Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms presents so many options for substrates that I got a little lost.  Luckily, the last half of the book gives specific inoculation paths that Paul Stamets has used to successfully grow various species of mushrooms.

I started out on this journey wanting to propagate shiitake mushrooms, but have since determined that oyster mushrooms are the easiest and least expensive to grow and thus my top choice.  Paul Stamets' tried and true method for growing oysters begins with mycelium on agar in petri dishes, then expands onto grain, and again onto straw (or enriched sawdust.)  At each step, the mycelium are expanded onto substrates that are 5 to 10 times bigger and are given a week or two to colonize the new substrate.  Stamets warns that it is possible to skip steps, but that doing so can result in slower colonization which in turn leads to contamination.  In either case, the inoculated substrates should be incubated at 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and 85 to 100% humidity.

Want to grow King Stropharia mushrooms too?  Their spawn prefers 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit and 95 to 100% humidity.  Stamets goes from petri dish to grain to wood chips/sawdust.  Check out Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms for instructions on growing all kinds of other species.

This post is part of our Growing Gourmet Mushrooms lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms King Stropharia mushrooms in permaculture Tips for cloning mushrooms Growing and expanding spawn Can growing mushrooms be as easy as a worm bin? Growing mushrooms indoors and outdoors Substrates for mushroom cultivation Sterilizing and pasteurizing mushroom substrates Inoculation paths for mushroom cultivation How to initiate mushroom fruiting

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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