Grow Shrooms at Home

Mushrooms are healthy and tasty food items that are used in several cuisines. Be it the vegetarian recipe or non-vegetarian dish, mushrooms are a preferred ingredient. The high nutritional value and minimal fat content makes shrooms a highly popular food for people of all ages. Mushroom growing at home, is widely practiced all over the world. One more advantage of these edible fungi is the ease in growing them. So, no need to worry, even if you are growing mushrooms for the first time. Let's take a look on how to grow shrooms at home.

How to Grow Shrooms at Home?

Detailed steps on how to grow shrooms at home, depend upon the mushroom variety, which you have opted for growing. The basic aim is to understand the growth factors and prepare the growing medium. If you are thorough with these, then more than half of your work is completed. Information on required materials and procedure to grow shrooms indoors are given below:

Required Supplies
For growing mushrooms at home, you need the following:

• Mushroom spore
• Growing medium
• Water spray bottle
• Clean water
• Indoor thermometer

Growing Procedure
Prepare Compost
Prepare the growing medium, as per the instructions provided in the kit. You just have to mix the raw materials and moisten with water. Do not sprinkle excess water as it is not desirable for germination of the mushroom spores. In case of planting shrooms in jars, it is ideal to sterilize the growth medium in a pressure cooker. Allow the medium to cool down before inoculating the spores.

Spawning
After careful preparation of the compost and/or growing medium and sterilization, sow the shrooms spores. Depending on which variety you have chosen, place the spores at a certain depth. You can refer to the kit for the preferable depth; the best way is to keep the kit with you while proceeding the successive steps.

Growing Phase
Place the spore inoculated jars in a cool and dark corner of the house. Check and regulate the temperature of the growth medium within a range of 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit. In order to maintain maximum humidity for growing mushrooms, you can place a pan containing water near the jars.

Harvesting
Within 6-8 weeks of sowing spores, some of the mushrooms will mature. Harvest only the fully developed mushrooms. You can pick further crops after every week. Mushrooms that are harvested after the first crop are called flushes. When you have finished harvesting shrooms from the jars (after about one month), discard the growth medium and start again.

How to Grow Shrooms Without a Pressure Cooker

As we have seen already, a pressure cooker of appropriate size is used for the sterilization process. So, if you have a fair idea about other options for sterilization, then you can successfully grow shrooms without a pressure cooker. The ideal method that can be followed is steaming. A large cooking pot having a correct sized lid that can hold the jars is required for steam sterilization.

Add water (not much) to the pot and place a steel utensil (upside down) at the bottom, then place the jars over the utensil, ensuring water from the pot will not enter the jar. For proper steam sterilization, allow the water to boil for about an hour and then cool down. You can inoculate shroom spores when the temperature inside the jar is about 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

With this information, I hope you have understood the procedure on how to grow shrooms at home. If you have a query like 'how to grow shrooms at home without spores', then the answer is by using mycelia or by tissue culture method. For growing with mycelia, you can follow the same procedure as above. Tissue culture method is usually done in well maintained laboratories under controlled conditions of light, temperature and humidity. To be more precise, growing mushrooms by tissue culture is not a practical option for carrying out at home.