fungi

this page has some notes about growing mushrooms at home. i’ve only tried growing blue oyster mushrooms so far.

recently i followed this guide on freshcap.com on how to grow mushrooms out of a 5 gallon bucket. we decided to try it out ourselves. it’s amazing how quickly the bucket fruits once the mushrooms are ready to go!

substrate & grain spawn

we ordered our grain spawn from northspore. originally we were planning on using aspen wood chips for the substrate, but i wasn’t able to find any close to where i live on the day i was searching. i ended up settling on some cat litter that was 100% pine shavings. it is supposedly chemical free, and it smelt good, though frankly i’m sure it was one of the most expensive ways to acquire woodchips. i’m ok with the decision - the pet store clerk was a fungi ethusiast and now i’m going to bring them some mushrooms haha.

like the guide linked, we soaked the substrate in hot water, then layered the grain spawn and put the lid on. then we waited for a few weeks.

mycellieum

we took the lid off to check on the growth after a few weeks. the mycellium had some bits of water sitting on the top, but otherwise, it looked the substrate was gegetting very colonised, which is great. it looked like this:

pins

the bucket has small 1/4” holes drilled around it (spaced at about 4-6” apart). a small cluster of little mushrooms will form which are called “pins”. this is when you’re supposed to ensure that the humidity of the space is very high.

fruiting

and pretty soon you’ve got giant mushrooms growing!

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