Cultivation

Growing Gourmet Mushrooms is Easy and Fun!

Three Stages for Successful Mushroom Cultivation

Spawn Production

Spawn is usually the vegetative mycelium of the mushroom species you want to grow.  It is the form in which the mushroom can be transferred to the growing medium or substrate.  We produce sawdust and grain spawn for many species mushrooms.  You can find out more on our Spawn Products page.

Substrate Preparation

The substrate is the growing medium to which the spawn is transferred for mushroom fruiting.  Depending on the substrate, some preparation may be necessary to optimize it for growing a particular mushroom.  For example:  when growing on outdoors on logs, recently felled live dormant tree wood is best,  when growing on straw, pasteurization or fermentation to reduce competitive organisms gives advantage to the cultivated variety.

Mushroom Growing

Colonizing the substrate with vegetative mycelium after inoculation with the spawn is the first stage.  This spawn run through the substrate is necessary for the mycelium to gain enough energy and mojo for the mushrooms to form.  During the spawn run it is important to keep the substrate from drying out and in some cases to maintain temperature for optimal growth.

Once the mycelium has colonized the substrate-this can be indicated by mushrooms forming on logs, or particular time period certain species- conditions can be changed for fruiting mushrooms.  For shiitake logs, soaking in cool water stimulates mushrooms to form;  for some oysters on straw changing the temperature will promote fruiting.  For more information about particular methods visit the pages about growing Woodland Mushrooms, Garden Mushrooms, and Indoor Mushrooms. 

Learn more about our hands-on Mushroom Cultivation workshops.