Two of the best reasons to garden are to grow things you would otherwise have to pay too dearly for at the supermarket and to grow great-tasting things you cannot buy at any price. Mushrooms often fill both bills.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, which grow quite differently from plants. Beginning as dustlike spores released from the gills or pores beneath the cap, mushrooms spend much of their life as mycelium — a network of moist fibers that use powerful enzymes ...to penetrate wood or other organic matter.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, which grow quite differently from plants. Beginning as dustlike spores released from the gills or pores beneath the cap, mushrooms spend much of their life as mycelium — a network of moist fibers that use powerful enzymes ...to penetrate wood or other organic matter.
Chemically, mycelium does the opposite of what plants do. Materials rich in carbon that tend to break down slowly, wood, for example, are the preferred substrate of many culinary mushrooms, but there is a fungus at work in nearly every ecological situation.
Mushrooms grow from spores—not seeds—that are so tiny you
can't see individual spores with the naked eye. Because the spores don't
contain chlorophyll to begin germinating (as seeds do), they rely on substances
such as sawdust, grain, wooden plugs, straw, wood chips, or liquid for
nourishment.
A blend of the spores and these nutrients is called spawn.
Spawn performs a bit like the starter needed to make sourdough bread. The spawn
supports the growth of mushrooms' tiny, white, threadlike roots, called mycelium.
The mycelium grows first, before anything that resembles a mushroom pushes
through the growing medium.
The spawn itself could grow mushrooms, but you'll get a lot
better mushroom harvest when the spawn is applied to a substrate, or growing
medium. Depending on the mushroom type, the substrate might be straw,
cardboard, logs, wood chips, or compost with a blend of materials such as
straw, corncobs, cotton and cocoa seed hulls, gypsum, and nitrogen supplements.
Get you away from eating mushrooms in the grocery store that have been sprayed with pesticides and get you on a path to eating fresh, organic and healthy mushrooms at home. Cultivating mushrooms is considerably different from other gardening techniques and requires a different set of tools. Before beginning a venture with mushrooms you will need the following items:
[1] Pitchfork for handling compost. The type best suited has five or six prongs.
[2] Trays in which the mushrooms will be grown. Wooden trays or boxes made from old lumber are quite adequate. Use long nails or — better yet — screws when constructing these trays because the moisture from the compost tends to cause the wood to warp and the containers will not last through many growing seasons if poorly constructed. The trays should be from ten to twelve inches deep.
[3] Spawn. Spawn is a pure culture of mycelia (slender root-like filaments) that has been grown in specially prepared media and will continue to grow when placed in a suitable environment.
Moist spawn is actively growing mycelia that must be used immediately after it is received from the laboratory. This type allows growth to get under way quickly when introduced into the compost because it is already in the process of growing. While this type of spawn is used by commercial growers, it is fragile and must have a continuous supply of nutrients.
A home gardener cannot be certain that the compost will be at the proper stage for use when the spawn arrives. For this reason, it is more reliable and easier to use dry flake spawn or dry brick spawn. As the names imply, these are dry and dormant, so either may be kept until conditions are conducive to good growth in the mushroom house.
[4] Gypsum. The chemical name for gypsum is calcium sulfate. It can be purchased at building supply companies at very little cost.
[5] Watering can. A pump-type sprayer that gives off a fine spray or mist is needed to maintain the proper moisture content in the trays without adding large water droplets.
[6] Straw. Bales of straw can be bought from farmers or lawn and garden shops. The straw will be mixed with manure to form the compost.