How To Grow Shiitake Mushrooms At Home The Easy Way
Growing shiitake mushrooms is a lot easier than people think.
The first time I grew them I did it on oak logs and grew about 1000 pounds of mushrooms, but these days anyone can grow a batch of fresh shiitake mushrooms even if they live in a small apartment and you don't need to cut down oak trees to do it.
Shiitake Mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms can cost $4 and $40 per pound or more depending on where you live for good quality shrooms. But with this kit that's about 20 bucks you could easily grow that much in your own house and you're going to have them fresh and you'll get to select when you want to harvest them, whether you want to harvest them when they're small or nice and large.
So you might be thinking, "Hey, how do I get that kit?"
Well, you could go to the website to this direct link at FungiPerfecti to order the Mushroom kit. And no, it's not an affiliate link. I get no commission or incentive to refer you there.
Basically how these kits work is that there is a mushroom spawn, those are the mushroom seeds also sometimes called mushroom plugs, that actually are already built into this kit with all the medium you need.
It looks like a moldy loaf of bread when it arrives but it's really a compressed loaf of sawdust impregnated with mushroom spores.
All you have to do is water it and keep it somewhere where the humidity is high. I just put it in my greenhouse on an oven roasting tray that I kept filled with water and covered the loaf with some plastic.
I watered it every day with the hose soaking it real well.
Sometimes if you have already like a log to basically impregnate your spawn into you could just buy the plugs or the spawn only. So if you're new to growing mushrooms I'd highly encourage you to get the kit because it's basically a no frills and easy approach to grow mushrooms so that you can be successful.
It can be much more difficult by having to pre-treat the wood and the different grow mediums that you'll be using if it's not a setup kit like this.
So we just saw the regular kits, but they also have kits for kids. Now, once again I'd encourage you to get a kit for the kids if you have kids or just to play around to see how mushrooms grow.
Mushrooms will grow many places, but you need it to have the proper conditions and the right spawn or seeds to start off with.
I would encourage you only to eat mushrooms that you know to be edible. Many are psychotropic, psychedelic, and poisonous.
So, if you are going to grow your mushrooms I'd highly encourage you to buy a kit or buy a spawn that you know the variety that you're growing before you do.
Garlic Sauteed Shiitake Mushrooms
Health Benefits Of Eating Shiitake Mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms are high in vitamin A, D, B-12 and have an abundance of health improving properties including boosting the immune system, destroying cancer cells and boosting brain function among other things.
In one study, eating shiitake mushrooms was shown to lower blood pressure within one hour of eating them for people who had high blood pressure and also raising blood pressure for people who had low blood pressure. In other words, it seems to regulate blood pressure to the proper levels regardless of whether they have high or low blood pressure. Pretty amazing really.
Growing and cooking with your own homegrown shiitake mushrooms is something I highly recommend and it's so easy to do.
All images are mine unless noted and credited.
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Nice post, @luzcypher! I'll chime in with a good word for Fungi Perfecti, too (and I'm not affiliated with them, either). As a company, they have done so much to make mushrooms available to the average person, and to share what they know so new businesses can grow from what they have learned. Their founder, Paul Stamets, has really advanced the world's knowledge about fungi, their role in the environment, and how to grow so many different kinds in both small and large operations. Here in Oregon's Willamette Valley, we can buy mushroom kits from local people at Farmer's Markets - because of the sharing of Paul Stamets and Fungi Perfecti. And thanks, @luzcypher, for sharing your experience, too, with your post. Befriend a fungi today! ;D
Paul Stamets is the authority on mushrooms for sure. He's done a lot for the advancement of mushroom culture.
His TED Talk you can watch here is amazing and he made a great documentary called, Paul Stamets on How Mushrooms Can Save Us from Ourselves is worth watching.
Post Hurricane Katrina there was a lot of toxic chemicals, sewage and gas spills to clean up afterwards and Paul used mushrooms to clean it up which you can watch here called Mushroom Magic | Bioneers
Between Paul Stamets and David Aurora (from Mushrooms Demystified), I can't even imagine how much fungi knowledge they have! Those are all great links!
You know your mushrooms gurus, I'm impressed. But then again, I know you like foraging so I'm not surprised.
I'm a foraging fungophile, for sure! ; )
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very good . ..i like this
Thanks for reading it. Do you grow things? Are you a gardener?
Now I'm hungry for sauteed mushrooms.
We've discussed growing them here in AZ. It's dry, so we'd need to figure out a way to do it. And we're into structuring things as passively as possible. Maybe we can keep a place moist enough?
You could partly fill a plastic tub with water, put a drying rack across the top and place the mushroom block on the rack to it's suspended a few inches above the water. Then cover the whole thing in a plastic trash bag. That should keep it humid enough.
I agree with @luzcypher's recommendation. My dad used a similar setup for several oyster mushroom kits, indoors in winter with dry central air, and had great success. The key seems to be a plastic tent to get the humidity in, but with enough air circulation so you don't get mold, and a passive way for the block to wick up water without being drowned in it. If you use water that has sat out a day or two, any chlorine will evaporate and not try to sterilize the mushrooms, lol. And leave room in the plastic tent for the mushrooms to really grow. Have fun -- and report back to the @gardening-trail! ; )
Thanks for the additional input. I'm hoping to get a greywater system set up this summer, so maybe that would make for a good way get some mushrooms going. I'll keep it in mind as I work it out.
Let us all know for the @gardening-trail! (hint, hint) ; )
This is awesome ! I may start growing mushrooms when i move back to the country ! Theres alot of Fir and Larch trees around here ! Will they work ok to grow mushrooms !? 😉👍
Shiitake mushrooms are traditionally grown on seasoned hardwood logs — preferably oak, but maple, birch, aspen, beech, poplar, and other species have also been used successfully.
Thats great to know ! We have alot of birch here in British Columbia Canada ! It would be something cool to try anyways ! Thanks !👍
You make it look so easy!