Mushrooms are delicious, nutritious, and make a wonderful dish all the time. Growing mushrooms is actually very easy. In fact, growing your own mushrooms will also give you the peace of mind of eating it with pleasure, minus the worry that you might be eating something that can make you sick.
Furthermore, weight watchers and the health conscious people should really learn how to grow their own mushrooms. Because
Mushrooms love the indoors. This is another advantage if you hate going under the sun to grow your own food. So if you have a closed yet well ventilated and easy to manage space at home, you can use it to grow mushrooms.
Here are some tips to remember when growing mushrooms:
Choosing The Type Of Mushroom To Grow
There are several mushrooms that are popular in dishes these days. They are the shitake mushrooms, the button once, and the oyster mushrooms. They are all very easy to grow, but you have to give them the right place where they can grow conveniently. Ideally, all can grow on straw or even in sawdust. But to give them the proper environment where they can get proper nourishment, make sure to follow the list below:
Oyster mushrooms = straw
Shitake mushrooms = sawdust
Button mushrooms = manure with compost
So these are the proper, or shall I say ideal growing places for mushrooms that you might want to consider, depending on the type of mushroom that you want to grow.
Spawns
Now that you have a growing media for your mushrooms already, you should now buy your spawns. Spawns are more ideal compared to spores. This is especially true, if you do not have experience in growing mushrooms yet. You can buy spawns online, in a local farmer’s market, or even at a gardening supply store.
Preparing The Growing Media
Before placing your spawns on your growing media, you have to sterilize it first, in order to kill any microorganism that might interfere or contaminate your spawns. You can do this by heating the media inside a microwave oven for at least two minutes. You might want to damp the media with a little water too.
Heat Will Promote Growth
You might want to heat a pan up to at least 21 degrees C. Place the growing media on top of that, and spread the spawns on the growing media. Leave the pan with the spawns and growing media on top, and place in a room that is dark. This kind of environment is ideal for mushrooms to grow quickly and abundantly. This process will take 3 weeks. After that, you will have to transfer it in a room where the temperature is colder (at least 13 degrees C).
Harvest Time
Wait about 3 weeks again, and after that, you will already see mushrooms sprouting.
image courtesy of Dawn Endico/flickr
