Does anyone have any links to a tutorial on how to grow mushrooms, from store bought mushrooms, at home? Just looking for something to do, and being able to grow those basic white or brown mushrooms from the store seems like something to do. I would also imagine it could be good for my garden.
I know how to get a spore print from a cap, but like, what do I do next? Just put it in dirt?
Any help would be appreciated!
I would encourage you not to grow Agaricus Bisporus in your garden outdoors if it’s not native to wherever you happen to live. Mushrooms can’t really be contained as easily as plants so it could become invasive very easily. Or it will just die if your climate is too far off from what it’s used to.
If you’re looking for an easy way to get started with mushroom cultivation, you might want to try one of those oyster mushroom kits you can find online. Just follow the directions and grow the initial crop of oysters, then if you’re so inclined, you can use the block of mycelium from the kit to start again. To reuse the kit you need a plastic turkey bag, alfalfa pellets (rabbit/guinea pig food from a pet store), and Timothy hay or newspaper pellets (both used as rabbit/guinea pig bedding so same aisle as the alfalfa).
Sterilize the turkey bag and boil the mix of alfalfa/hay/paper (the substrate). When the substrate cools layer chunks of mycelium from the kit with layers of wet substrate and pack it down tight so there’s no air in between.
Leave the bag in a warm dark place until the mycelium covers the substrate (a couple weeks or so, check about once per week). Then bring it out and cut holes in the bag and put it in a tub or box. From there it should be the same procedure as the kit, mist it a couple times per day and fan it to get some fresh oxygen in there.
You can keep repeating this process to get more oysters. If you want an oyster log, you can stick piece of a dowel in your substrate (sterilized of course) and wait for the the mycelium to grow on to it. Drill a hole in your log and stuff the dowel in, with any luck the oysters will take over the log and you’ll keep getting oysters until they eat the whole log.
Just look up an uncle Ben’s tek method of mushroom growing. It’s a technique for growing illicit mushrooms but works the same for all mushrooms as far as I’m aware.
Also you’ll need to look up a tutorial on how to transfer your spores from the spore print into a syringe so you can inoculate the bags.
works the same for all mushrooms as far as I’m aware
Only mushrooms which grow on grains (in grass), mushrooms that naturally grow on wood like oysters need different substrate.
You can do a thing called a live tissue transfer where you use living flesh of the mushroom to inoculate agar then use that to inoculate a growing medium such as brown rice/grain.
I would suggest getting a copy of Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms By Paul Stamets
The person has some bad takes and I disagree with how he markets some shit nowadays, but this book was written 20 years ago and is by far and wide the best and most approachable book on the subject of growing edible/medicinal and psychedelic mushrooms out there, including what you’re asking OP.
Genuinely one of the best resources to get started with.
Typically you need sterile spores in a syringe that you inject into sterilized growing medium that you basically can in canning jars and once it’s colonized you place that into a moist and dark container full of shit and you’ll get mushrooms of the type you want.
Its easy to contaminate it and get different and potentially poisonous fungus from spores that are pretty much everywhere.
It’s pretty hard to accidentally grow poisonous mushrooms unintentionally, haha
Much more like to get regular contamination which will ruin an attempt.