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getting started growing mushrooms
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Posted by markcase1964 7 (My Page) on Mon, Dec 22, 08 at 19:12
| I want to grow some mushrooms at home. I was trying to search the strings but did not find any concrete advice. Does anyone have "starts" that they can trade? If you buy one of the kits I saw mixed results.
Thanks for the information.
Mark |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| Hi Mark, Sorry, don't have any good advice to give you, just starting out myself... But I bought a Shitake mushroom "kit" off eBay (link below) for $5...
Only had it going for a few days now, but it's starting to grow / Looks nasty as hell, but they are a growing...
All the fun stuff has already been done when you get it, just have to open the bag, but it's a start... I haven't tried them yet, but they also sell plugs that you hammer into logs that I've heard work good??? Good Luck,
DC |
Here is a link that might be useful: Mushroom Block
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| Practically all mushrooms kits are pre-cultivated and you simply are encouraging them to fruit by exposing them to light, air, moisture etc. Try Field and Forest Products (www.fieldforest.net). They've got a good variety of kits to choose from. I've been wanting to try one of their hericium (pom pom) kits for years, as I think that hericium is one of the most under-rated of all edible mushrooms. Very light and slightly sweet, absolutely delicious sauteed in garlic and butter. |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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We got Pompom blanc and Blue oyster logs and Morell (TO actually make a habitat for and plant)for xmas. The 2 logs are sprouting!
I've got a word in on my cooking board for recipes and ways to preserve if need be!
I don't can, but I have a dehydrator and a vacuum sealer.
We were considered the weird ones of the family, cause we gave mushroom logs for xmas! 2out of 3 LOVED them!
We got our kits from GMUSHROOMS.com in Graton CA.
Hope to hear more beginner mushroom talk! Nancy |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| If you follow the directions to the letter - the kits are a great way to grow mushrooms. I have given them as gifts and they have always bloomed fantastically |
mold on my home shiitake log
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Hello,
I'm hoping someone can help me or at least point me in the right direction. I'm trying my second home mushroom kit and am having some troubles. I grew 3 crops easily on a composite style log last winter. Now I am trying to do a real oak log, shiitake, inside my house. I started it just after the holidays and followed the directions closely for soaking it, misting, etc. but I ended up with an initial crop of only 3 small mushrooms that were hard. I also seem to be getting a fair amount of green and white mold. I initially cleaned the mold off with some vinegar, (I wonder if this is where I went wrong). Anyway, I did some online research and am now dabbing on alcohol to clean off mold. I tried to "let it rest" on a bed of moist soil, but again, it got moldy along the bottom where it was on the soil. Now I have a dry log, mold-free, and want to try to get a harvest out of it at some point, but not sure how to proceed. HELP! |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| The fact that you're doing it indoors is probably the problem. It's always recommended to do logs OUTSIDE. Mold will grow easier indoors where there's no drafts and plenty of stale, stagnant air. The mycelium needs to fully colonize the log and get a good hold on before competition from other fungi and molds can be ruled out. If you're doing mushrooms indoors, I'd recommend getting your hands on some hardwood (oak, maple, etc. not pine or cedar or redwood) saw dust, sterilizing it (oven @ 250F for three hours), inoculating it with spawn, and putting it an airtight container where it can't be contaminated by floating spores in the air. Good luck. |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| thanks sequoia, I'm not surprised, I live in an old house and we get mold sometimes in our basement, Despite our efforts, I'm sure it just drifts about. It's winter here too, so not lots of fresh air. It also makes a little more sense that the composite kit worked much better. I think that because I started it partially covered in plastic, it not only kept the moisture in, but it protected it until the shiitake got established over anything else. I did get a small amount of green mold on the bottom, but it was easily removed and never returned. I will look into resourcing the sawdust method. Maybe I'll restart my log with a barrier, just to try. Thanks again for the advise. |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| I posted a guide of how to grow shiitake and oyster mushrooms indoors that might be rather helpful and could probably be adapted for outside as well if you had the space. It also explains how to inoculate your own logs (I just don't have the space to do so, or logs), and provides links to places that sell all different types of spores and kits. So far I'm having pretty good success with oyster (on toilet paper) and shiitake (on a log) inside. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Indoor Shiitake and Oyster Mushrooms
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| I agree with everyone on the grow kits. The easiest way to get started growing is to buy a kit and read the directions. But if you want to learn more specifically about how to grow mushrooms, the link below is a great resource for learning how to grow mushrooms. Hope that helps! |
Here is a link that might be useful: Learn How To Grow Mushrooms
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| I am planning to try a kit and also plug some logs for the first time and one important tip that I was given was to not use chlorinated water (tap) on mushrooms. Maybe someone else can chime in on this. |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| I've been researching this same subject like crazy, a good place to start is with the book "The Mushroom Cultivator" by Paul Stamets. it's essentially a text book on mushroom growing, and it will overwhelm you with knowledge. read through it and then check the internet for ways to simplify what you just learned. I found that without that basic mushroom info from the book, I couldn't follow the conversation from other growers. oh, and you'll learn at the end of all that that mushroom growing is a complicated process to set up, and that growing kits are much much easier. |
RE: getting started growing mushrooms
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| Home extension service did a class on shiitake cultivation. They gave us a handout from the spore providernurseries. They are catered to your agric zone. They say type C17 is for our zone (8b). You have to use a deciduous hardwood (loses leaves in winter) log about 3 feet long and as big around as you can carry. Mine is about 5" diameter, and son, Balder, got about 9-10" dia. log provided by the seminar. The bigger around the longer it takes the log to rot completely and stop producing.Deciduous hardwood around here is turkey oak, water oak, laurel oak, southern red oak, hickory, white oak, white ash, black locust. Mark the tree during the summer when you can see the leaves, because softwood like pine will not do at all. Cut the logs after the first frost when the trees are dormant (very important--no sap up in the layer that the spore plugs will be in) and up to the time in the Spring when the leaves begin to bud out. No more than one week before you will be inoculating them with the spores or spawn. Log should be free of internal decay. Then drill holes 1 to 1.5" deep with a drill bit 5/16" diameter. The spawn are impregnated into dowels 1" long, which you buy. Hammer the dowels into the holes flat, not recessed. Melt your para-fine wax in an ugly pot you bought at a junk sale or a fry-baby you won't be needing except to make candles or boil cinnamon at Christmas time to smell up the house or something. Put log in the dark shade, like on the north side of the house leaning up toward the house on a cowboy horse-tying up place like in front of the saloon in westerns. You don't want it touching the house because you have to water it a lot. The old man who taught the class said he leaned his up to his block house ( that can't rot) between the row of azalea bushes and the block wall. I am going to make a little shaded lean-to right by my fig tree, so when I water it , the fig will be watered too, as fig trees need a lot of water. I put the fig under the eaves of the house where the water will roll off the roof and water the fig. I am going to have to rig a little shade on the south side of the log to keep the light off because the fig aint got a leaf. Twice a week down here water the logs with a little sprinkler for 1 hour (up north where the air is dry: 6-12 hours). They taught us 1 hour is fine for all the coastal counties. It is drier up north where your nose bleeds just watching Oprah, so they need more watering. They brought a log impregnated in 2006, (Spring) to the class on Tuesday (Spring, 2009). Saturday before the class they put the log in a big cooler with 3 bags of ice and the log went into production and had eating size mushrooms by Tuesday to show the class. You can force them into production again and again by putting them into a cooler or something with a bag of ice. |
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