom into most tasty oyster mushrooms.
Grey Dove and Italian Oyster mushroom seem to work the best. They are both tasty and toothsome.
Good luck.
I’m just as curious as everyone else about the results of this experiment. Most articles I have found about growing mushrooms seem so specific about the temperature, light and moisture ideals that it makes me wonder how mushrooms are ever able to just grow in the wild 😀
Did you ever finish your posting of growing mushrooms. I can only find the first posting.
Unfortunately we didn’t.growing mushrooms turned out to be rather difficult and we struggled to be successful with the second step of the process.