Pet & Animal: How to Grow Edible Mushrooms

Mushrooms are delicious, but the gourmet varieties can be expensive and difficult to find fresh. If you're a big fan of cooking with mushrooms, you can keep your kitchen stocked and your kitchen diverse by growing your own unique varieties, ensuring that you've always got a fresh fungus to cook with. Read on to learn how to select varieties, methods of fruiting, and cooking techniques for your mushrooms.

EditSteps

EditSelecting Varieties

Buy the mushroom spawn of your desired variety. If you're a seasoned mushroom-grower, you can order spores and inoculate your own fruiting cakes, but to get started and ensure a successful fruiting, it's usually best to buy pre-inoculated "spawn," which is usually available in pre-mixed bags. All you need to do to grow mushrooms is to prepare these spawn in a proper growing medium, keep them in a humid, dark location, and wait.
- If you're going to commit to growing mushrooms, make sure to select a variety that you'll like to eat a lot of.

Consider the humble button mushroom. It goes by many names: crimini, button mushroom, white mushroom, table mushroom, but the agaricus bisporus is one of the most popular, versatile, and delicious mushrooms you can grow. Hearty enough to grill but delicate enough for salads and sautés, you can't go wrong with the button.
- Mushrooms sold as criminis and portobellos (both agaricus bisporus) are essentially white button mushrooms that have been discarded because they lacked the salable whiteness. More recently, as tastes have changed, these once-discarded mushrooms have become more popular, even though they are essentially the same variety. The portobello mushroom is simply an agaricus bisporus allowed to mature slightly, until the cap opens up and plumps.

Grow some wine caps. Not as common as the portobello, but similar in texture, flavor, and heartiness, the wine cap stropharia rugosoannulata is a beautiful brownish-red mushroom with a bright white stalk.^[1] Just as versatile as the button varieties, the wine cap could be a change of pace in your kitchen. Impress your friends at a dinner party with this seldom-used mushroom plucked straight from your garden.

Grow shiitakes. Cultivated for its nutritional properties (shiitake has proven tumor-reducing effects) this Japanese variety is translated "oak mushroom." Grown on logs, the delicious and rich caps of the shiitake mushroom are perfect for soups and stews, as well as a killer mushroom risotto. The stems are somewhat tough to chew when cooked, but are still very useful for flavoring broth.^[2]

Try out some oyster mushrooms. A popular mushroom to pick, the pleurotus ostreatus is commonly known as the oyster mushroom because of its delicate briny taste and oyster-like appearance.^[3] Grown on logs like the shiitake, the oyster mushroom is easy to grow and even easier to eat.

EditGrowing and Harvesting Mushrooms

EditTerrarium Method

Choose a cooler or terrarium with a lid. Styrofoam coolers, plastic terrariums, or even old grow-trays covered with enough wet newspaper can be used to grow mushrooms in the right environment.
- If you've got a dark basement in which to grow your mushrooms, you don't necessarily need a growing chamber with a lid. Use or build some 6-inch deep trays to grow your mushrooms in.
- Use an old fishtank or a plastic storage bin for growing mushrooms in drier climates, or if you don't have a basement in which to grow your mushrooms and need to regulate the temperature more readily.

Fill your container with medium that is suitable for mushroom growing. You can buy your own pre-mixed beds to grow mushrooms, or make your own. Materials as diverse as manure, rye meal, vermiculite, and sawdust are used successfully for growing different varieties of edible mushrooms, but the basic mix will need to include compost and wood chips.
- The medium is very important, because mushrooms--unlike plants--can't manufacture their own nutrients and need an appropriate mix of sugars, starches, cellulose, and nitrogen. The kind of substrate you'll want to create for growing your mushrooms depends on the variety you want to grow:
- A manure-based compost is most appropriate for button varieties. Straw-rich horse manure, aged to the proper pH is appropriate. A composted mixture of corn husks, moss, and sand can also be used to approximate manure.^[4]
- A fruiting substrate that is 50% sand and potting soil and 50% hardwood chips, rice hulls or soybean meal, and a very small amount of lime has been known to work for growing morels and other mushrooms.^[5]

"Plant" the mushroom spawn. Plant your spawn about two inches deep in your substrate, several inches spaced from your other plantings.
- Alternatively, you can sprinkle your growing chamber with your spawn and cover with compost.

Keep the chamber at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or 21 degrees Celsius. Placing the container in a heated room or in direct sunlight may be used to regulate the heat. It will take about 3 weeks for the roots to spread into the medium.
- You want to check for the thin, white thread-like mycelium, which serve as the rootbase of the mushrooms. When you see this spiderweb-like formation happening, place the container in a darkened room or basement, so that the temperature is reduce to 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 16 degrees Celsius, and cover the spawn with a 1 inch layer of regular potting soil.

Spray the soil surface with water to keep it slightly damp. Do this regularly. A wet cloth is also useful for keeping the mushroom and soil damp. If you are keeping the container in a heated indoor space, then spraying everyday is necessary.

Maintain cloth and soil dampness and temperature for 3 to 4 weeks. During this time, keep an eye out for any problems. Pin-prick black dots are a sign of a bad kind of fungus, likewise if your mushrooms seem to be over-saturated and slimy you may need to start over.

Harvest the mushrooms. The mushrooms are ready to be picked when the "veil" connecting the cap to the step of the mushroom is lifted. As soon as you see this happen, the mushrooms are at their optimum ripeness and deliciousness. Pick them.
- Don't pull them up from the substrate and risk knocking loose other mushrooms. Hold them firmly and twist them out, or use a small knife to cut them off near the base.
- Picking the mushrooms regularly is important--don't wait. Keeping the ripe mushrooms out of the way allows the flush to continue spreading, leading to a fruitful harvest.

EditLog Method

Grow shiitakes and oyster mushrooms on oak logs. You can buy pre-inoculated logs directly from spawn suppliers, or you can make your own fairly easily.^[6] If you have access to fresh-cut oak or maple logs (they need to be inoculated quickly, before competing organisms take root), you can inoculate your logs by:
- Cutting a diamond-shaped pattern of 3-8 inch holes in each log
- Filling the holes with spawn
- Plugging each hole with wax to protect from bacteria

Keep the logs in shade. Avoid wind and sun. You can purchase fruiting blankets to cover the logs with, or find a location with good shade-cover to allow your logs time to fruit.

Keep the logs moist. Make sure the logs stay humid and damp by rinsing them down with a hose, until you start to see them fruiting. Do not spray them after you see mushrooms forming.

Harvest the mushrooms. When you see the veil lifted, it's time to harvest your oysters and your shiitakes. Twist them off or cut them with a knife.^[7]

EditCooking Your Mushrooms

Prepare your mushrooms to eat by brushing them of dirt. You don't need to soak the mushrooms or wash them considerably to get them ready to cook. Use a paper towel to brush any dirt or stray particulate from the mushrooms and trim off the stem ends. Discard the stems of shiitakes completely, or save them for making stocks or stews.^[8]
- Some people disagree on the proper method of cleaning mushrooms. You can get them wet, and getting them wet won't ruin the mushrooms, especially if you're eating them right away, but you don't need to. Make sure there's no large dirty spots on them, and they're fine to eat.

Make marinated mushrooms. One of the most simple and delicious ways to prepare and eat your fresh mushrooms is by cooking them quickly in butter and oil and and letting them chill overnight to gain flavor. For this recipe, you'll need:
- A pound of fresh mushrooms, any variety, chopped into quarters or halves
- a tablespoon of butter
- three tablespoons of olive oil
- half an onion, chopped (or shallots, if you prefer)
- two cloves of garlic, chopped
- half cup of dry red wine
- a handful of chopped green herbs, like oregano, thyme, or parsley
- salt and pepper to taste
- Heat the butter and a tiny amount of olive oil in a pan on medium-high heat until the butter bubbles. Add the onion and garlic and cook until translucent.
- Add the mushrooms. Do not stir for a minute or two until you hear them start to sizzle. That means the water is being released. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper and toss them to coat them with the garlic and onions. Continue browning the mushrooms.
- Add more oil as the liquid cooks off and deglaze the pan with the red wine. Let some of the liquid cook off and add the chopped herbs and seasoning to taste. You can eat it now for a delicious side dish or transfer it to a container to chill over night.

Make a mushroom omlette. Mushrooms and eggs go together well, combining a meaty and substantial substitute to pork. It's perfectly simple and complex at the same time.

Experiment with your mushrooms. Cooking mushrooms are versatile and delicious any way you prepare them. Use your imagination and try different combinations. You can make:

Consider drying your mushrooms. If you end up with several pounds of fresh mushrooms, it may be difficult to use them all at once. Consider investing in a food dehydrator to keep your kitchen well stocked with your own produce well into the year.