How to Grow Enoki Mushrooms at Home: A Detailed Guide to Home Cultivation Techniques

The rise of balcony vegetables has changed the traditional boundaries of people's vegetable growing and made it possible for urban residents to grow vegetables, which is undoubtedly a very useful growing method for Chinese people who love to grow vegetables. But after all, the area of a balcony is limited, so the quantity of enoki mushrooms grown will not be too large either.

How to Grow Enoki Mushrooms at Home

1. Choose plastic bags to cultivate enoki mushrooms. First place the plastic bag inside a cardboard box, spread plastic sheeting and newspaper on the bottom of the box, spray a little water on the mushroom substrate bag, and cover it with a transparent plastic bag.

2. After primordia form and mushrooms begin to appear, place the cardboard box in a spot at room temperature of 10-18°C, keep the surrounding air moist, and spray water on the newspaper or into the surrounding space. Never spray directly on the mushroom caps. The little enoki mushrooms you see at this time, in clusters, are really adorable!

3. At this stage the enoki mushrooms begin to grow taller, with the tallest reaching 5 cm. When the vigorously growing enoki mushroom stems reach 10 cm in height, they can be harvested.

Enoki Mushroom Cultivation Techniques

1. Making the mushroom bags

Mushroom bag production requires plastic film bags, collar rings and cotton, etc. The film bags used for making enoki mushroom bags should be made of polypropylene. The specifications are 38 cm long and 15-16 cm wide. The film bag thickness is 5-6 silk (0.05-0.06 mm). The quality of the plastic film bags has a relatively large impact on the yield of bag-cultivated enoki mushrooms. Attention should be paid to checking the film quality. There are two kinds of collar rings: plastic collar rings and hard paper collar rings. The cotton used for making cotton plugs should be exposed to the sun before use and stored in a dry, ventilated place.

2. Mixing the substrate

There are two ways to mix the substrate: mechanical mixing and manual mixing. When mixing, special attention should be paid to fully and evenly mixing the various culture materials and auxiliary materials, and the culture material and water should also be fully and evenly mixed. The specific method is to strictly weigh out the required amount according to the culture material formula. Apart from a small amount of auxiliary materials such as sugar that are soluble in water, first dry-mix the dry materials evenly, and at the same time dissolve soluble auxiliary materials such as sugar in water. After diluting in proportion, spray it onto the culture material, stirring while spraying, until the water content is suitable. The theoretical water content of the culture material for enoki mushroom cultivation is 58-65%, but because the types of culture material and their dryness and wetness differ, this should be judged according to specific conditions when mixing. Usually it is checked by experience: the method is to tightly squeeze the culture material in the hand so it forms a ball, and it breaks apart when dropped to the ground; or to pinch the culture material tightly with the thumb, index finger and middle finger and see a trace of water, which means it is suitable.

3. Filling the bags

At present there is no bag-filling machine dedicated to enoki mushroom cultivation in China, so a filling machine used for shiitake sawdust cultivation can be used. The specific manual bag-filling operation is: after putting a small amount of culture material into the bag, use the thumb and index finger to press the two corners of the bag bottom into the bag so that the bottom is square-shaped and the mushroom bag can stand upright, then continue filling and compacting the material. In order to shorten the mycelium culture time, when filling, a small conical wooden stick about 1 cm in diameter can be placed into the plastic bag; after the material is filled and compacted, gently rotate and pull out the small wooden stick. After the material is filled, put on the collar ring, insert the cotton plug, and then sterilization can be carried out. The amount of material filled accounts for about 3/5 of the total length of the bag, leaving 15-20 cm at the upper end of the bag unfilled.

4. Sterilization

Bag cultivation of enoki mushrooms is cooked-material cultivation, that is, sterilization must be carried out with a sterilization pot or sterilization stove. When sterilizing with a pressure cooker, it must be kept for 1.5 hours under a pressure of 1.5 kg/cm. When sterilizing with a normal-pressure furnace, it must be kept for 10 hours when the temperature of the culture material in the culture bags in the furnace reaches 100°C. After sterilization ends, first open the vent hole to gradually lower the temperature, then open the furnace door and take out the bags.

5. Inoculation

Bag-cultivated enoki mushroom inoculation is generally carried out in a disinfected inoculation box. If there is no inoculation box, inoculation can also be carried out in an inoculation room according to conventional edible fungus procedures. When inoculating in the inoculation room, the inoculator should change into clean clothes before entering the inoculation room; both hands and tools must be disinfected with 70% alcohol; and before the spawn is fully inoculated, people should not keep walking in and out. The enoki mushroom cultivation spawn must be carefully selected; spawn found to have contaminating bacteria cannot be used, and the spawn age is best within 1.5 months. During inoculation, the mouth of the plastic bag should be brought close to the sterile zone of the alcohol lamp flame. A larger inoculation amount is better: put a small part of the spawn into the hole, and distribute most of the spawn on the surface of the medium, so that each bottle of stock spawn can inoculate about 40 bags.

Distribution of Enoki Mushroom Producing Areas

Enoki mushrooms are widely distributed in nature, found in China, Japan, Russia, Europe, North America, Australia and other places. In China, from Heilongjiang in the north to Yunnan in the south, and from Jiangsu in the east to Xinjiang in the west, all are suitable for the growth of enoki mushrooms. Lingshou in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, grows large amounts of white enoki mushrooms, and every year in November and December they are sold in large quantities to various places.

Nutritional Value of Enoki Mushrooms

1. Enoki mushrooms contain a relatively complete range of essential amino acids for the human body, among which lysine and arginine are especially abundant, and the zinc content is also relatively high, which has a good effect on enhancing intelligence, especially on children's height and intellectual development, and they are known as the “intelligence-boosting mushroom”;

2. Enoki mushrooms also contain a substance called flammulin, which can enhance the body's resistance to cancer cells. Regular consumption of enoki mushrooms can also lower cholesterol, prevent liver disease and gastrointestinal ulcers, strengthen the body's vital energy, and prevent disease and keep fit;

3. Enoki mushrooms can effectively enhance the body's biological activity, promote internal metabolism, help the absorption and utilization of various nutrients in food, and are also greatly beneficial to growth and development, hence they have the fine names “intelligence-boosting mushroom” and “Ikkyu mushroom”;

4. Enoki mushrooms can inhibit the rise of blood lipids, lower cholesterol, and prevent and treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases;

5. Eating enoki mushrooms has the effects of resisting fatigue, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory action, removing heavy metal salt substances, and anti-tumor effects.

6. Regular consumption of enoki mushrooms can not only prevent and treat liver disease and stomach and intestinal ulcers, but is also suitable for people with high blood pressure, obese people and middle-aged and elderly people, mainly because it is a high-potassium, low-sodium food.

Although the method of growing enoki mushrooms at home is very simple, and new enoki mushrooms can even be grown from discarded enoki mushroom roots, for now the cultivation method that can meet the large-scale demand for enoki mushrooms is still large-scale enoki mushroom cultivation, so home cultivation is only suitable for personal interest and small needs.