Growing your own mushrooms?

[Yaklady]

I have a friend who is trying to talk me into growing my own gourmet mushrooms. Does anyone here do this? My friends makes it sound do easy. He says it comes to you in the form of wooden dowels that you 'innoculate' into existing tree stumps. I have an acre of wooded area on the back of my property that I don't use for anything. Might be a good place to grow mushrooms.

 

[simple life]

I grow them with dowels too but you can't use just any old wood to innoculate with the mycelium.
Old wood, stumps that were cut a while ago, cut tree limbs etc. has already been exposed to other types of fungi.
You have to use newly cut logs and stumps, usually cut within three weeks or your mushrooms will be competing with the existing fungi and you could either get no mushrooms out of the deal or end up eating something that is not safe because you think its what you innoculated and eat a bad mushroom.
Depending on the season they can be cut longer than that but you will read about that when you are selecting your mushrooms.
Certain mushrooms grow on certain woods, some like hard woods and some like conifers so you have to select your mushrooms for the type of wood that you will have available.

 

[patandchickens]

I went to a talk over at Richters Herbs a couple weeks ago on growing shiitakes etc that way. It sounded worth a try, except that you have to have the right kind of logs (and they have to be fresh-cut) and I just don't happen to. But if I did, I'd probably give it a whirl.

FWIW, some of the things the guy talked about that struck me as somewhat more memorable than others were:

-- he suggests buying sawdust plugs rather than dowels, to inoculate the logs, as having a higher success rate. Mind, he also *sells* sawdust plugs himself, but still

-- the logs have to be fresh cut (well, no more than a month old) from a living tree.

-- at least for shiitakes, which is mostly what he was addressing, leave the logs lying on the ground or raised just barely above it, in a shady damp place where they get no more than an hour or two of dappled light (preferably NO direct sunlight), for the first year and a bit. When you see the white mycelium visible at the cut ends of the logs, they are ready for you to try forcing them to fruit if you want, or you can just let them sit there and work on their own timetable.

-- to force them, soak them thoroughly for a day, then stand them up on end and maybe give them a good solid thump against the ground once or twice in the process. Leave them leaning up, still in a shady area, not letting them dry out too much, til mushrooms appear. This can be done several times per season.

-- although he sells the indoor mushroom kits he is not a fan of them, does not htink they are cost-effective.

Note that two of the audience members were people who had previously bought plugs and inoculated logs and got exactly Zippo out of it (one apparently due to mismanagement, the other who knows), so I would suggest don't spend more than you are willing to potentially lose

I do wish I had some hard maple or beech or oak branches I could cut and use for this, it does sound like a fun thing to try.

Pat

 

[simple life]

Also, there are some places online selling dowels for three times what other places do so shop around and get to know what you are buying.
The cheapest place and the most known one is Fungi Perfecti.

If you can't grow them due to the wood available you could consider innoculating a patch in your yard.
I have a morel patch that is only a 4x4 space, you just have to properly prepare the bed before adding the mycelium.
There are a couple of others some places offer that you can grow like that too but the only one I can remember off the top of my head is the shaggy mane type but you can find others online.
I have shiitake, maitake, lions mane, blue oyster, pearl oyster and the morels at this point. I am going to add the brown oysters next.
The thing is alot of people expect the mushrooms sooner than later and think they didn't pan out.
Weather and management do play a big factor in your success.

 

[snewman]

There also are kits that can be grown on some other substrate, like coffee grounds or shredded paper, as opposed to having the right type of logs handy. I'm growing oyster mushrooms in a five-gallon bucket of shredded paper right now.

 

[Yaklady]

Wow! Thanks a bunch, everyone!

 

[wifezilla]

I think there is one that grows on sawdust. Oyster mushrooms maybe?

 

[simple life]

They do have a few that grow on sawdust and they also have some that are in an oil form but all of these I believe produce a smaller number of mushrooms compared to putting 100 dowels into a log.

I went to an agricultural fair and one of the food vendors sold all types of lunches with all things mushrooms and he had a rick set up out in front of their booth of dozens of logs all in full fruit and it was pretty impressive.
He said he did them with the dowel method.
I have the dowels and the morel patch but have been thinking of adding a couple of other outdoor patches as well.
The reason I like the log method is because you can move them where you want if needed and a patch is where you put it and if you decide the area was not the ideal place for it you are stuck with it.
I put the morel patch in an out of the way place and to see how I would like it but since you only need a small area you can squeeze them in here and there.
If you are going to do an outdoor patch start saving some ashes from your fires because you do need a good bit of it for some of them.

 

[Ladyhawke1]

Look around because you can buy kits. Ummmm.......mushrooms.

http://www.gardeners.com/Grow-Your-...&SC=XNET8019&gclid=CJymw4rQ4KACFQdLbQodmG2fAg

They even have kits for the kids to grow mushroomsthat is where I would have to start. They are supposed to be grown in a dark place..duh then I would probably forget them. Doh!

 

[simple life]

The only problem with those is that they are at least 2-3 times more money as the outdoor ones and you get much less from them.
I looked at those myself but couldn't justify the cost when I could get 100 dowels for 10-12 dollars.
Those kits cost $35.00-40.00 for anywhere between 2-5 lbs of mushrooms, shop around and look for cheaper ones.