Growing Mushrooms Light

Okay, so you’re starting to grow your own mushrooms and you want to know some things.

Here we will shortly cover one of the conditions to grow mushrooms, namely how much light if any, is needed to grow them.

Many people have thought that it is an absolute must to grow mushrooms in the dark. That is not true, nor is it completely false or without reason to believe so, however.

Mushrooms, unlike plants, do not contain chlorophyll and therefore do not have the ability to convert sunlight to food through the process known as photosynthesis.  Instead, they need to “leech” their nutrients from other sources, that’s where substrates such as soil, straw or logs come into play. So, with that said, this means mushrooms can grow just fine in the dark, but it does not mean that mushrooms cannot grow if exposed to sunlight.

There is a logical reason for people to grow mushrooms in the dark. Although mushrooms do not use light to produce food, they are in fact sensitive to it. They will grow towards the direction of light first of all.

Secondly when mushrooms sense the light, it tells them to start, what is called “pinning” or begin to form the fruiting bodies we have come to know as mushrooms. What this translates to in essence, is that you use light on your substrate to tell the mushrooms to start growing at a certain point when you feel it is right. It should also be mentioned that light is only one factor affecting mushrooms pinning. Other factors include the carbon dioxide levels and temperature. But you’ll come to know this through experience.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Growing Mushrooms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.