Grow mushrooms at home: find out how to do this and enjoy a harvest after only a few weeks
Mushrooms are a nutritious and much-loved food. For many, the hobby of collecting them on walks in the mountains or forests is a real passion. Other people prefer to buy them: fresh, dried or frozen. Whether wild or cultivated, there are many species of mushroom on the market.
Few people know, however, that it is possible to grow mushrooms at home, just like any other type of vegetable. You just need to equip yourself with the necessary and follow some specific steps (which are very simple) to enjoy a home-grown harvest after just a few weeks.
If you are keen to grow mushrooms at home, you need to find out about the types of spores that are sold. After deciding which type of mushroom is right for you, you will need to figure out what kind of growing medium is suitable for that specific mushroom. Speaking of a growing medium, we usually refer to straw, humus, sawdust and any other type of material that replaces soil in home cultivation projects. Each mushroom requires a different type of growing medium.
Both mycelium (spores and seeds) and the medium it needs are readily available in gardening and DIY stores.
Generally, although techniques and materials vary, the operation follows roughly similar guidelines in all cases. This consists in obtaining a suitable container, which has openings for the fungi to grow out of, and where you can alternate layers of the growing medium with more layers of spores. Once this is done, begin to water, periodically, for a few weeks and wait for the mushrooms to sprout.
A precaution to be adopted if, for example, straw or sawdust are used as the growing medium, is to sterilize the medium first.
A simple technique for growing some types of mushrooms requires the use of plastic containers and straw. Obviously, as we have already specified, straw is only suitable for certain types of spores. So, once you have established which mushrooms grow in straw, you can implement the procedure described below. This method is widely practiced with abalone mushrooms and could give you wonderful harvests and much satisfaction:
- Take a plastic container and cut out the base with a utility knife. You will put it back later.
- Drill holes in the body of the tank. Your crop will emerge from these holes .
- Separately, put some straw in a pot and cover it with water. Bring it to the boil, let it "cook" for about half an hour.
- After cooking the straw and letting it cool down, begin to lay down alternate layers of straw and layers of mycelium in the container, taking care to distribute everything in a proportionate manner.
- Reposition the base by securing it with scotch tape and start watering daily.
- After a week, you will see some changes happening and, after just two weeks, you will be able to harvest your first crop of mushrooms.
- The others will emerge in three or four successive phases, within a few days of each other.
- Within a month, all the sown mushrooms will be grown and harvested.
Have you ever grown mushrooms at home?
