I have been experimenting a lot the last 6 weeks with growing oyster mushrooms- and finally had
some success. Time to jot down a few of the things I have learned.
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| Happy oysters (pleurotus ostreatus) 15 days after inoculation! |
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| Second harvest of oysters growing already on day 19. |
- Mushrooms really care about their environmental conditions. Hit the sweet spot for temperature, light, humidity and airflow, and they are champs. Too high or too low in any 1 variable and you have sadness (and no mushrooms).
- Oyster mushrooms will grow on lots of things. So far I have seen good growth on: shredded paper, coffee chaff, coffee grounds, coffee jute bags, hardwood pellets, and rye grain. Nothing surprising here, but neat to see it.
- Too much moisture in your substrate (growing material) is a real killer. Better to have non- sterilized substrate at the right moisture than sterilized and too wet.
- If a culture is given the right conditions it will grow like crazy. I made up 8 containers with different moistures, materials, etc.. and a couple grew like crazy. Just 7 days after mixing the spawn into freshly sterilized rye grain primordia was already forming. I harvested 10 ounces of mushrooms from 1 block on day 15! (see first photo).
- Spawn bags with a filter patch are pretty awesome. Limits contamination and allows fresh air in. Totally worth the cost (~$0.50/bag).
- You can do a lot without a HEPA hood, but having one exponentially increases what you can do. At $1,000+ however, they ain't cheap. Note- if you are reading this and make HEPA hoods- I will be happy to write a lot about how great your hood is if you are feeling generous.... :)
