How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms at Home? Detailed High-Yield Cultivation Techniques

Oyster mushrooms are a fairly common type of fungal food with very high nutritional value, offering benefits such as boosting immunity, preventing and fighting cancer, and beautifying the skin. So do you know how to grow oyster mushrooms? Below, the editor gives a detailed introduction to oyster mushroom cultivation methods!

High-Yield Oyster Mushroom Cultivation Techniques

1. Sowing

First lay a layer of agricultural plastic film on the bottom of the bed frame, then spread the growing medium onto the bed frame and pat it firm with a wooden board. The thickness of the growing medium should be 10-15 cm. In high temperatures, the growing medium should be slightly thinner; in low temperatures, slightly thicker. Use about 15-20 kg of dry material per square meter of bed surface.

After spreading, sow immediately using the hole-sowing method, with hole spacing of 5-8 cm and hole depth of 3-5 cm, using 4-5 bottles of spawn per square meter. Finally, sprinkle another layer of spawn on top to cover. After sowing, lay a layer of newspaper on the bed surface, then cover with plastic film.

2. Spawn Running Management

After sowing, keep the mushroom house temperature at 15-20°C and relative humidity at around 70%. If the temperature is too high, uncover the plastic film to ventilate and cool down. After 10 days from sowing, uncover the plastic film 1-2 times per day for 20 min each time.

3. Fruiting Management

30-40 days after sowing, the mycelium will have fully colonized the growing medium. At this point, primordia of oyster mushroom fruiting bodies resembling grapes will appear. Then remove the plastic film covering the medium surface, keep the mushroom house temperature at around 15°C, spray water to maintain moisture, adjust humidity to around 90%, and strengthen ventilation in the mushroom house. After about one week, they are ready to harvest.

How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms at Home Yourself

1. After receiving the spawn bag, prepare a somewhat large plastic bucket or cardboard box (if using a cardboard box, it is best to line it with a waterproof plastic film). Pour a small cup of water into it, tear off the newspaper at the opening of the spawn bag, and then place the spawn bag inside the plastic bucket. (Of course, if you have a foam box, you can also place these spawn bags inside a foam box.)

2. Cover the bucket with a sheet of newspaper, moisten the newspaper with a spray bottle, once in the morning and once in the evening each day (if conditions allow, you can spray several more times; keeping the newspaper moist is best, but do not use too much water). When watering, be careful to just moisten the newspaper and try to avoid excess water dripping onto the medium surface. If too much water is applied, pick up the newspaper and shake off the excess water. Each day when watering, move the newspaper a bit: first, it allows the bag underneath to breathe; second, you can check whether any mushroom buds have emerged. If mushroom buds appear, you can appropriately increase the frequency of spraying, but still be careful that the water amount cannot be large. It is best not to let water splash onto the medium surface and cause standing water. If you find standing water on the medium surface, promptly take out the bag and pour off the excess water.

3. Fruiting management: After about one week, you can see that fruiting has begun. Of course, the timing of fruiting is related to management. With good management, fruiting begins 5-7 days after the mycelium is fully colonized. If the air is relatively dry and management is not very good, it may take about 20 days before fruiting begins. These are all normal. (After mushroom buds appear, you must not keep the newspaper covering them; be sure to lift the newspaper away, and strengthen daily spraying to maintain moisture.)

4. After fruiting begins, manage them diligently every day and be sure to observe frequently, because once mushrooms grow, they grow very quickly, basically becoming overgrown in three to five days.

Harvesting Oyster Mushrooms

When the oyster mushroom caps have basically expanded, the color has changed from dark gray to light gray or grayish-white, and the spores are about to be released, this is the optimal harvest time for oyster mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms harvested at this time have thick, plump fruiting bodies, high yield, and delicious flavor. Harvesting method: use your left hand to hold down the growing medium and your right hand to grip the mushroom stem, then gently twist and pull it off. You can also use a knife to cut it off at the base of the stem, close to the medium surface. Harvest the large clusters and leave the small ones. Under normal circumstances, one sowing can yield 3-4 batches of mushrooms. After each batch is harvested, clean off the residual dead mushrooms and stem bases on the bed surface to prevent rotten mushrooms in the next batch. Cover with plastic film, stop spraying water for 4-5 days, then spray a little water again to keep the medium surface moist. After about 10 days, mushroom primordia will grow again on the medium surface. Continue managing them according to the method for the first batch.

Introduction to Oyster Mushrooms

Oyster mushroom is also called Hiratake, Branched Oyster Mushroom, oyster mushroom, Black Peony Mushroom, and in Taiwan, China it is also called Xiuzhen mushroom. It is a species under the order Agaricales, family Pleurotaceae, in the phylum Basidiomycota, and is a quite common gray edible mushroom.

The germ tubes of oyster mushrooms continuously branch and elongate, forming monokaryotic hyphae. After monokaryotic hyphae of different sexes combine (plasmogamy), they form dikaryotic hyphae. The dikaryotic hyphae have clamp connections on the septa. With the help of clamp connections, the dikaryotic hyphae continuously undergo cell division, produce branches, and under suitable environmental conditions, grow and reproduce indefinitely.

In the hymenium, the tips of the dikaryotic hyphae produce basidia, whose genetic material recombines and segregates, forming four basidiospores. After the spores mature, they are ejected from the gills, completing a life cycle. Because there are many cultivated varieties of oyster mushrooms, producers need to be able to simply distinguish common types by appearance to avoid mismatches between production and sales.

As mentioned above, oyster mushrooms can also be grown yourself at home! Nowadays, ingredients bought outside carry hidden safety risks. If conditions allow, you can grow them yourself; they are clean, and you will feel more at ease eating them!