Mushroom Kits?
 

Watched a garden show on TV and they were growing mushrooms in the
kitchen. Said something about a mushroom kits you can order online.
Has anyone ever grown your own mushrooms in the kitchen with a kit?
Any inexpensive web sites that sell these kits?

Thanks,
Tom

wrote in message
...
Watched a garden show on TV and they were growing mushrooms in the
kitchen. Said something about a mushroom kits you can order online.
Has anyone ever grown your own mushrooms in the kitchen with a kit?
Any inexpensive web sites that sell these kits?

I've bought several of them over the years and have always gotten good
results. We grow ours in the basement. I generally buy from one of the big
seed catalog companies but you can find lots of hits if you Google on
"mushroom kit". Here's the URL for Park Seed's website; they have a search
window, type in "mushroom".

http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/s...mainPage=page1

I've tried a couple times to use the basic kit to expand to boxes of
composted horse manure in the basement but they never grew there. Has anyone
had experience in growing non-kit mushrooms?

Paul

In article ,
"Pavel314" wrote:

wrote in message
...
Watched a garden show on TV and they were growing mushrooms in the
kitchen. Said something about a mushroom kits you can order online.
Has anyone ever grown your own mushrooms in the kitchen with a kit?
Any inexpensive web sites that sell these kits?

I've bought several of them over the years and have always gotten good
results. We grow ours in the basement. I generally buy from one of the big
seed catalog companies but you can find lots of hits if you Google on
"mushroom kit". Here's the URL for Park Seed's website; they have a search
window, type in "mushroom".

http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/s...splay?catalogI
d=10066&storeId=10101&langId=-1&mainPage=page1

I've tried a couple times to use the basic kit to expand to boxes of
composted horse manure in the basement but they never grew there. Has anyone
had experience in growing non-kit mushrooms?

Paul



That will only work if you sterilize that substrate first.
Pressure cooking it for 20 minutes will work.

Bag it first, sterlize it in the bag, then transplant some of the
mycelial clumps to the new substrate. If your mushrooms eat horse
manure, that should work.

I've only messed around with oyster mushrooms and they are wood
consumers.

One of the best places for edible mushroom kits is he

http://fungi.com/
--
K.

Sprout the MungBean to reply

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell‹you
see, I have friends in both places." --Mark Twain

"Katra" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Pavel314" wrote:

I've tried a couple times to use the basic kit to expand to boxes of
composted horse manure in the basement but they never grew there. Has
anyone
had experience in growing non-kit mushrooms?

Paul



That will only work if you sterilize that substrate first.
Pressure cooking it for 20 minutes will work.

Bag it first, sterlize it in the bag, then transplant some of the
mycelial clumps to the new substrate. If your mushrooms eat horse
manure, that should work.

I've only messed around with oyster mushrooms and they are wood
consumers.

One of the best places for edible mushroom kits is he

http://fungi.com/
--
K.

Sprout the MungBean to reply

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell see, I have friends
in both places." --Mark Twain

Katra,

We have one of those propane turkey cookers which my wife uses for dyeing
wool. I put some water in the bottom, put the composted manure in the
perforated container that sits within the main pot, covered it, and let it
cook and steam for a half hour, to kill any wild fungi that might have been
present.

However, I never thought that mushrooms limited themselves as to their food.
I should have know that, as we have a small stand of Dye Cort mushrooms out
back which only grow under pine trees. The fellow who delivers our hay says
that he takes any hay that gets rained on to the mushroom growers up in
Pennsylvania; guess I should have taken a clue from that.

When you grew oyster mushrooms, did you grow them on fresh sawdust or wood
chips? Do you know of any good websites with instructions for growing
mushroom?


Paul

your boiling of the substrate was way too little - the center of the
manure never got up to boiling temps. To grow mushrooms outside, you
need a mushroom "spawn". It is much more hit and miss with the spawn
than with the indoor kits. If you want to grow them in logs, then you
buy "plugs". Oysters will grow on the widest variety of substrates, in
fact they will grow an on anything organic. find all you need
(including instructions that you should follow carefully) at
www.fungi.com.

In article ,
"Pavel314" wrote:

"Katra" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Pavel314" wrote:

I've tried a couple times to use the basic kit to expand to boxes of
composted horse manure in the basement but they never grew there. Has
anyone
had experience in growing non-kit mushrooms?

Paul



That will only work if you sterilize that substrate first.
Pressure cooking it for 20 minutes will work.

Bag it first, sterlize it in the bag, then transplant some of the
mycelial clumps to the new substrate. If your mushrooms eat horse
manure, that should work.

I've only messed around with oyster mushrooms and they are wood
consumers.

One of the best places for edible mushroom kits is he

http://fungi.com/
--
K.

Sprout the MungBean to reply

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell see, I have friends
in both places." --Mark Twain

Katra,

We have one of those propane turkey cookers which my wife uses for dyeing
wool. I put some water in the bottom, put the composted manure in the
perforated container that sits within the main pot, covered it, and let it
cook and steam for a half hour, to kill any wild fungi that might have been
present.

However, I never thought that mushrooms limited themselves as to their food.
I should have know that, as we have a small stand of Dye Cort mushrooms out
back which only grow under pine trees. The fellow who delivers our hay says
that he takes any hay that gets rained on to the mushroom growers up in
Pennsylvania; guess I should have taken a clue from that.

When you grew oyster mushrooms, did you grow them on fresh sawdust or wood
chips? Do you know of any good websites with instructions for growing
mushroom?


Paul



I started mine on unbleached toilet paper rolls. :-) I got one flush
from them, then lost my culture to the heat! I am planning to try it
again now that one of the greenhouses is shaded (or try it indoors as
soon as I make some space) then try to allow them to grow into hardwood
shavings.

I'm going to bag them this time as I had a serious problem with fungal
flies. They lay eggs and the maggots destroy your culture. :-P

The BEST thing if you are serious about cultivation of mushrooms is to
get this book:

http://fungi.com/books/cultivation.html

The first book is the best, and might seem expensive until you start
reading it. ;-) It's $45.00 and worth every penny! Fascinating read too
and well written enough to be entertaining....

It's better than any website!

The kind of mushroom you are trying to grow will need specific types of
media with specific types of nutritional requirements. I've not gotten
serious about the oyster mushrooms yet, but I can start them from pureed
stems from the oriental market where I buy the fresh ones.

I want to try some Shitake's too, just have not gotten set up for them
yet. They needed hardwood, not pine, and I now have a couple of bags of
hardwood shavings to play with. I think tho' that I'll invest in some
fungal culture media plates and try to get a good bunch of mycelia
started on the media plates then try innocullating sterilized hardwood
shavings. I'll probably try bran fortification, or look up Stammet's
recommendations for those. Most Shitake's are grown in logs.
--
K.

Sprout the MungBean to reply

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell‹you
see, I have friends in both places." --Mark Twain

"Pavel314" wrote...
We have one of those propane turkey cookers which my wife uses for dyeing
wool. I put some water in the bottom, put the composted manure in the
perforated container that sits within the main pot, covered it, and let it
cook and steam for a half hour, to kill any wild fungi that might have been
present.

I tried to grow mushrooms once and every source I read said that ordinary
boiling won't work, you must have the higher temperature a pressure cooker
produces to kill all bacteria and fungi that might compete with your
spores. Without proper sterilization you might get lucky a few times and
have the spores successfully colonize the medium, but more likely the
bacteria will take over and kill the spores. Other molds might also
colonize the medium and until fruiting you probably couldn't tell that
they weren't your species. Oh, but I do remember one source that said if
a pressure cooker wasn't available, that repeated conventional boiling
over a day or two might be sufficient (as long as the substrate is
contained in an airtight canning jar). After sterilization, the trick
is to innoculate the substrate with the spores or germinated mycelia
without introducing any bacteria into the jar, otherwise you wind up with
a jar of rotten grain.

Pavel314 wrote:
wrote:

Watched a garden show on TV and they were growing mushrooms in the
kitchen. Said something about a mushroom kits you can order online.
Has anyone ever grown your own mushrooms in the kitchen with a kit?
Any inexpensive web sites that sell these kits?

I've bought several of them over the years and have always gotten good
results. We grow ours in the basement. I generally buy from one of the big
seed catalog companies but you can find lots of hits if you Google on
"mushroom kit". Here's the URL for Park Seed's website; they have a search
window, type in "mushroom".

http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/s...mainPage=page1

I've tried a couple times to use the basic kit to expand to boxes of
composted horse manure in the basement but they never grew there.
Has anyone had experience in growing non-kit mushrooms?

For non-kit mushrooms, see http://www.mycowest.org/cult/i-grow/i-grow-1.htm

Dick