Growing mushrooms is an interesting aspect of vegetable gardening that allows enthusiasts to cultivate these nutritious fungi right at home. This category explores the diverse techniques, challenges, and rewards of mushroom cultivation, deepening the scope of traditional vegetable gardening.
You can grow common edible mushroom varieties indoors with controlled growing conditions using grow kits, mushroom logs or spawn. The mushrooms can also be overwintered in the cold months to have an early crop as the weather gets warm.
To grow mushrooms at home, you need a cool, dark, and damp place where you can easily control temperature and humidity. Generally, mushrooms thrive in locations like basements, closets, and cabinets. You can use mushroom growing kits for efficiency.
There are several methods to grow mushrooms. They can either be grown from Spawn, on Logs, in plastic bags with Straws, Spores or simply through ready-to-use mushroom growing kits.
Oyster mushrooms are by far the easiest to grow on straw. Also, mushrooms like enoki, shiitake, pioppino, wine cap, morel, and lion’s mane can be cultivated on straw if the right growing conditions are maintained.
One way my partner and I have experimented with growing mushrooms is by inoculating hardwood logs. We buy dowels impregnated with the mushroom mycelium and just drill holes in the log and bang them in. The mycelium will then take between 8 months and a year to spread through the log and will give spring and autumn crops for up to 4 years! We are currently growing, Oyster, Shiitake, Lions mane and Chicken of the woods. It is very exciting.