How to Grow Mushrooms

Growing mushrooms is unlike other gardening, but you can grow mushrooms at home.

There’s no need to be in the dark about growing mushrooms. These tasty chameleons of the food world are fat-free, low in calories, and filled with vitamins, antioxidants, and other nutrients.

The keys to growing mushrooms at home are establishing the right growing conditions and acquiring or making mushroom spawn, which is the material used to propagate mushrooms.

How Mushrooms Grow

Mushrooms grow from spores — not seeds — that are so tiny you can’t see individual spores with the naked eye.

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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.

Where to Grow Mushrooms

Mushrooms prefer dark, cool, moist, and humid growing environments. In a house, a basement is often ideal, but a spot under the sink may be all you need.

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Mushrooms can tolerate some light, but the spot you choose should stay relatively dark or in low light.

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Growing Mushrooms

If you are growing mushrooms in your home, you have a couple of options for materials.
You can buy mushroom kits already packed with a growing medium that’s inoculated with mushroom spawn. Buying a kit is a good way to begin your knowledge of mushroom growing. If you start without a kit, the type of mushroom you choose to grow determines the substrate you grow the mushrooms on. Research each mushroom’s needs.

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Button mushrooms should appear within three to four weeks. Harvest them when the caps open and the stalk can be cut with a sharp knife from the stem. …………

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Article Source: Better Homes And Gardens
Image Source: Mykoweb