Grow Oyster Mushrooms at Home in a Bucket! (Super Easy Method) | GroCycle

Plastic Free Mushroom Farming

We discuss why plastic bags are so widely used in mushroom growing and take a look at some alternatives.


One of the most common bits of feedback we've heard from people is something along the lines of:

"why do you have to use so much plastic?"

And it's a fair point...

Single-use plastic bags are widely used in the mushroom industry, and with millions of tons of substrate filled into bags each year, it's a really harmful practice that needs to be addressed.

So that's what we're looking at in this week's video:

In the video we take a look at:

- Why plastic bags are used so much in mushroom cultivation
- Alternative options like beds, buckets and bottles

- Biodegradeable bags (and why they're not the answer we're all hoping for)
- Why we're switching half of our production over to growing mushrooms in buckets


If you'd like to learn more about how to set up and run a low tech mushroom farm, come and download our free ebook here:

https://grocycle.com/e-book/

Shipping Container Farms | Growing Mushrooms In Shipping Containers

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Top 5 Best Mushroom YouTube Channels

“Discover How to Grow Delicious, Organic, Pesticide-Free Mushrooms at a Fraction of the Cost of Buying Them from Supermarkets”

• A step by step guide to mushroom growing
• All the information you need to set up a mushroom growing operation
• Commercial growth medium for mushroom growing
• Creating a nutrition mix for use in mushroom growing
• Getting your mushrooms to bud can be the key to growing mushrooms
• Growing mushrooms successfully enough to share with your friends and acquaintances
• How long does mushroom growing take?
• How mushroom growing can benefit the health of your entire family
• How to ensure that your mushroom growing is successful
• How to go about expanding on your mushroom growing
• How to make sure your mushroom growing doesn't get derail
• How to use a greenhouse for mushroom growing
• Just how does one go about mushroom growing
• Just how easy is growing mushrooms?
• Making the right growth medium needed for mushroom growing
• Mushroom growing for an amateur gardener
• Mushroom growing for the ambitious commercial planter
• Planting the spawn is only the first step in mushroom growing
• Preparing the growing medium when growing mushrooms
• The basics of mushroom growing
• The best tips and tricks to mushroom growing
• The conditions needed for mushroom growing
• The secrets to mushroom growing
• Tips and tricks that can help you towards successful mushroom growing
• What you'll need for large-scale mushroom growing
  
  

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What you'll need for large-scale mushroom growing

What you'll need for large-scale mushroom growing

This article will tell you about all the different things you'll need if you want to go in for mushroom growing on a large scale. 

This will take a little trouble, but if you do it right, will ensure that your family always have fresh, organically grown mushrooms, a food both nutritious and exceedingly high in protein. 

I can see that you're already interested, so let's just cut to the chase. 

Now mushrooms can take a week or two to grow, or sometimes even more, depending on the richness (or otherwise) of the growth medium.

As such, you'll want to ensure that you have the most mushrooms growing at once, because this means that you'll have a regular supply for your loved ones, or to distribute among acquaintances, or even to put up for sale. 

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who are interested in buying fresh, organically grown mushrooms. 

Now the first thing you need to arrange is a room in which to do your growing. 

Don't put this right in your home if you're going to do some large scale growing, though the basement might be an acceptable place if you can maintain the temperature.

At this stage of mushroom growing, you need to make sure that the temperature remains within ten degrees of fifty five degrees Fahrenheit, so if your basement gets much colder than that, you'd have problems growing mushrooms there. 

If you can maintain the temperature, however, it might be an ideal place to grow mushrooms. If you have an outhouse, garage, or barn, they might also be nice places in which to grow mushrooms. 

There's one more thing that's needed besides a stable temperature range, and that is an absence of light. Mushrooms don't like light, period, so if you choose a place that you can keep completely dark, they'll be more likely to grow successfully.

Lastly, you need to keep the wind out - mushrooms don't like winds either, especially if they carry any chill along with them, and if you put them in windy places, don't be surprised to find your mushrooms dying after a draught. 

However, you can just put them in closed boxes with removable lids, and if you do this, they should be fine so long as you maintain the temperature and humidity. 

Mushrooms in the early stages of growing love lots of water, though once they sprout you'll need to push back on the humidity a little. 

Spores, growth medium and even trays to plant mushrooms in are available everywhere, and mushroom growing is very much easier than most people think

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Tips and tricks that can help you towards successful mushroom growing

Tips and tricks that can help you towards successful mushroom growing

How you go about mushroom growing can directly impact how successful (or not) you are at growing them, of course. 

If you go into this without sufficient information, you may end up with a lot of wasted effort. 

On the other hand, if you do a little research (something that's so easy to do with the course here) you can easily make it a vast success. 

Because the simple fact of the matter is that it's extremely easy to grow mushrooms. 

You just have to do things right. To start with, it's best not to use mushroom spores directly.

While it's possible to buy mushroom spores, these spores are actually so tiny that they're microscopic. 

This means that they can be quite difficult to handle, at least until you get used to things. 

You can also harvest spores from mature mushrooms, simply by cutting the cap off and placing it on a large sheet of paper or on a sheet of glass. 

However, I would advise against using spores, not only because they are inconvenient to handle (a single breath of wind will scatter them all over the house or yard), but also because they're vulnerable to contamination, and if they contaminated with spores from wild, poisonous mushrooms, the consequences could be disastrous.

Preventing contamination is also the reason why it is recommended that you always go in for mushroom growing indoors. 

Indoor growing greatly reduces the chances that a few wild spores might come to rest in your mushroom beds, and grow up among your safe mushrooms. 

If the mushrooms that grow from the wild spores turn out to be poisonous, it could cause serious problems for anyone who eats them. 

And that's just one reason why you shouldn't grow mushrooms outdoors.

Another reason is that the growth medium is so rich that a lot of germs and unhealthy algae and fungi can start to grow in it if it's left in an open environment.

In a closed environment, things are more controlled, and this means that your mushrooms can be relied upon to not only not be poisonous, but also not to carry any disease producing pathogens. 

Of course, you will wash the mushrooms before cooking them, but considering the growth medium that mushrooms grow in, it's better to be safe than sorry. 

These are just a few tips that you can use to help you with your mushroom growing. Read more here

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The secrets to mushroom growing

The secrets to mushroom growing

If you always liked mushrooms, 

mushroom growing is a great way to assure your family of a regular supply of this excellent food. 

Many people think that growing mushrooms takes some special kind of skill, or at least extremely specialized growing conditions. 

But this is absolutely not true. In reality, mushrooms are as easy to grow as anything else, and can be a good deal easier to grow than many kinds of food.

They often need less care and require growing conditions that potentially allow even a person in a city to grow them. 

Did you know, for example, that mushrooms can be grown in your own flat? 

I know of city residents who have grown mushrooms in a box in their homes. 

Of course, if you live in the countryside you have the option of growing mushrooms on a far larger scale, simply because you have so much more space available. 

But even if you live in the city, and have a garden shed, you could grow your mushrooms in it.

Now, all mushroom growing takes is some growth medium and some mushroom spores or spawn, as they are also called. Yes, that's all that it takes to grow mushrooms. 

Now, while mushrooms may not take too much space, and may not require too much care, the ambiance you provide them with can be all important.

Mushrooms do not like light, so make sure you keep light away from them. 

If you're growing them inside your house, you can grow them in a closed box that will keep the light out, and the temperature inside the box stable. 

If you are growing them in a shed or in your green house, you will need to ensure that there is a very minimum of light falling on them, and also that you exclude draughts. 

You will also need to maintain a stable temperature range, because mushrooms are very susceptible to changes in temperature. 

If you do not maintain a stable temperature range, and it varies beyond around fifty to sixty degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, your mushrooms are in trouble.

On the other hand that's all that it really takes to grow mushrooms. 

You just need spawn and the growing medium. Place the spawn in the growing medium and place it in a dark, moist place. 

Water it regularly every day, and pretty soon your mushrooms will be ready for harvest. There really isn't all that much to mushroom growing.

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The conditions needed for mushroom growing

The conditions needed for mushroom growing

More and more people are becoming interested in mushroom growing. 

There are a good many reasons for this. 

Firstly, there's the simple issue of the increased cost of living. 

Most people find that any way that cuts down on living expenses is one that is eminently useful. 

Now, most would think that growing one's own food would be too much bother, but when that food is mushrooms, you'll find that it's hardly any bother at all.

Of course, this depends to a great extent on the scale upon which you want to take up mushroom growing. 

On the very smallest of scales, mushroom growing is truly effortless. 

Everything is really so pre-packaged these days, from TV dinners to mushroom growing, and all you have to do, really, is to purchase a kit. 

The kit will have virtually everything that's needed, and all the instructions that you require. 

But, since it is a kit, it will not save as much on costs as a little more innovation of your part might do.

If you would like to save the most, of course, you should do everything yourself, from harvesting spores from mushrooms that have become mature to actually doing all the task of preparing the growth medium (a reasonably big job) on your own.

Generally speaking I would only advise this for people who are thinking of going commercial, but to be honest, even doing everything yourself is pretty easy.

There are lots of instructions available on the internet, and if you're here, you already know for yourself what a source of knowledge the internet can be. 

Feel free to experiment, and never be so afraid of failure that you don't try something new. 

Yes, you might make a few mistakes along the way, but mushrooms are really a low-maintenance organism, and ultimately I have not the slightest doubt that you'll be growing those mushrooms with hardly any effort at all. 

The growth medium itself is often a simple method of self-fermenting a special mixture of manure and straw over a few days.

This takes a little careful overseeing, but other than that is really pretty easy to do, and it more or less makes itself. Extracting spores from mature mushrooms can be as simple as placing the cut-away cap on a piece of glass and waiting a day or two for the spores to fall out, and then collecting them.

There's really nothing about mushroom growing that needs to be an unsolvable mystery.

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The best tips and tricks to mushroom growing

The best tips and tricks to mushroom growing

Mushroom growing is really not all that difficult if you know what you're doing. 

While it is true that mushrooms can prove a real health hazard if you allow the mushrooms you're growing to become contaminated by wild mushrooms, in reality this rarely happens unless you decide to grow your mushrooms outdoors. 

If you decide to grow your mushrooms outdoors, please be warned that you must be an expert at recognizing the strain of mushroom that you're growing.

A person cultivating mushrooms usually provides an ideal environment in which the mushrooms can thrive, 

and if you do this outdoors, it's quite possible that strains of wild mushrooms will try to take advantage of the ideal growing conditions that you're providing.

This is impossible to counter as mushrooms spread via microscopic spores blown by the wind, and these microscopic spores will inevitably infest the growing environment that you have provided for your mushrooms.

This wouldn't be a problem if there were not so many strains of deadly poisonous mushrooms among wild mushrooms species. 

Actually, no matter how confident you are of being able to recognize safe mushrooms, you should still preferably grow your mushrooms indoors. 

This really is your best bet because it is much more difficult for wild spores to infest such a controlled environment. 

And this decreases the chances of a dangerous accident occurring. 

So, how long do mushrooms really take to grow?

Well the mushroom growing period can obviously vary from species to species but your mushrooms will usually take at least a week or so to put out their mycelia. 

After that, the growing process begins, and your mushrooms will be ready for harvesting about eight weeks into this period. 

Don't be fazed by the long growing times, because mushrooms actually take much less time to grow than a great many other food crops, and the fact that they grow so quickly is an added and considerable advantage.

If you want to have mushrooms regularly, then all you need to do is to ensure that you plant a great many of them at staggered intervals, so that there are always some mushrooms ready to harvest. 

This is an easier task than you might think, because it's just a question of planting more mushrooms in the seedling box trays that they favor. 

Since mushrooms grow in the dark they require an exceptionally small amount of space. 

This means that when you go in for mushroom growing at home, you can plant them in trays set in rows, or even on shelves, one on top of the other.

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The basics of mushroom growing

The basics of mushroom growing

Many people don't realize that mushroom growing is something that can be done right in their own greenhouse. 

And since mushrooms are such a wonderful food, this can be a superb addition to one's diet. 

However, you may need to change things about in your greenhouse if you want to grow mushrooms, because the one thing these edible fungi cannot stand is too much light. 

Yes, they can tolerate a little light, but perhaps I should modify that statement and say that they can tolerate a VERY little light.

Better than even a little light is no light at all. They also like a stable temperature range, so make sure that stays within the range of between fifty and sixty degrees Fahrenheit - anything more than that will cause problems for your mushrooms. 

You need to be careful to keep out any draughts. The air needs to be moist, because that's just how mushrooms like it. 

If you've looked at any mushrooms growing in the woods, you'll have noticed that they don't exactly grow in the soil. 

Similarly, when you grow them in your greenhouse, or even in a garden shed, you're going to have to arrange (or buy) a special growing medium for them.

There are two ways of going about mushroom growing, and the method that you choose will depend upon just how many of these fungi you plan to grow.

If you're starting out on the very smallest scale, a log of wood should do just fine for a growing medium.

Yes, that's absolutely right, you can grow mushrooms on a log of wood. And why should that surprise you - haven't you seen them growing around tree stumps in the woods? All you need is a good log of some reasonably hard type of wood - oak does just fine.

Take that log and make a few reasonable holes in it, and fill each of them with some mushroom spawn.

Then let nature take its course. 

If, on the other hand, you intend to grow mushrooms on a larger scale, you're going to need to bed them down in trays filled with a special mushroom growing medium. 

Well, I did tell you before that they won't grow in soil. What you're going to need is some compost mixed up with straw or a mixture of straw and horse manure.

You can plant the mushroom spawn in this, and your mushrooms will grow just fine. 

If you need to grow more mushrooms, you'll just have to set out more trays and set aside more space for your mushroom growing.

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Preparing the growing medium when growing mushrooms

Preparing the growing medium when growing mushrooms

Mushroom growing can be both lucrative and fun. It all depends on how well you can manage to grow them, and on the amount of space you have available. 

And of course it depends on the quantity you wish to grow. If you're just getting started and would like to study the process, I would suggest that you buy one of the mushroom starter kits. 

These mushroom starter kits usually provide you with a container to grow the mushrooms in, a growth medium, and, of course with the mushroom spores or spawn. 

Generally speaking, growing mushrooms from such a kit is extremely easy.

All you have to do is place the growth medium inside the box and place the spawn in it. Then you just keep the box closed in a room in your house which is safe from draughts, and the mushrooms just grow. 

It's really just that easy. You have to water the mushrooms, of course. This involves misting them with a water spray. 

You wait for the mushrooms to grow sufficiently, and then harvest them. After you harvest them, you keep misting the growth medium again until the next batch grows.

You can sometimes get a good many mushrooms from a single batch of growth medium and spawn, and they can provide some very nutritious and tasty meals for your family. 

So a mushroom growing kit is a great idea if you like mushrooms, or even if you want to learn the basics of growing them. 

But if you want to grow them on a larger scale, you're going to need more space. Of course they don't take up too much space, but you still need the bare minimum. 

I would suggest the garden shed as the best possible place to grow them, or a greenhouse should you have one available.

Bear in mind, though, that mushrooms will never stand the excess of light available in most greenhouses, and you'll have to find a way of darkening the greenhouse, or at least of darkening a certain section of the greenhouse. 

If you can do that, you can have quite a few batches of mushrooms set up and growing right at once. 

You can either buy growing mixture and spawn, or you can make your own growing mixture and buy the spawn, just as you wish. 

Making your own growing mixture is likely to lower your operating costs if you're at all thinking of commercial mushroom growing.

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Planting the spawn is only the first step in mushroom growing

Planting the spawn is only the first step in mushroom growing

That's right, planting the spawn is only the first step in mushroom growing, but it's nevertheless necessary to get it right. 

Seedling boxes work very well when planting spawn. Remember, of course that you must not use mud in the boxes, but instead compost, or specially prepared manure mixed in well with equal quantities of straw.

There are simple ways in which to prepare the 'soil', or growth medium as it is more correctly called.

But if you don't want to be bothered with this, there are plenty of commercial preparations available. 

Bear in mind, though, that the commercial preparations will cost more than any nutrient formula you make yourself. 

It's also absolutely not true that the commercial preparations will work any better than your home-grown growth formula. 

Now, the right way to plant the spawn is to mix in spawn flakes with the nutrient formula. Make sure you space the flakes out sufficiently that the young mushrooms have place to grow. 

Then you need to make sure that the growth nutrient is watered sufficiently.

However, if you're buying your spawn commercially, like most people who go in for mushroom growing at home, you have a choice between flakes and complete bricks made up of spawn. 

If you go in for the bricks instead, you just need to break them into one inch cubes and poke holes in the nutrient mix that go in about two inches. 

Place a cube in each of these holes, close up the holes, and commence watering. Either kind of spawn works just as well. 

The moment you start watering, the spores will begin to grow, though this growth may not be apparent at first. In time, however, a find white web will form on the surface of the nutrient formula. 

This white web is actually the root system of the budding mushrooms.

Keep watering, and in time the tiny mushrooms will appear. 

This is a time when you need to reduce the amount of water by a considerable extent, because too much water at this time will cause your new mushrooms to wither and die.

The mushrooms will not need too much water now until it's time to harvest them. 

Harvesting is pretty effortless - you can just use a kitchen blade to cut right through the stems. A simple twist and pull is also an effective method of harvesting mushrooms. 

Once you harvest each mature mushroom, it makes room for the next mushroom growing in its place.

 

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Mushroom growing for the ambitious commercial planter

Mushroom growing for the ambitious commercial planter

So what sort of person does best at mushroom growing? It's a cliché, of course, but there are people and there are people. 

And while some people are happy enough with their daily routine, there are those others who wish they could reach for the stars. 

Well, that same philosophy could apply to mushroom growing, at least facetiously speaking. 

Not that reaching for the stars is any real part of mushroom growing, but while some people who grow mushrooms are quite satisfied with growing them out of kits, you'll have others who want to grow mushrooms on a much larger scale, who learn how to make the growing medium, how to harvest the spores for 'replanting' and who learn to cut costs to make themselves truly independent and commercially viable.

However, if you want to grow mushrooms commercially, all the will in the world won't make it possible unless you have some place to grow them in. 

You can even grow mushrooms on a medium to large scale in a spare room in your house, but I'd advise against this if you can possibly avoid it. 

While many people do grow mushrooms commercially within their own homes, it's best not to push your luck - the growth medium for mushrooms is not of materials that you'd want in large quantities within your house.

An outhouse or perhaps a greenhouse, or, in a pinch, a garden shed, would do much better. 

Now, the second thing that you'll need are containers in which to put the growth medium. You might need a number of large, flat trays for this. 

How many trays you need, of course, depends on the amount of mushrooms you want to grow. 

I'd advise you to start out small while you're still in the experimental stages, and then expand as your experience improves and you gain more knowledge and confidence.

Most garden stores should have trays of the kind that you need. After this, you obviously need material to plant your mushrooms in, and no, soil absolutely will not do. 

Mushrooms do not grow in soil. Instead you need a special medium to grow them in. 

You can try compost if you're willing to experiment, but if you're not, then a specially cultured medium of horse manure and straw is what will make you're mushrooms grow best.

This is not worth preparing unless you're really thinking of doing things on a large scale, but if you are, go ahead, because with this and the containers, you have everything you need for your mushroom growing.

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Mushroom growing for an amateur gardener

Mushroom growing for an amateur gardener

Actually, I wonder whether the word gardener suits a person engaged in mushroom growing, since mushrooms are fungi, and so can hardly be said to grow in a garden. 

In fact, mushrooms grow in a very different environment from plants and gardens, requiring a complete, or almost complete absence of light, an absence of light that would quickly kill most plants.

However, if we use the word gardener in the sense of a person who cares for growing things, then I suppose the name fits. It's very easy to care for mushrooms, primarily because they are basically a wild organism that has been harnessed by men for food. 

Another nice thing about mushrooms is that they are fungi, not plants, and this means that they can be a far greater source of protein than plants can ever provide. 

Another good reason for growing mushrooms if you're a health conscious individual is the fact that if you grow the mushrooms yourself you can be sure that they were grown without all the excess additions of pesticide and fertilizers that are so common in most industrially grown foods these days.

When you try your hand at mushroom growing yourself you know that they are both organic and that they will benefit the health of your family. 

In this day and age when so much of our lives seem controlled by the mechanized and the artificial, home grown mushrooms can provide a wonderful source of health building protein for your family. 

Best of all, this wonderful food is easy, and indeed almost effortless to grow. There are starter kits available that make the whole process extremely simple without spoiling the organic aspect of things in any way. 

These starter kits are an excellent way to learn the basics of growing mushrooms, and I would certainly recommend them if you have never grown mushrooms before.

Mushroom kits are also a great idea for anyone who wants to grow mushrooms on a small scale without too much trouble. 

These kits come complete with everything you could possibly need to grow your own mushrooms, including the growing medium itself, and plenty of mushroom spores.

The procedure, if you have one of these kits, is easy and even elementary. All you need to do is to put the growth medium into a container, which is also sometimes provided. 

Even if the container is sometimes not provided, it should be easy enough for you to find a flat box that should do perfectly well. 

Once the mushrooms are planted in the box, they do require a certain amount of light watering, or rather spraying every day. This is all the care needed for most home mushroom growing.

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