Garden Hobbies Growing Mushrooms: Kit or Spawn? With Substrate Or Not?

Summary: Garden hobbies such as growing mushrooms by kit or by spawn, with or without substrate, ensure fresh, healthy food from indoor and outdoor home gardens.

shiitake mushrooms growing on sawdust and cereal log, yellow oyster (yellow and white), pom pom (egg shaped), beach (small cap), royal trumpet (large stem), maitake (dark brown on plastic wrapped growing log) and oyster (light gray) mushrooms displayed at USDA Farmers Market and Harvest Festival, USDA Whitten Building east parking lot, Washington DC, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013: Lance Cheung/USDA, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Growing mushrooms such as crimini, enoki, maitake, oyster, Portobello, shiitake and white buttons are as easy to cultivate in home gardens as they are tasty to serve for snacks and in meals.

Mushrooms bring exotic practicality to home gardens because they have beta-glucans that activate immune system cells and fight infection and since they never reproduce by seeds. Crimini, enoki, maitaki, oyster, Portobello, shiitake and white button mushrooms can grow from mushroom kits, indoors and outdoors, and from mushroom spawn, with or without substrate. Experience determines the method since kits accommodate least experienced cultivators, spawn with substrate appeals to more experienced gardeners and spawn without substrate attracts most experienced growers.

All three growing methods entail cool, humid environments that ensure access to moisture in the event of dry spells and that receive little or no light.

Growth follows when spores, as mushroom equivalents of seeds, and such nutrient-rich substances as grain, sawdust, straw, wood chips and wooden plugs are formed into spawn.

Spawn grows mycelium, the delicate, thread-like, white roots that tend to produce greater quantities and higher quality for home gardeners growing mushrooms with substrate than without. Substrate, whose soil pH is 5.7 to 7.0, has cardboard, compost, straw or wood chips blended with cocoa and cotton hulls, corncobs, gypsum and nitrogen supplements. Substrate for garden hobbies is important since buttons demand composted manure, crimini and Portobello 30-day-old compost, oyster mushrooms straw and enoki, maitake and shiitake hardwood sawdust.

Oyster, shiitake and white button mushrooms join crimini, maitake and Portobello in requiring temperature ranges between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (12.78 and 15.56 degrees Celsius).

Enoki mushrooms keep to an even cooler temperature range, at 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7.22 degrees Celsius), than the other six mushrooms commonly grown by home gardeners.

Chilly temperatures, humidity and moisture from sleet and snow, short days and the sun's low angle lead to basements as wintertime, not summertime, home gardening venues. Kits and spawn with or without substrate may grow best between fall and spring in southerly hardiness zones and between spring and fall in more northerly. Home gardeners with premixed kits need only follow instructions whereas garden hobbies with spawn require 1- to 2-inch (2.54- to 5.08-centimeter) potting soil toppings over mycelium.

Home gardeners growing mushrooms from spawn with substrate observe the best and quickest results in 6-inch- (15.24-centimeter-) deep, 14-inch- (35.56-centimeter-) long, 16-inch- (40.64-centimeter-) wide, seed flats.

Growing mushrooms from mushroom spawn with substrate and from premixed kits provides results within one month if growth requirements of cool, humid, moist darkness are met.

Experience with straw or woody substrates qualifies gardeners for growing mushrooms on 40-inch- (101.6-centimeter-) long, 6-inch- (15.24-centimeter-) wide aspen, beech, birch, maple, oak or poplar logs. Beeswax-coated, 0.61-inch- (1.54-centimeter-) deep, spawn-filled holes 6 inches (15.24 centimeters) apart run up and down 24 fresh, fall-cut logs kept moist and upended in teepee-like fashion. Mushrooms grown from kits and in composted substrates show quicker growth rates than those grown in straw or woody substrates and, by six months, on logs.

Cool, dark, humid, moist temperatures, excepting the month growing mycelium at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 degrees Celsius), and variety-specific substrates turn mushroom-filled gardens into mushroom-rich meals.

shiitake plugs with beeswax log: saiberiac, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

shiitake mushrooms growing on sawdust and cereal log, yellow oyster (yellow and white), pom pom (egg shaped), beach (small cap), royal trumpet (large stem), maitake (dark brown on plastic wrapped growing log) and oyster (light gray) mushrooms displayed at USDA Farmers Market and Harvest Festival, USDA Whitten Building east parking lot, Washington DC, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013: Lance Cheung/US Department of Agriculture (USDA), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/11179120305/

shiitake plugs with beeswax log: saiberiac, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/saiberiac/17358129342/

For further information:

Pleasant, Barbara. October/November 2004. "Grow Your Own Mushrooms." Mother Earth News.
Available @ http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/grow-your-own-mushrooms-zmaz04onzsel

Russell, Stephen D. 2014. The Essential Guide to Cultivating Mushrooms: Simple and Advanced Techniques for Growing Shiitake, Oyster, Lion's Mane, and Maitake Mushrooms at Home. North Adams MA: Storey Publishing.

Wiley, Deb. "How to Grow Mushrooms at Home." Better Homes and Gardens.
Available @ http://www.bhg.com/gardening/vegetable/vegetables/how-to-grow-mushrooms/