What growing mushrooms involves

A mushroom is the fruit of a fungus. The body of it, called mycelium, is a web of white threads that lives inside its food. Growing has two phases. First the mycelium spreads through the food (growers call the food substrate, and this phase colonization), which happens in the dark and needs nothing from you. Then you trigger fruiting by giving the colonized block fresh air, humidity and a little light. A ready-to-fruit kit arrives with the first phase finished, so day-to-day the hobby is small: two or three mistings a day, a look at how the clusters are coming along, and a harvest with a kitchen knife. Most of the skill is noticing what the mushrooms are telling you about air and moisture.

White oyster mushrooms growing out of clear bags of straw-colored substrate on wooden shelves — Oyster mushrooms fruiting from bags on a shelf

02

Two ways to grow

Indoors on blocks and bucketsYou start with a ready-to-fruit kit, a block of sawdust the supplier has already colonized, and then mix your own in a drilled bucket of soaked aspen chips. Both fruit within weeks on a counter or shelf, and a bucket costs far less per pound than a kit.

Start here

Order one oyster kit, cut the bag open the day it arrives and set it on a kitchen counter out of direct sun. Mist it morning and evening, and once it has fruited, pack your first bucket.

UW-Madison Extension bucket method

Mushroom log cultivationYou drill fresh hardwood logs, tap in spawn plugs and seal them with wax, then leave the logs in outdoor shade. It takes most of a year to start and then fruits for several years with almost no upkeep.

Start here

Line up two or three freshly cut oak or maple logs before you order anything, then buy shiitake plug spawn and inoculate within a few weeks of the cut.

Cornell guide to log-grown shiitake

Open a card for the first thing to do. The log card also adds the log gear to the shelf list.

Free guide to growing on logs

Cornell Small Farms: Best Management Practices for Log-Grown Shiitake Free guidebook covering log selection, inoculation, incubation and soaking in full

03

Which mushroom to start with

Blue or pearl oyster

The fastest and most forgiving. It fruits anywhere from 55 to 75°F and tolerates a missed misting. Start here.

Pink and golden oyster

Just as quick, but they want a warm room (70°F and up) and wilt within a day or two of picking, so cook them at once.

Lion's mane

A single white pom-pom with a texture like crab meat. It needs steadier humidity than oysters and browns if water sits on it, so mist the air around it and not the mushroom.

Shiitake

Slow and fussy on an indoor block, reliable on logs. Save it for the log route.

Not yet

Button and portobello mushrooms need composted manure and a casing layer, and morels are unreliable even for professionals.

A harvested cluster of pink oyster mushrooms lying on a grey surface — A cluster of pink oyster mushrooms

04

Your first grow, step by step

The tested method for the bucket steps

UW-Madison Extension: Growing Mushrooms in Buckets The tested bucket method this guide follows. Needs 1 lb of grain spawn, 5 to 6 lb of aspen chips, a lidded 5-gallon bucket, a drill and boiling water

What you can grow in your first month

A first flush of oyster mushrooms

One or two clusters from a kit, usually half a pound to a pound, ready about two weeks after you open the bag.

A second flush from the same block

Soak or rest the block as its instructions say and it fruits again, smaller, a week or two later.

A packed and colonizing bucket

Chips and spawn layered in a drilled bucket, turning white inside by the end of week two and pinning through the holes soon after.

A jar of dried mushrooms

Slice whatever you cannot eat within a few days and dry it in a low oven for soups and stock.

A stack of inoculated shiitake logs

Drilled, plugged and waxed in one afternoon if you take the log route. The work is finished this month, the harvest comes next year.

05

The four conditions you manage

Humidity

Mushrooms are about 90 percent water and have no skin to hold it in. Aim for 80 to 90 percent humidity right at the block, which is what frequent misting or a loose plastic tent with a few slits gives you.

Fresh air

Mushrooms breathe out carbon dioxide like we do. Long stringy stems and tiny caps mean stale air, so open the tent wider or move the block somewhere less enclosed.

Light

Enough to read by for a few hours a day. Light tells the mushroom which way to grow and deepens cap color. It is not food, so a windowless closet with a lamp works.

Temperature

Ordinary room temperature suits most beginner species. Cooler rooms give slower, denser, darker mushrooms, and anything above 80°F invites mold.

Close view of the pale gills under a grey oyster mushroom cap, lit softly from a window behind — Oyster gills in window light

06

What trips beginners up

Expect the first flush to be the big one.

Each later flush is roughly half the size, and most blocks are spent after two or three.

Expect some kits to do nothing.

A block that sat in a hot delivery truck can be dead on arrival, and good suppliers replace it if you send a photo.

Expect green, black or pink patches on a homemade bucket sooner or later.

That is mold beating your mushroom to the food. It is not a reflection on you, and the fix is to bin it outdoors and start again.

Stop soaking the block with the sprayer.

Pooled water rots pins and causes more failures than dry air does.

Stop sealing the grow up to keep humidity in.

A closed tote or tied bag grows leggy, deformed mushrooms within days.

Stop waiting for mushrooms to get bigger.

Past their prime, oysters shed a visible white dust of spores and turn tough.

Stop buying a pressure cooker, agar plates and lab gear on day one.

Kits, buckets and logs need none of it.

07

Staying safe

Only eat the species you planted.

If something else sprouts from a block, bucket or log (a different color, shape or a stray mushroom nearby), do not eat it. Wild look-alikes can colonize outdoor logs.

Buy spawn and kits from an established supplier that names the species and strain on the label.

Cook everything you grow.

Raw oyster and shiitake are hard to digest, and undercooked shiitake gives some people an itchy rash.

Try a small cooked portion the first time you eat a new species.

A few people react to mushrooms they have never had.

Harvest oysters before the caps flatten and keep fruiting blocks out of bedrooms.

Their spores can irritate the lungs, and people with asthma or mold allergies should grow in a ventilated space or outdoors.

Take a moldy block outside before you open it, and wash your hands and the surface afterward.

The wood

Oak is the classic choice for shiitake, with sugar maple, beech and birch close behind. Avoid pine and other conifers, and anything that has been lying on the ground for months. Logs are not something you order online: ask a tree service, a firewood cutter or a neighbor who is thinning trees, and expect them free or for a few dollars each.

The size

Logs 3 to 8 inches across and 3 to 4 feet long are easy to carry and hold moisture well.

The timing

Cut from healthy living trees while they are dormant, from leaf fall to bud swell, and inoculate within a few weeks so wild fungi do not move in first.

The pattern

Drill holes 1 inch deep and about 6 inches apart along the log, in rows 2 inches apart, offset so they form diamonds. A 4-foot log takes 30 to 50 plugs.

The seal

Tap a plug into each hole until it sits flush and brush melted wax over it to keep the spawn from drying out.

The wait

Stack the logs off the ground in full shade where rain reaches them, and water them in a dry spell. Expect the first shiitake 6 to 18 months later, then flushes each spring and fall for three to five years.

09

Where to learn more

University extension services publish the most dependable free instructions, because they test a method before writing it up. Local mushroom clubs are the other good source: most are known for foraging walks, but many also run cultivation nights where members inoculate logs together and trade spawn. Good spawn suppliers post growing instructions for every strain they sell, and those are worth reading before you order, since they tell you which food and temperature each strain wants.

Free guides and clubs

10

How the shopping list is built

The only thing you must buy is a kit, and one kit is a complete first grow for about the price of a pizza. Everything in the recommended tier is for the step after that: a proper mister, a humidity gauge so you can stop guessing, and the spawn, chips and bucket for a bucket grow. Kits cost the most per pound of mushrooms and buckets the least, so the bucket gear pays for itself by the second batch. The log gear is its own group because it only makes sense if you can get fresh hardwood. Living spawn is perishable, so order it when you are ready to use it and keep it in the fridge until then.

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the shelf list. Clicking a card selects it there, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out. The log gear and the optional book stay out of the total until you switch them on.

Ready-to-fruit mushroom grow kit

Essential · Living culture

A block the supplier has already colonized, so your first grow skips the slow and failure-prone part. You cut it open, mist it and harvest in about two weeks.

budget

Back to the Roots Organic Oyster Mushroom Grow Kit, Harvest Gourmet Mushrooms In 10 Days

4.1(17.4K)

$14.16

Mushroom Growing

What growing mushrooms involves

Two ways to grow

Which mushroom to start with

Your first grow, step by step

The four conditions you manage

What trips beginners up

Staying safe

How mushroom log cultivation works

Where to learn more

How the shopping list is built

Stock the grow shelf

Ready-to-fruit mushroom grow kit

Fine-mist spray bottle

Digital thermometer and humidity gauge

Oyster mushroom grain spawn

Aspen wood chips

5-gallon bucket with lid

Shiitake plug spawn

5/16 inch drill bit for plug spawn

Log sealing wax

Mushroom cultivation book