Technology of growing mushrooms at home

Growing mushrooms at home can provide us with this unique product throughout the year. Gathering mushrooms in the woods is a fascinating activity, but short-term, season-related, for the inexperienced mushroom grower is not safe, and the unfavorable environment increases the risk. Another thing – mushrooms grown with their own hands, from reliable seed and under control. Breeding methods are known. If you master them in practice, you can cook tasty and healthy dishes containing protein, vitamins, essential amino acids, not only on nice autumn days.

What mushrooms to choose to grow?

Of the many edible species that exist in nature, more than ten have been “domesticated”. When choosing one has to take into account not only one’s own tastes, but also one’s capabilities: whether there is a suitable room, what conditions we can create in it, whether we are ready to allocate time for complex care or whether it is worth trying to grow something less fastidious. For each species has developed its own technology, sometimes it is quite complicated. For more information on growing mushrooms at home, see the article published on our website.

The most popular and sought-after mushrooms – mushrooms, but they can be successfully engaged only in artificially created conditions, and this requires great accuracy in the details, labor and material costs.

Such technology is called intensive, with its help it is possible to have mushrooms at home all year round. A simpler extensive method is to create conditions close to natural, in the open ground. Oyster mushrooms and chives to grow in this way is simple enough, but the harvest will be short-lived and seasonal, as in nature.

How to grow mushrooms indoors?

Sensitive to environmental conditions, mushrooms require a well-adapted room for this purpose.

Suitable basement, shed, airtight enough to maintain the right temperature, ideally – equipped with air conditioning and a fan, you will need thermometers and sensors to determine the humidity of the air and substrate.

Light is not needed for harvesting, it only affects the coloring: in the dark, the caps will grow white. But for the convenience of work, lighting, of course, will be needed.

You also need to prepare means to prevent mold.

Champignons are capricious, the technology must be observed in all the subtleties. Preparation of the substrate is quite a labor-intensive process. The basis – fresh, not overdeposited manure, preferably horse manure, but cow manure can also be mixed with wheat or rye straw. Small amounts of lime, chalk, urea are added. To improve the composition, experienced mushroom growers contribute chicken manure, pig manure. To make the mass mature, it is stacked in a pile, moisten to 70%. Every five days stir it with a pitchfork. Maturation lasts 20 days, after which it is placed in boxes with a layer of up to 45 cm.

Mycelium (mycelium) of mushrooms is sold in stores, to grow it is not easy, this is done by special laboratories. On wooden sticks, you get a higher quality and more expensive seed than on a grain of rye.

Planting can begin when the heat in the depth of the substrate reaches 27 ° C. Staggered pieces of mushrooms the size of a walnut, with intervals of about 20 cm, to a depth of half a centimeter. For good sprawl, you need to keep the room at 24 – 25 ° C for 12 days and a humidity of about 60% of the substrate. Then reduce the temperature to 16 – 20 ° C, cover the surface of the turf soil, not pressing. After 40 days, the first mushrooms appear, and within about 3 months you can harvest.

Mushrooms in the open ground

When grown outdoors, mushrooms do not yield much and depend on weather conditions, but since the method is relatively easy, it is sometimes used in the vegetable garden or in the cottage to grow a crop “for yourself.” The place for the beds for mushrooms should be shaded, a canopy is desirable. Prepare the substrate and sow mycelium in the same way as it is done indoors, but cover the top with straw, the preservation of moisture is the main problem of open beds. If it dries out, if the mushroom grows badly, water carefully, without pouring, mushrooms poorly tolerate a wet substrate.

How do you grow chives on stumps and chocks?

A great advantage of opiate mushrooms is that it is much easier to grow them than white or mushrooms. A completely costless, extensive technology is suitable for them – sowing with mycelium of a stump from a deciduous tree on a garden plot.

A piece of active mushroom should be found in nature, put in a hole made in the stump with a diameter of 1 cm, a depth of 0, 5 cm, and seal it with masking tape, plasticine or plug with moss until next year, when the mushroom will be ready for fruiting.

From then on, you can harvest the opium mushrooms every fall for 5 to 8 years. There is no problem even if you can’t find a suitable stump on the property. You can grow a delicious family on wood chocks up to half a meter long, 15 – 30 cm in diameter.

A portable base even gives an advantage: during spring frosts it is brought into the barn, and with the warming weather it is dug into the soil, leaving a third of the height on the surface. The place should be chosen moist, shady, similar to those in which mushrooms grow in the forest.

Breeding of opium mushrooms in an intensive way. The same wood base with mushrooms planted on it can be used indoors. If you keep high humidity and the right temperature (25° C when the mycelium develops, about 18° C when the fruiting bodies germinate) they will bear fruit for some time at any time of year. In order to grow a really abundant crop of opion, the process must be intensified: master cultivation in plastic bags. They are filled with a mass, the following composition: dry sawdust, boiled for sterilization for 2 hours, mix with oats or barley in a ratio of 3 :1, add a teaspoon of lime to create an alkaline environment. In the bag made mycelium and kept in a room at 20 ° C for a month, then the compacted contents is removed from the bag, the temperature is reduced to 10 – 15 ° C and constantly maintain high humidity. Two types of honeydew – summer and winter (flammulina) – are introduced into the culture, both can be successfully grown according to the described method.

The technology of growing opetuses and oyster mushrooms in jars

When it comes to how to grow mushrooms at home, we mean, of course, not a window sill in the room. The special conditions in which mushrooms grow and bear fruit – humidity, temperature, sometimes a specific substrate – are unacceptable for human habitation. And yet such unpretentious species as oyster mushrooms and beech mushrooms can be grown in some quantities even on the balcony, although this technology is more suitable for a specially designated room.

Glass jars with a capacity of 1, 2 or 3 liters are filled with a mixture: 3 parts wood sawdust (not coniferous) to 1 part bran. Substrate is placed in jars after soaking for a day and mandatory sterilization. Carry out her as follows: keep filled jars for 2 hours in boiling water, leave for 24 hours, then repeat the same procedure. Cooled, put a normal plastic lid with a round hole cut in it (about 2 cm in diameter), put in the mixture mycelium of stumphead or oyster mushrooms. Mycelium development lasts about a month at a temperature of about 20 ° C, with the beginning of germination must be reduced to 10 – 15 ° C. When the lid starts to interfere with the growing opium mycelium, it should be removed, wrapped around the neck of the jar with cardboard (for support) and kept it constantly moist.