Learn How to Grow Your Own Mushrooms at Home
Photo by Megumi Nachev/Unsplash
Growing your own food at home isn’t just a move that can help you save money—it’s also a great way to foster a deeper connection to your food, which can make every bite that much more delicious. But while it’s relatively easy to start growing parsley or basil at home, growing your own mushrooms comes with a slightly bigger learning curve. As long as you have the right information and equipment, though, you could be enjoying your first crop of home-grown indoor mushrooms in a matter of weeks or months.
1. Decide what kinds of mushrooms you want to grow.
First of all, you have to think about the kind of fungi you want to grow. That might be an easy choice if you already have a favorite variety, but you may also want to consider what’s easiest for beginners. Pearl oysters are one of the simpler beginner varieties since they’re relatively easy to grow. Dominique Kline, Farm Manager at The Hope Farm in Fairhope, Alabama, suggests lion’s mane, “a beautiful cream-colored toothy mushroom (with some incredible health benefits) that colonizes substrate quicker than many other species.”
2. Buy a kit or start from scratch.
When you first start your fungi-growing journey, you may find it easiest to start with a growing kit. “My recommendation would be to first try something like an all-in-one bag or a ready-to-grow bag that has been pre-colonized with the mushrooms you’d like to grow. It’s the easiest way for a beginner to get their feet wet,” said Andrew Bolitho, owner of mushroomspawnstore.com.
According to Kline, kits generally come with a substrate (“a sterile, hydrated material to act as food for the mycelium”) along with the mushroom culture and a bag that retains humidity around the growing mushrooms. By choosing this route, all you’ll really have to do is open the bag to give the mycelium some oxygen and make sure the growing environment is cool and sterile.
However, if you want to learn more about growing mushrooms or don’t have access to a kit, you can start growing your fungi from scratch. “To prepare everything from scratch will require a pressure cooker to sterilize grain, specialized bags designed for mushroom cultivation, whole grains like oats or rye, compost or hardwood-chips/pellets (depending on species) and Rubbermaid containers or those little greenhouse tents for seed starting,” Bolitho said.