Mushroom growing is very easy if you know exactly what you’re doing, and it’s not difficult to learn the different steps involved in the process.
Now, the basics of preparing growth medium and containers have been covered elsewhere, but the actual basics of how to plant and care for mushrooms will be covered in detail in the course of this article.
A Step By Step Guide To Mushroom Growing
You will most likely buy mushroom spores or spawn when you first learn to grow mushrooms, and before you learn to harvest the spores from mushroom caps for yourself. Now, there are two types of this spawn available.
Check this Grow Your Own Mushrooms Kit – Colonized Lion’s Mane Mushrooms – Indoors kit.
It is available in flakes, but it is also available in bricks as well. How you plant the spores or spawn depends on what sort that you buy.
I would suggest if you’re thinking of planting mushrooms regularly, that you buy and plant both types, and see what works better for you.
If you buy and plant both types, there are very different methods of planting them.
The bricks need to be broken into chunks, each about one inch in diameter. These chunks are put into the growing medium, spaced about half a food from each other.
Read also All The Information You Need To Set Up A Mushroom Growing Operation
You need to make holes about an inch or two deep before you put these chunks in. Flakes are mixed right into the growth medium.
Take about a quart of these flakes and spread them over fifteen square feet, and continue until you have the growth medium evenly covered. You need to mix these into the growth medium while doing this.
Make sure that the flakes are not visible on the surface of the growth medium. Whether you use chunks or flakes, the next steps to mushroom growing are the same. You spray a mist of water onto the mixture regularly and keep it in the dark.
Soon the mushroom spawn will begin to put out mycelia, which are the fungal version of roots. Once these are out, the mushrooms will really start to grow. As a matter of fact, in time you will see an intricate web of these pale white mycelial forms.
Slightly increasing the temperature to about sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit at this time will encourage growth. Remember to water daily. In a few weeks, you should be able to see the mushrooms.
You should not water in the period between when the mushrooms appear and the harvest.
You can harvest mushrooms when they are either very small or when they mature. Just use a sharp knife to harvest each mature mushroom, and there’ll soon be another mushroom growing in its place.
If you have some spare area in an outhouse or even in your cellar or garage, you can utilize it for mushroom growing, which are tasty, nutritious, and a great source of organic protein.
Remember that food that you grow yourself will always be guaranteed to be free of harmful fertilizers and pesticides, as well as of all the subtle array of bio-chemicals that commercial food-providing companies today use to maximize yields.
Advantages of Mushroom Growing
If you’re at all conscious of the food you eat, and if you want it to be healthful, then you could do worse than growing your own food.
Growing your own food ensures that not only will the food be healthful, but also that you can maximize yields by providing the best possible growing environment for the food you’re growing.
This is especially true with mushrooms. If you go in for mushroom growing and get the growth environment right, you can have enormous yields. Of course, you can go in for commercial growth medium, but these things are best created yourself.
And it’s not difficult. So if you want to get started growing mushrooms, what would you need?
The 4 Easy Steps for Mushroom Growing
1# Space & Trays for Mushroom Growing
Well, first of all, to best use the space you have available, I would suggest that you get yourself some shelving. This can also be made oneself. Then you need a large number of flat trays in which you will actually plant the mushrooms.
Of course, the length and breadth of these trays will be based upon the space you have available, and the size of the tray that will best make use of that space, but as a general rule, don’t purchase any tray that might potentially be too hard to lift.
The trays should also as a general rule not be any deeper than four inches. See if you can get a good deal on a larger number of trays at your usual gardening store? trays like these are often used for seedlings.
Read more in detail about Fungiculture.
2# Seeding the Mushroom Spore
Once you have your trays, fill them with growth mixture and add in mushroom spore or spawn flakes, which are easily available in gardening stores, or on the internet.
3# Watering Mushroom
Water the mixture carefully, and the mushrooms will start putting out their mycelia, which is a sort of fungal root.
Once this happens, keep watering at least twice a day, preferably with a mist spray, until the young mushrooms start to appear. Once you reach this point, you need to stop watering while the mushrooms mature.
4# Harvert Mushroom
Once they reach the size that you need, you can harvest them. This is all you need to know to go in for mushroom growing.