Growing mushrooms in your backyard isn’t a very tough job. In fact, it’s a job that any person who is happy to grow his/her food in the house should think about. However, it requires a bit of care. As they are lower in calories and fat, they’re a healthy addition to your daily diet. Additionally, growing them at home is easy and doesn’t require a lot of hardwork. The best conditions for growing mushrooms can be maintained inside your home because we get more control over light and other factors that affect its growth.

Determine the type of mushroom that you want to grow: Three types of mushrooms that can be grown easily at home are shitake, oyster and white button. The technique used for growing all these mushrooms is similar. However, source material differs. White button mushroom spores uk. mushrooms grow best in composted manure, oysters grow best in straw while shitakes grow best in sawdust. Which sort of mushroom you determine to grow depends completely on your preferences of taste and health.

Buy mushroom spawn or spores: These are the seed for growing mushrooms. Mushroom spawn serves as the root structure of fungus. Basically it offers sawdust permeated with mushroom mycelia. Several stores sell it or you can purchase it from your preferred traditional gardening supply store too. On the other hand, spores also do the same but require a bit of practice and expertise in comparison to spawn. In short, if you aren’t a seasoned mushroom grower you should always avoid the spores and opt for spawn instead.

Spread mycelia into the growing medium by heating it: Before you start growing your favorite nutritious mushrooms, you’ll need to spread the mycelia equally and thoroughly in growing medium. Heat can help you out in this matter. For doing this place your preferred growing medium into a skillet and mix mycelia with it from your hands. After mixing it place the skillet on a heating pad that has temperature set to 21° C (or 70° F), which is the finest temperature for encouraging growth of mushrooms. In which case you can leave the whole setup in a dark environment for 3 weeks.

Fuel the growth by providing proper environment: After 3 weeks you’ll have to place your setup in an environment that’s dark and cool. Your cellar may work fine in many cases, but in winters a cabinet in unheated room will also be able to do the same job. Cover your growing medium with potting soil and apply of water. For preventing moisture loss you can place a wet towel over the skillet if necessary. The key thing worth remembering here is that your medium should remain humid and cool as mushrooms grow. Keep checking them periodically and apply water if necessary.

Harvest them when they’re grown: Finally, by the end of a 3 weeks long period your mushrooms will be prepared for farming. At first you’ll see small mushrooms appearing… keep encouraging their growth by keeping environment dark, humid, and cool. Harvest them once their truck caps get separated from the stems. You can easily pick them from your fingertips. Rinse them with water and they’re ready to be baked!