It is quite easy to grow mushrooms at home when you meet all the conditions capable of meeting their needs. Mushrooms grow very fast, without any chemicals, and there is nothing better than eat them super fresh, just after harvest. There is no shorter circuit! Let’s not forget that nearly two-thirds of the mushrooms on the market are imported from foreign countries, some from the other side of the world… Here are some tips to follow to get started in the myciculture in the kitchen or in the cellar, a fun activity to share with the children.
Growing edible mushrooms at home: general
Mushrooms grow quickly if they have the following conditions:
- A constant temperature, knowing that it differs according to the species,
- An airy space but without drafts,
- More or less light, again depending on the species,
- sufficient humidity,
- A fruiting substrate,
- Casing soil, for some only.
The easiest edible species to grow at home can simply grow in:
- Cereals,
- coffee grounds,
- Cardboard,
- Sawdust or hardwood shavings (never softwood),
- Paper…
Chilling in a fruiting room may be necessary, but to practice, you start by growing mushrooms that do not need to go through this step.
Cultivating your own mushrooms: the special case of cultivated mushrooms
The button mushroom which is a layer mushroom needs casing soil to cover the growing medium which thus maintains the ideal humidity level. This casing layer or casing is therefore absolutely essential for button mushroom (it cannot grow without it), and promotes the yield of rough-ringed stropharia and sidewalk agaric.
For other species such as the Panicaut oyster mushroom or the hairy coprin, it is facultative. For still others, it is totally useless. This is the case, for example, with oyster mushrooms and shiitake, which do not need any casing soil at all.
There are many casing recipes that can use some of the following ingredients: peat, fermented bark, vermiculite, limestone, chalk, manure… Before preparing your own casing layer, it is important to always be well informed about the needs of the casing. chosen mycelium.
Growing mushrooms at home: the ideal species
Individuals show real craze for growing mushrooms at home. It’s easy, fun, the harvest comes quickly, and you can eat healthy products of excellent taste quality while preserving the environment. This also makes it possible to make substantial savings, especially in the case of mushrooms which are very expensive on the stalls of our markets and on the shelves of supermarkets.
Some species lend themselves particularly well to domestic culture, and growing at home rather than outdoors offers the possibility of widening your selection, the regulation of growing parameters being easier indoors. Among the mushrooms to grow at home, even without any experience, there is inevitably the oyster mushroom, the cultivation method of which we will detail below.
Coulemelle, Paris mushroom, shitake and even morel mushrooms are more difficult to cultivate than oyster mushrooms, but they are also excellent mushrooms to grow at home to have these essentials of gastronomy on hand. Again, it is recommended to start by buying ready-made kits. For information, a culture kit containing 50 ml of conical mycelium of morels costs about thirty euros. This remains quite reasonable given the price of morels on the market where they are not so common…
Growing mushrooms at home: start with a kit
Generally, one can find different species of mushrooms in grow kitwhich is very convenient for do one’s apprenticeship. Each kit allows you to obtain from one to three harvests. It contains all the necessary equipment as well as the suitable substrate already enriched with mycelium and, if necessary, the casing soil. A kit obviously contains a very well-made explanatory note. Just follow it to the letter for guaranteed results.
Buying a few mushroom growing kits is very useful for gain some experience without any failure. We can thus get the hang of it without much effort and harvest after about twenty days. This is very encouraging and this makes you want to move on to growing slightly more delicate varieties.
Growing Panicaut oyster mushrooms at home: long live coffee grounds!
As surprising as it may seem, these oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus eryngii) grow very well in fresh coffee grounds. By proceeding in this way, not only do you offer your whole family the opportunity to eat very healthy mushrooms on a regular basis, but you also recycle organic waste, namely coffee grounds, which find a second life in becoming a fabulous resource. There is nothing like valuing this natural fertilizer – according to the principles of permaculture – which, moreover, increases the taste qualities of the oyster mushroom et improves its texturethis mushroom then having the ideal firmness that is expected.
So here’s how grow oyster mushrooms at home without casing.
- Prepare the substrate by mixing one part fresh coffee grounds to 9 parts wood chips.
- Incorporate the oyster mushroom mycelium which is none other than the colonized substrate of microscopic spores. This parent culture is commonly referred to as mushroom spawn.
- Pour everything into a perforated plastic bag, in order to create a sufficiently humid environment.
- Leave it in total darkness for the duration of the incubation, until the substrate has turned completely white, that is to say when it is completely invaded by fungi.
- Place the bag containing the substrate in the refrigerator overnight to confront it with thermal shock. Under the effect of this stress, the mushrooms will bear fruit.
- Take the bag out of the refrigerator, put it on a tray for example and leave it open in a room of the house (living room, kitchen, etc.), making sure that it is not subject to any drafts and is in the light but without direct sun.
- Moisten the substrate daily using a spray bottle.
Almost impossible to prepare at home because the mother crop needs a sterile environment, it should preferably be purchased from a specialist shop that is supplied directly from the laboratory.
The principle consists in reproducing the best conditions that the oyster mushrooms need to grow, namely what can be found in a undergrowth. It is necessary to offer these mushrooms which can be grown indoors enough sunshine for good light, good humidity thanks to regular spraying, an appropriate temperature, i.e. constant and of the order of 20 to 25°C, i.e. all that in nature constitutes their ecosystem.
In less than a month, the oyster mushrooms will have grown. They absolutely must be harvested as soon as they have reached their final size because they don’t keep for long. The ideal is to taste them extremely fresh, that is to say just after picking, either as an omelette or as an accompaniment to stewed meat, for example.