To grow mushrooms on wood, you need to start off choosing between one of two options: 

• Either pick out the species of mushrooms you want to grow and order yourself a mushroom growing log from a supplier. 
• Or if you live close to the woods and know what trees you have around your area that you can harvest logs from, then you can decide what mushrooms would be suitable candidates for growing on your logs.

A log should average 4 to 8 inches in diameter (could be more or less) and be roughly 3 feet long.  When you have your log you will need to the following:

• Drill holes into the log about 6 to 8 inches apart, working in rows, and 1 inch deep.  The bigger the log’s diameter, the more rows you will have.
• Place inoculated mushroom plugs into the drilled holes, which you can obtain from a supplier unless you make your own.
• Seal all the holes with the plugs in them using wax, either cheese or candle wax would be acceptable.  The purpose here is to protect the mycelium or spawn from insects and contaminants and to prevent it from drying out, effectively killing it as well.

Your log is now prepared.  From this point on, you will need to keep the log under favorable conditions to encourage the log to start fruiting.  The log should be kept in an area where it receives indirect light and should be kept moist.  Learning how to grow mushrooms can be a very rewarding experience.  Your log should fruit about every 5 to 7 weeks, enjoy the harvest!

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors

For many, the idea of growing mushrooms indoors rather than outdoors has an appeal.

One of the biggest reasons being it does not require you to do outside laboring and it enables better control of the growing environment such as temperature and humidity/moisture level.

For reasons like this, indoor mushroom growing is preferred to outside growing. One of these indoor methods is growing mushrooms in bags.

Assuming you know the basics of growing mushrooms already, we will skip ahead a bit. You will first need to have your bag of growing medium: wheat, rye, rice, soil, whatever it is you are using to grow your mushroom species. When you have the bag packed with the medium, you will need to throw in either a liquid spore mix or “cakes” which are usually bundles of sawdust or straw, fully colonized with mycelium.

At this point, shake the bag to mix around all the medium with your spores or cakes. You want to make sure everything is nicely distributed about as evenly as possible so break up the cakes into smaller pieces when mixing it. Once everything is mixed, just pack it tightly together by compressing it.

After everything is done, all that is left is to puncture the bag with holes to let it ventilate, and put the bag somewhere where it is cool and moist and maintain optimal conditions for growing your own mushrooms. Now you can sit back for a while and occasionally check in on the progress until your first flush of fresh mushrooms, enjoy!

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors

If you’ve been growing your own mushrooms from scratch then you know how troublesome and also how expensive sterilizing and/or pasteurizing substrate for your mushrooms can be.

Luckily for you, there is a method that can be used in growing your own mushrooms that can simplify and speed up the process.  This method is growing mushrooms with hydrogen peroxide

While using hydrogen peroxide has some limitations, it has obvious advantages.  The first being you would not need to sterilize your substrate for hours or days at a time if you instead add a low concentration of hydrogen peroxide to your mix.  This in turn means you do not require expensive pressure cookers and it also means the amount of substrate you can produce is not limited to any size, as would be the case if you used a pressure cooker (you can only make as much as it can hold).

Using hydrogen peroxide you are able to work in a non-sterile, non-laboratory like environment because hydrogen peroxide will help keep the mushroom cultures bacteria and contaminant-free.

The basic idea behind using a low concentration of hydrogen peroxide is that it helps promote healthy mushroom growth, while, at the same time, it keeps other possible fungi and contaminants from growing.  A low concentration of peroxide will not damage or hurt mushrooms.

Eventually the peroxide will be used by the mushrooms, turning it into nothing more than water and oxygen promoting a healthy growing environment.  So what are you waiting for?  Go grow your own mushrooms with the peroxide method.

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors

photo credit: lipár

There’s nothing more relaxing than being at home growing mushrooms while you enjoy your Sunday afternoon.

One of the easiest ways to start growing edible gourmet mushrooms at home is to purchase a mushroom grow kit.

In order to grow properly, these kits – either boxes with specially prepared soil layers or sections of spore-treated logs – need a dark, relatively damp place to stay and will need to be sprayed with water every day or so (depending on the variety you buy, specific needs will vary).

Use the mushroom grow buddy to help you learn the different techniques for growing virtually any type mushroom.

Here’s a great website about all things outdoors:

• All Things Related To Outdoor Recreation – September 24, 2009 – Chris Mathew presents Grow Your Own Morel Mushrooms posted at How To Grow Mushrooms, saying, “Growing mushrooms can be easy, rewarding and fun. Learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors and outdoors.” …

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors

Growing mushrooms from scratch is a long and difficult process. Make the task of growing mushrooms easy for yourself by learning all about how to grow mushrooms and/or buy a mushroom grow kit.

There are a lot of mushroom grow kits available on the market today and many of these can be used in your own backyard to create an outdoor mushroom garden.

With the kit comes the spores, nutrients and substrates. Typically, the mushrooms will begin fruiting within 1-2 weeks. Depending on the growing conditions, a single kit can produce 1-2 pounds of mushrooms per flush. With each kit, you can usually get 2-3 flushes until the nutrients and food supply is completely consumed

After following the kit’s instructions and with a little effort and time, you can begin growing and eating fresh gourmet mushrooms straight from your own backyard!

Here’s a great website about growing your own mushrooms with logs:

• Grow your own mushrooms – Grow your own mushrooms. By Patti Schiendelman | February 25, 2009. logs21. I have a small city yard, but I grow some of my own food – I have raspberries, a nice old Italian plum tree, a filbert hedge. Last year I had a great crop of …

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors

Learning how to grow mushrooms can be easy, rewarding and not nearly as difficult as you might think.  Common mushrooms such as button , portabella and oyster mushrooms grow easily on compost in trays, bags, boxes or raised beds.
Four Easy Steps:
The basic steps for growing mushrooms:

• Making the compost. Raw materials for the compost are mixed together, moistened and composted.
• Spawning. The compost is put in trays, bags, boxes or raised beds, under cover, and then the spawn is added. Controlling the environmental conditions are important to achieve optimum growth of the spawn.  Over the next several weeks, the spawns will fill the compost with mycelia.
• Casing. Casing involves placing a layer on top of the compost, to bring about environmental conditions which encourage the formation of fruiting bodies (ie: The mushrooms which are eaten).
• Harvest.  After several weeks, the first crop is picked. Further crops occur every week or so (These are called flushes). After a month or two, the flushes decline and the compost should be discarded and the process started again.

If you want to grow a lot of mushrooms, learning how to grow mushrooms and how to protect and harvest them are important in a successful crop.

This post via the: How To Grow Mushrooms blog where you can learn how to grow mushrooms at home, indoors or outdoors