Mushrooms belong to the Plant kingdom and are specifically classified as Fungi. They are also known as Toadstools, and they bear fruit. Usually, they are grown above grown or on soil and can sometimes be grown on top of their food source. Mushrooms are heavily used in the culinary arts and are considered a delicacy in many cultures.
The most significant advantage of Mushrooms alongside their taste is the ease of growing them in your backyard. Moreover, they have many nutritional benefits and have many advantages that make mushrooms good for you.
Decide your Mushroom
Mushrooms come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Your first order of business is to find out what type of mushrooms are right for you. Mushrooms have generally been used for many years to add a lot of flavor to various dishes.
You can also clump them up with other vegetables. When trying to cultivate a Mushroom, you should first find spores for the mushroom you are interested in. Here is a list of Mushrooms we recommend starting with:
After you have decided on your Mushroom, you should read up particular interesting facts about it, and if there are any guidelines, you should follow them.
Extracting the Spore using Spore Prints:
Mushrooms produce billions of spores that spread using the Air and grow in various regions around the globe. To harvest Spores so you can grow your mushrooms, you need to make a Spore Print. For that, you need a piece of white paper, black paper, and a glass container. We use colored papers as Spores can sometimes be light or dark in color, so it is easier to identify them.
You need to put the papers die by side, remove the stem from the mushroom you chose and leave the mushroom covered with glass overnight not to let it dry. After waiting a day, all the spores should be present in the paper. You can then use these spores to start growing your mushrooms as they are perfect for you.
Start with a Petri Dish:
After you have collected your spores, start by putting a sample of them in an extremely clean petri-dish that is filled with nutrient-rich substances such as Agar. Ensure that there is no cross-contamination, or else bacteria might out-compete the Mushroom, which will lead to shallow growth if any growth at all.
After some time, you should start seeing some growth in the spores as they turn into larger blobs of culture due to the constant cell reproduction happening inside them. Once the Mushrooms reach this stage, they are known as a Culture, and their collective is known as Mycelium.
Transferring Mycelium to Grain:
One pre-requisite before moving the Mushroom to Grain is assuring that it is sterilized. You should now see the Mushroom growing rapidly over a few days and taking over the entire container that you put it in.
It would help if you kept adding more grain into the mix until you see no real way for the Mushrooms to go further. Mushrooms are not ripe for harvesting at this point, but they look quite aesthetic as décor in your house.
The Fungi should now have festered into the entire container and have been infused with the grain. At this point, mushrooms at this stage are now known as spawn. This spawn can make ten more containers filled with spawn if you have enough sterilized grain. So, we recommend that you take some of the spawn out and transfer it to another container so you can start the cycle once again.
If you are planning to reap the benefits of Mushrooms, then you should keep a few samples handy with you at all times in case you wish to grow them up later or something messes up your current project due to whatever reason.
Adding Substrate to the Mix:
The substrate is the material you use for the final growth of your Mushrooms. The material usually depends on the type of Mushroom you are trying to grow. Most usually, Substrates can vary from straw, wood chips to compost. The type of substrate you choose will dictate what type of particular sterilization methods should be used if any at all.
At this point, you should put your Fungi closer to the Sun and avoid the light at all costs if they are of a variety that cannot be directly exposed to heat as they are susceptible to any environmental changes now.
It would help if you let the Mycelium overtake the entire substrate as it will consume all of the nutrient’s presence inside it.
Allowing your Mushrooms to Grow – Pinning:
Pinning is the act of suddenly changing the temperature conditions of fully grown Mycelium to introduce little knots that turn to pins giving Mushrooms their iconic shape. You have to induce changes such as reducing the temperature or increasing the humidity over time. This is a primary method of fruiting.
These small pins will grow up over time and grow large enough to be harvested if given enough water and the right conditions. Healthy cultivation of fungi can produce larger pins in stages called flushes. It would help if you harvested these flushes whenever they grow.
Mushrooms are a fascinating farming material. They are nutritionally rich, and mushrooms are extremely good for you as they have a lot of essential nutrients and vitamins such as Beta Blockers and Anti-Oxidants. Growing them is surprisingly easy, and they are more of a hands-off Fungi as they do not require a lot of attention.
Mushrooms can be grown in huge batches and are thus extraordinarily lucrative and have a delicious taste. They are relatively inexpensive to grown and maintain and can be done from the comfort of your backyard, not requiring a lot of space to be grown in the first place.
These reasons are why mushrooms are good for you in terms of nutrition and from an entrepreneurial side.