Mushrooms grow anywhere,...Oyster mushrooms is about the easiest to grow, can be grown in straw or straw bales easily, which I've done for several years but when I grew Shiitake on wood, I then gave up on the Oyster. Shiitake is one of the very best Mushrooms.
Not sure how far you want to go,..get a mushroom growing kit, .buy your spawn and inoculate? This was my first step,..I then have made my own Oyster spawn on grain, also Shiitake wooden plugs and put into poplar logs, it has worked, also made my own sawdust, [oak] substrate and inoculated with shiitake spawn, you can have much faster result going this route.

I have taken a course out in BC many years ago.

Konrad, you now have my interest. I am going to have to look into a kit. Curiously, do shiitake grow on all members of the populus genus?

Not sure but I would think so.

Without a kit, your biggest obstacle will be finding a way to sterilize the growing media so that undesirable microbes don't outcompete your mushrooms.

It's not needed for logs,..just fairly fresh wood, [not half rotten].
I've immersed whole straw bales, [fresh straw] in water for a couple of weeks, it worked pretty good, now I would make a steamer, have also used chopped straw and pasteurized first, made a large pot and wire basket and heated up with propane outdoor, for Oyster mushroom.