Snopes Mushroom You Dont Have to Eat Again
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- Types of Oyster Mushrooms
- Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus 'Blueish Oyster Mushroom' 'Blue Pearl Oyster Mushroom'
- Pleurotus citrinopileatus 'Golden Oyster Mushroom', 'Yellow Oyster Mushroom', 'Tamogitake'
- Pleurotus djamor 'Pink Oyster Mushroom'
- Pleurotus eryngii 'King Oyster Mushroom', 'King Trumpet Mushroom', 'French Horn Mushroom'
- Pleurotus populinus 'Aspen Oyster Mushroom'
- Mushroom Substrates for Oyster Mushrooms
- Straw
- Coffee Grounds
- Hardwood Sawdust
- Coco Coir and Vermiculite
- Manure
- Watering Your Substrate
- Inoculating Your Substrate
- Inoculating Straw
- Inoculating Coffee Grounds or Coco Coir/Vermiculite
- Inoculating Hardwood Sawdust Blocks
- Colonizing Your Oyster Mushrooms
- Coercing Your Mushrooms To Fruit
- Having Problems? Keep Information technology Clean.
- Growing Oyster Mushrooms For Profit
- What To Practise With Your Spent Substrate
Do y'all want to know how to grow oyster mushrooms successfully without having to buy a new kit each time? Possibly y'all'd like to grow a variety which isn't typically found in kits? Let's see what you need to become started and how to do it!
Nigh oyster mushrooms are depression-calorie foods that are high in protein and are loftier in vitamin and mineral content. While they are reputed to accept medicinal properties, specially in Asian medicine, they are even so beingness studied in terms of what their medicinal properties are. They are reputed to aid in lowering cholesterol in one ongoing written report, but how successfully has yet to exist determined.
They're also delicious, and are a common umami flavor in a lot of Asian foods, particularly Chinese and Japanese cooking. Some varieties are described as being meaty in both flavor and texture, and they've get popular substitutes for meat products for those on a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Types of Oyster Mushrooms
There are many varieties out at that place, and you lot'll demand to choose the best variety for y'all. Some of the most popular types include:
Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus 'Blue Oyster Mushroom' 'Blue Pearl Oyster Mushroom'
The blue oyster mushroom unremarkably colonizes its growing media apace. They are a cold-weather variant of the pearl oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus, and grow in temperatures from 45-65 degrees Fahrenheit, although they exercise not fruit heavily unless it's around threescore degrees. They like lots of fresh air to develop their large caps, which means that they can perform well outdoors. The not-blue variation of this species is widely grown throughout Asia and is used heavily in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cooking, simply the columbinus variety is very like in flavor and texture to its whitish namesake.
Pleurotus citrinopileatus 'Golden Oyster Mushroom', 'Xanthous Oyster Mushroom', 'Tamogitake'
Originating in Nippon, northern Mainland china, and eastern Russia, the golden oyster mushroom lives naturally on decayed woods. In the wild, information technology seems to adopt hardwoods like elm. Still, as it'southward a popular edible mushroom (especially in China and Nippon), they are often cultured commercially on a growing medium of grain, straw, or sawdust. They are reputed to convert 100 grams of organic refuse into 50-70 grams of mushrooms, then they're wonderful at converting waste product to nutrient. They are also considered to have antioxidant properties.
Pleurotus djamor 'Pink Oyster Mushroom'
These are heavy yielding and vigorous growers. Vibrantly pink, they produce fruits in only three or four weeks. They abound well at temperatures ranging anywhere from 60 degrees Fahrenheit and upwards. They are also known to be prolific spore producers, so it'due south important to harvest them earlier they drop spores, peculiarly if growing indoors. Straw is an ideal growing medium for this type of mushroom, but they tin also be grown on a supplemented sawdust. On harbinger, they produce at rates from 75%-150% of the normal, merely the fruit tends to be smaller and more delicate. On sawdust, the fruit tends to be larger and meatier. They lose near of their flavor during cooking, but tin be cooked to taste quite like to bacon as a vegetarian culling.
Pleurotus eryngii 'Rex Oyster Mushroom', 'King Trumpet Mushroom', 'French Horn Mushroom'
Male monarch oyster mushrooms are uniquely different in appearance and texture, unlike the other varieties. They produce large horn-shaped private mushrooms rather than clusters. Growing male monarch oyster mushrooms is surprisingly piece of cake on used java grounds that have been sterilized, merely they also tin be grown on harbinger, sawdust, or fifty-fifty paper-thin. The male monarch oyster mushroom has the largest fruit of any of the Pleurotus species, and is widely grown commercially in Asian countries also as in Australia. Its flavor is sometimes described as beingness like to abalone.
Pleurotus populinus 'Aspen Oyster Mushroom'
The aspen oyster mushroom grows throughout the northern United States and Canada. Information technology is easily recognizable as it tends to grow in overlapping fan-shaped clusters, and it prefers to grow on decaying woods like aspen or related species (hence its name). It typically is thick and flattish in shape, and only has merely a slight vestigal stalk, unlike some other oyster mushroom varieties. Information technology typically fruits in June and July.
Mushroom Substrates for Oyster Mushrooms
In that location'south a few different choices for what you volition utilize as a growing media, as well chosen a mushroom substrate. While at least one Pleurotus variety will occasionally grow in dirt, well-nigh mushrooms generally don't grow in soil like other plants, and instead adopt unusual substrates to grow on. Some of the almost popular types are listed beneath.
Harbinger
Shredded straw is a practiced substrate for growing oyster mushrooms. Ideally, you want straw that'due south been run through a wood chipper or driven over with a lawn mower until information technology's 1-3″ in length. Once it'southward cut to size, y'all need to make clean it and pasteurize information technology to kill off any microorganisms and to ensure it's less-likely to go contaminated.
To clean your straw, fill up a tub or bucket with warm water and a small corporeality of dish soap (a couple tablespoons is plenty). Place your straw in the water and piece of work the lather through it quickly with your hands to remove whatever dirt or grit. Once it's clean, rinse it with clean water until no more soap comes out of the harbinger.
To pasteurize your straw, you lot will need a large cooking pot and some form of strainer or mesh basket. Some people have also used bags fabricated of cheesecloth to replace the strainer or handbasket. Fill your pot with water and bring information technology upward to a temperature of 149-180 degrees Fahrenheit (65-82 degrees Celsius). Once the water is at the optimal temperature range, add your straw to the pot either inside the basket/strainer/bag or outside of it. Make sure the harbinger is completely covered in water, adding something on top to keep information technology nether the surface as necessary.
Allow the straw to soak in your hot water, maintaining that optimal temperature range, for about an 60 minutes and a half. And then remove the harbinger, milkshake out as much h2o as possible, and lay it out temporarily on a clean surface to cool and finish draining — ideally, a table covered in sheet plastic that's been cleaned with some rubbing alcohol to kill any potential contaminants. Once cooled, it'southward ready to inoculate with mushroom spores.
Coffee Grounds
One of the simplest and cheapest growing mediums for oyster mushrooms is used java grounds. This waste cloth is very easy to source, every bit you can accept a bucket to your local coffee shop and inquire them for theirs. While they've been pasteurized when the coffee was made, yous should at to the lowest degree pasteurize them once again to be sure that they're safe from contagion. To practice this, place your grounds in a make clean linen or cotton pocketbook, and then do the pasteurization process (heat water to the temps mentioned for straw, place basis bag in the hot water, soak for 1.5 hours). In one case you have soaked your grounds, advisedly remove the fabric purse of grounds and prepare it (bag and all) into a strainer and let the grounds to bleed and cool.
One note: while the remaining water in the pot will look like coffee, I don't recommend drinking information technology. But it volition make your kitchen smell similar coffee for hours!
Hardwood Sawdust
For oyster mushrooms that like hardwoods, like the aspen oyster mushroom, yous may want to consider a hardwood sawdust. These are quite pop when growing mushrooms for sale, peculiarly when mixed with some wheat bran to add extra nutritional value for your fungi. Whatever yous do, merely use hardwood sawdust… mushrooms do not abound well on softwood sawdust.
Unlike java grounds or straw, you tin can't simply pasteurize sawdust… it must exist fully sterilized, as otherwise it's prone to developing molds or other issues that volition ruin your mushroom colony. The best way to sterilize it is using a pressure cooker.
A good ratio of sawdust to bran is to combine just over 5 cups of hardwood pellets (available at near feed stores or in BBQ sections of large-box stores for smoker use) with about 1.v liters of warm water and one.25 cups of wheat bran for nutrition value. The warm water volition interruption down the pressed pellets into sawdust. Then add together your wheat bran and mix well to combine it through all of the sawdust. Make full your purse, pressing out all of the air while forming it into a block shape, and seal it before standing on with sterilization.
Identify the filled abound handbag into a pressure cooker, and heat at 15PSI and at over 250 degrees Fahrenheit for at least ii.v hours to ensure it has been fully sterilized. Allow your sterilized sawdust block, as well chosen a fruiting block, to completely and fully cool before you inoculate it so that y'all don't run the risk of killing your mushroom spores with too much heat.
Coco Coir and Vermiculite
Coconut coir, mixed with vermiculite, is a decent growing medium for many types of mushrooms as well. While oysters seem to really like growing on straw, sawdust, or sterilized coffee the best, you tin can make a blend of coco coir and vermiculite, and you can even add some coffee to it to add an extra nitrogen kick. Mix your moistened coco coir and vermiculite at a 1:1 ratio, add together in a little damp pasteurized coffee for added diet, and y'all're set up to inoculate and grow.
Manure
This is a common substrate for growing button mushrooms, the almost common mushrooms to find at the supermarket. While information technology's possible to grow some forms of oyster mushroom on manure, it's not recommended — oyster mushrooms prefer one of the other options listed above.
Watering Your Substrate
Before y'all inoculate, y'all need to brand sure your substrate is properly prepared — and that includes making sure it's holding all of the moisture information technology will need to grow your batch of mushrooms. While you may exist able to lightly mist the exterior of your abound handbag with water, the vast majority of the fungal growth will happen on what'due south right inside that purse.
Chances are that your pasteurization process has given you enough of h2o for the growth process, as long as yous inoculate your medium immediately after information technology has cooled. A expert way to gauge is past picking up a handful of your substrate. It should not be dripping. Applying a light squeeze, maybe a couple drops of water will come out, and a forceful squeeze volition requite yous a quick stream of liquid. If your medium is doing that, you have the perfect amount of water for growth, and should non need to add more.
If y'all've sterilized your mushroom medium, it too should take enough h2o in information technology (specially if y'all added the right corporeality to make your pellets turn to sawdust). You lot should be able to just inoculate that as it is. Yet, having a misting bottle on hand is a adept idea, just in case you lot exercise need to add h2o as the mushrooms abound.
Inoculating Your Substrate
At that place are slightly dissimilar techniques used for inoculating your mushroom substrate depending on what the substrate is. Let'southward get over the process for each growing medium and await at how information technology varies in depth.
Inoculating Harbinger
Once y'all take pasteurized your harbinger and it'due south cooled off significantly, it's time to blend in your mushroom spores.
While your spore source should have directions for how much inoculant they recommend using, a common ratio is about iii pounds of spore inoculant to 20 pounds of straw. If y'all're doing a much smaller quantity, you can scale this downwardly, but y'all want to stay at approximately the aforementioned levels of spore to harbinger. Using a calibration and a large plastic tub or tote, weigh out your straw and utilize the appropriate corporeality of inoculant for your harbinger weight. You may want to inoculate more straw than y'all think you volition demand!
Once you take everything measured out past weight, thoroughly mix up your straw and the inoculant, being certain to break upwards whatever clumped spores you find. And so, using poly numberless or tubing, tightly pack your straw into the bags/tubing, being sure to pack it downwards very securely. Yous are in essence creating a rotted log for your mushrooms to grow on, and then the tighter you can pack in the harbinger and spores, the better you are. Once your purse or tube is full, press out as much air as you can to crusade it to pack tighter still, and secure the handbag closed with string or a zilch tie.
Once y'all have created your harbinger log, you need to sterilize something to poke holes in the pocketbook's exterior with. A sterilized Exacto pocketknife blade is dandy for this (you can boil it or place it in the oven for an hr or 2 to sterilize information technology thoroughly). Neatly cutting small X-shapes all over the pocketbook'south surface to allow in a limited airflow to help your fungi to grow.
Inoculating Coffee Grounds or Coco Coir/Vermiculite
Inoculating coffee grounds is quite similar to inoculating straw, except that the ratio of mushroom spawn to coffee is slightly different. A good rule of thumb is about 500 grams of spawn to nigh 2.five kilos (roughly five.five pounds) of used coffee grounds. Mix it in a clean basin or tub until the inoculant is fully worked through the moist coffee grounds, and then make your grow bag. You can purchase filter-patch grow bags from some mushroom spawn sellers, or use the poly bags or tubes I mentioned for straw, again using a sterilized Exacto knife to cutting tiny X-shapes in the bag's surface. I highly recommend the filter-patch abound bags, as they tend to keep contaminants out very well and come with instructions as to how to make full them and fix them for utilise.
The same rule holds true for coco coir and vermiculite blends, including those with coffee in them. It'southward actually a very simple process on the whole.
Inoculating Hardwood Sawdust Blocks
Since you've gone to all the trouble of making a sawdust cake, the last thing that you want to do is to mess up that shape. So when inoculating these, frequently the grain spawn inoculant is advisedly added to the abound bag, the pocketbook is closed again, and so you milkshake it to distribute the fine grain spawn all over the exterior of the block. Alternately, you can buy spawn in a liquid solution and inject information technology into the block using a needle. Either way works quite well.
Colonizing Your Oyster Mushrooms
You've done all the hard stuff — now you just need to make sure your oyster mushrooms have an ideal location in which to offset to form. Ideally, this is a cool, clean, and dark area away from directly sunlight but which nonetheless has fresh air. Ideal temperatures for most varieties are 64-77 degrees Fahrenheit, although types like the blue oyster mushrooms can colonize at cooler temperatures.
And now, it'due south time to expect. Initially, you're waiting for the spores to colonize your substrate fully. This tin take 7-21 days depending on the weather your grow bag is in and which type of oyster mushroom you are trying to abound. During this fourth dimension menses, the mycelium will be spreading through your purse, and once it'south spread, the entire surface of your substrate should be white in colour. If information technology is, perfect, you've successfully colonized your medium and it's time to convince your mushrooms to fruit!
If your substrate shows any signs of green mold, that's where you lot may have a problem. That means that something has managed, despite your careful pasteurization or sterilization, to get into the grow purse and is competing with your mushrooms. Very pocket-sized patches of green aren't necessarily a problem, and tin by and large exist combatted by poking a hole at the green spot and pushing in a small amount of table salt on summit of the green mold to try to kill off the opposition. If your entire substrate is light-green, you have failed, and yous will not be growing mushrooms in that batch.
Coercing Your Mushrooms To Fruit
Your substrate is a white mass and it all the same feels damp when gently touched through the side of the bag. What's next? Getting the actual fruit to grow! Recall most the weather condition which mushrooms grow in in nature — they like moist growth medium, shaded environments, and mild temperatures. That's your goal here, likewise.
So at present, it's time to innovate a little bit of light. While you yet don't want direct sunlight, you want more light than you'd had previously. A windowsill or other indirect lighting source is adept for this. At this signal, you likewise want to cut a small hole in the handbag, maybe 2″ across, and occasionally spray water via a misting bottle through that hole. While it shouldn't be necessary if yous properly hydrated your substrate initially, mushrooms love moist and humid environments, and then extra water just helps to ensure success.
After about a week, you lot should beginning to see the first signs of fruit coming out of the sides of the bag through the holes you lot punched initially. That'southward a skilful sign! The fruit should double in size every mean solar day, quickly becoming big and good for you oyster mushrooms. They will grow similar this for the side by side v-vii days.
When the edges of the mushroom caps first to roll upwardly, it's time to harvest before they driblet spores everywhere. Cut the stems at their base of operations or twist the cluster to snap it off the bag, and allow your mushrooms to become dry to the touch on the surface. So, place your mushrooms within of a paper pocketbook in your refrigerator for storage or cook them immediately. If you're going to await a little while before using your mushrooms, pack some newspaper towels around them in the bag to prevent moisture buildup that will cause the mushrooms to rot.
Don't get rid of that abound purse yet, though. Often, you can become 2-3 flushes of mushrooms or peradventure even more out of a single grow purse. Only continue ensuring that the substrate is moist, misting it to remoisten information technology if it's non, and continue it in indirect light at a controlled cool temperature. You can go a lot of mushrooms out of a single colony.
Having Problems? Go along Information technology Clean.
Every bit mentioned earlier, if you begin to run into any greenish mold in your grow bag during the colonization process, something else contaminated your batch. That means that y'all probably didn't work in a truly sterile mode.
To prevent bug like this, wash down all surfaces you lot're working on and all containers you're using with rubbing alcohol or a professional person cleaner (something like Star-San or another brewery cleaning solution is ideal, every bit it's meant to kill all manner of infection sources). Make certain your hands and arms are thoroughly cleaned before touching your substrate or your inoculant. Wear a mask to prevent coughing or sneezing into your batch, and take precautions to keep your hair tied back and out of the way. The cleaner the environs you lot can grow in, the better off you are… and the less likely you are to experience whatsoever problems.
Indoor growing of mushrooms tends to not create whatsoever pest issues, simply if yous practise take whatsoever pests, it'southward likely to be indoor types like spiders. While these shouldn't be hard to eliminate just by keeping your growing space clean, you can also use normal spider-repellent options to go on them at bay. Simply avert adding anything on the surface of or inside of your grow bags, every bit that could negatively affect your oyster mushrooms.
Growing Oyster Mushrooms For Profit
At present that yous've learned how to grow oyster mushrooms, y'all might exist wondering why nosotros don't all abound them… later on all, it'due south actually a very simple process for what sells for a high price in the supermarket. You might fifty-fifty exist considering whether you tin make some money at doing it yourself.
Well, I've got some swell news for you. With a trivial ingenuity and networking with local restaurants or farmers' markets, you can in fact grow oyster mushrooms for sale. And yous can practise information technology for a surprisingly low initial cost.
If y'all are growing oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds, and you take a regular supplier in your local coffee shop, all you need is a cool colonization room and a source of indirect lighting for fruiting. You may be able to convert a spare sleeping room into a mushroom habitat, in fact. If y'all don't have a supplier for coffee grounds, large bales of wheat straw are inexpensive at feed stores, and if you have a weed-whacker and a large barrel, you tin use that to cut up large quantities of straw into smaller pieces.
Your biggest cost outlay and so volition be in acquiring your mushroom spawn, and that's not super-expensive. However, if you want it to be fifty-fifty less expensive, you lot can learn how to cultivate your ain mushroom spawn, and make it a fully DIY procedure. The heaven is the limit!
What To Do With Your Spent Substrate
One of the all-time things about growing oyster mushrooms – or any mushroom, for that matter – is that once you lot've gotten all the flushes of fungi out of the numberless, you at present have some rich organic material left behind. Don't put that leftover white-tinged straw or coffee or sawdust in the trash can, considering it can have a whole 2d life.
If you have a compost tumbler or a stationary composter, your spent substrate is platonic for turning into compost. In fact, it's commonly done in the commercial growing manufacture, then the subsequent compost is then sold equally "mushroom compost". This rich source of establish diet is a worthy improver to your garden. Even if you don't have a normal compost pile, you lot can feed your spent substrate to vermicomposting worms, as they'll swallow information technology greedily and give y'all nutrient-rich worm castings equally a outcome.
An added bonus of making mushroom compost: you tin can use old mushrooms to generate spores and maybe get some other bloom or 4 of diverse types of mushrooms correct on superlative of your compost pile. This just works if your pile is fully shaded, merely this video will give yous some inspiration on how to perchance coax another batch or two of mushrooms out of your remnants.
I promise this has inspired you to grow your own oyster mushrooms… and maybe even to grow oyster mushrooms for sale, if you're feeling ambitious! Have you ever grown mushrooms before, and what'south your favorite type?
Ella Wilson of TinyPlantation.com contributed to this commodity. Thank y'all Ella!
The Green Thumbs Behind This Article:
Source: https://www.epicgardening.com/how-to-grow-oyster-mushrooms/
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