Loads of home gardeners are starting to consider growing their own mushrooms at home. They can be a great addition to a sustainable vegetable and herb garden. Here are our top tips for growing mushrooms at home, whether you want to DIY or try a mushroom growing kit.
There are a few ways to grow oyster mushrooms at home. You can grow them from scratch, using oyster mushrooms spores, and spawns. You will need to find a medium to help them grow, like sawdust, limestones, sugar, and rice bran in organizing the growing media of your fruit bags. Before it can grow, you need several processes for the oyster spores handling, spawn growing, and media preparation. They will start to grow, normally, after a month.
There are ways to shorten the process though, to make oyster mushroom growing easier to do at home.
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Learn how to grow mushrooms at home with our recommended Best Mushroom Starter Kits.
What Are Oyster Mushrooms: Spores and Spawns
Mushrooms are a type of fungus. Oyster mushrooms are just one type of mushroom. When mushrooms grow above ground, they contain spores. Spores are how mushrooms grow and reproduce, similar to seeds for flowers and plants.
Each spore can develop branching filaments called hyphae (cottony-hairy-like structure) to develop into a fine filament group called mycelium (plural mycelia). The mushroom now is the one with the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus. Like any other mushroom production, oyster mushrooms spores are collected and grown in a clean, sterile medium to help them grow.
Mushrooms, regardless of variety, are a rich source of vitamin B and D, minerals like phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, copper, and potassium, and are also rich in dietary fiber.
Different Varieties Of Mushrooms
Edible mushrooms are generally the ones with fleshy fruit bodies of several fungi species with fruiting structures that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye. They can appear either below ground or above ground, where you can pick them by hand. Among these edible ones are white button mushrooms, Portobello, Shiitake, Oyster, Enoki, Shimeji, Porcini, Paddy Straw, and more.
Getting Started Growing Oyster Mushrooms
There are several materials you can choose to use when you decide to grow oyster mushrooms indoors. You can choose to do it all from scratch that will require more time and a long list of things to gather and prepare. Or, decide to use an oyster mushroom growing kit. It makes mushroom cultivation a lot easier, mess-free, and is a no-brainer activity. These grow kits are pre-inoculated with mushroom spawns. You don’t need to master advanced techniques at all to do the science-thingy activity because they are already complete and ready for your contribution to grow and enjoy them. It is a perfect choice for beginner mushroom growers.
Check out our other tops for Growing Mushrooms Indoors.
Is It Easy To Grow Oyster Mushrooms At Home?
Well, growing mushrooms at home is pretty much straightforward. I could say growing oyster mushrooms is the easiest as they can easily thrive on different substrates, or medium. They can grow in sawdust, straws, coffee grounds, and more. And, oyster mushrooms grow faster than others.
The Three Best Oyster Mushroom Growing Kits
These two best oyster mushroom growing kits are perfect for all who wish to grow and produce them. They don’t need to go through technical seminars and workshops on cultivating or studying the science behind them. These are purely organic grow kits with non-GMO materials. Because these products are a great value, they also work perfectly as gifts for mushroom lovers. It comes in a convenient and compact bag or box that does not occupy so much space.
- Back To The Roots Oyster Mushroom Kit
It comes with plant-based soil infused with oyster mushroom spawn in it and the other inclusions in the kit. - Root Mushroom Farm Oyster Mushroom Kit
The kit contains one Ready to Fruit blue oyster log, a humidity tent, a spray bottle, and detailed instructions. You do not need any extra tools to start!
How Does A Home Gardener Start And What Tools Are Needed?
Nowadays, innovation allows us to experience the convenience of growing them at home. Oyster mushroom growing kits help you succeed at home at a very minimum maintenance requirement. The tedious part of producing them starting from scratch is omitted on your end for you to experience fast results, get a happy face as you see them massively emerging from your kit. Above all, satisfy the excitement of cooking your freshly picked mushrooms to dive into your favorite mushroom recipes.
Tools & Equipment
- Active Oyster Mushroom Spawns or Spores – You can buy oyster mushroom spawns on Amazon.
- Mushroom Growing Media or you can opt to buy readily available growing kits with fantastic inclusions.
- Spray bottle for daily misting
Tips For Growing Oyster Mushroom
How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms
The advantage of buying ready-to-grow oyster mushroom growing kits is that the package itself already serves us the fruiting bag. They are pre-inoculated with the oyster mushroom spores or spawns from the manufacturer’s stock. All you have to do is follow the steps provided in the kit to activate the spawns.
Different producers of growing media kits vary in their ways of opening the bags. Anyway, all of them will have complete instructions to follow to optimize the growth and the how-tos of its care and maintenance. Most of them require a water-soaking way of watering at first.
Now you are about to get excited as you wait for your shrooms to sprout, grow, harvest, and cook. The idea of preparing your favorite mushroom pasta with your best choice of spices and herbs from your nutrient garden at home is so gratifying.
Care and Maintenance During Growing
The care and maintenance for the growing mushrooms are not that laborious. All you have to do is provide them a little moisture twice a day, preferably in the morning and in the afternoon, by squirting a little clean water using the spray bottle.
If your area is too hot, you may need to mist them 2-3 times a day to avoid the surface from desiccating where the fungal mycelia are actively growing. It is careful not to overwater it, as too much moisture will damage the baby-growing mushrooms, causing them to develop rotting and encourage microbial contaminants’ growth.
Oyster mushrooms do not require any light to grow. The kitchen is an excellent area to store them, especially near the sink, as relative humidity is slightly higher in that area, which favors the shrooms’ fast growth to emerge. You may have to check your house’s temperature to ensure that the desired humidity tends them.
Harvesting Mushrooms
After 7-14 days from opening, you can expect the shrooms’ emergence to the grow bags’ exposed part. You can start harvesting oyster mushrooms 3-5 days from the time they begin to form. Look for the large caps in the group with upward and flattened edges.
Hand-pick them by twisting them slowly to a complete turn until it is free from the medium. The growing medium has mycelial growth or baby mushrooms about to emerge, so be careful not to damage the surface significantly. Others use cutters in harvesting; however, if you are not skilled enough, you may end up leaving a stump that will eventually rot. The possible rotting can inhibit the development of the next batch of mushrooms.
Regular picking is crucial to make it regrow faster. If you have plans within the week and you are not sure if you can harvest them on time, you must at least spare some time to do it, or better harvest it young but leave the small ones which you think they will have enough time to grow as you come back and have time to tend and pick them.
Otherwise, they’ll be past their best when you get back. You need to remove and discard the giant, old mushrooms you skipped from the previous picking every harvest. They are not edible anymore as they become woody and have lost their original flavor and taste.
Since these are macrofungi, they will tend to drop white dust onto the surface below. These are spores, and you can harvest them and place inside a paper bag with few squirts of water and store them inside the fridge. They can last longer inside the freezer without affecting their quality. When they dry out, do not despair, as you can use them for your risotto for an added flavor for the meal.
Can You Grow Hydroponic Mushrooms?
Mushrooms, like most plants, can thrive in water and do not lose their superior quality. Unlike hydroponically grown plants, they grow as fungi. They do not need a solid substrate. Instead, they can appear uniquely above the flood table as their substitute substrate. Note that cultivating mushrooms hydroponic way is not for everyone if you consider doing it from scratch.
Again, the aseptic techniques, skills, tedious labor, and a long list of materials and tools will most likely frustrate you and lose interest in pursuing the activity. Plus, you need to research and mix your nutritional supplements for your specific mushroom needs. Hence, there is hope if you still want to pursue growing them hydroponically! Hydroponic mushroom growing kits are now available to cater to your convenience and satisfy the desire to grow them at home.
FAQs – Growing Oyster Mushrooms
On average, you are looking at approximately 20 days for oyster mushrooms to grow and be ready to harvest. This can vary based on growing continues and the quality of the spores.
Of the most common homegrown mushrooms, oyster mushrooms are the “easiest”. This makes the most recommended mushrooms for first time at home mushroom growers.
Oyster mushrooms are typically 3-9 inches in diameter. You want them to be free of any warts or bumps. A nice and smooth oyster mushroom is a good mushroom. In terms of color, you are looking for an off-white or light brown on the top.