Grow your own mushrooms!

by Monika Bartyzel, Posted Oct 29th 2008 @ 7:02PM

I had been planning on extolling the virtues of mushroom storage bags. But when I searched Google to try and find the type I use, I didn't include "storage" in my search and came up with mushroom bags of a completely different feather.

Did you know that you can buy special bags full of grains to grow your own? You order a bag, do a little sterile injecting, put it in a warm and dark place, and before you know it, you've got your own little mushroom farm -- enokitake, oyster, shiitake, maitake, morels... All the fungal flavor you could want! Once you get the hang of it, finished indoor patches can be brought outside for further growth on hardwood, and you can experiment with growing 'shrooms outside of the handy bags. You can't get much more local than your own home!

If you want to learn more, I'd suggest starting with ShamanShop.net, which has a ton of information about mushroom growing techniques, how-to's, and specific products. If you're already a mushroom grower, please comment below! I'd love to hear about your experiences.

Filed Under: Food Politics, How To
Tags: culture, growing mushrooms, GrowingMushrooms, mushroom bags, MushroomBags, mushrooms, spawn, spores

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-30-2008 @12:27PM Dave said... Another mushroom-growing option is boxes filled with mushroom-mycelium-inoculated compost. We bought a box from http://www.mushroomadventures.com/index.html a couple years ago, and it was doing well until the Great Seattle Power Outage meant that our house was below mushroom-growing temperature for almost a week.

Overall, our experience was mixed; on the one hand, the first batch of mushrooms came out great, and pulling a mushroom out of the "ground", dusting it off, and eating it was a great experience. Even the humble button mushroom popped with earthy sweetness.

On the down side: I think we over-watered our box. Without some experience I think it's a little tough to know exactly how moist is moist, and the instructions could maybe have been a little clearer. And it's tough to say what our final opinion would have been, since the aforementioned indoor cold snap seemed to have done irreparable harm.

I think I'd like to try again sometime; I'm sort of considering one of those shiitake logs, since I've heard they're pretty much idiotproof...
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10-31-2008 @9:47AM a said... I had a shiitake log, hardwood not the sawdust junk. Cost me $13 back in the eighties and gave me mushrooms every other month for 4 years. I miss that log.
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