Detailed Guide to Red Mushroom Cultivation Techniques: Planting Methods and Management Points

The red mushroom is a precious wild edible fungus, prized for its delicious flavor and rich nutrition, and widely loved by the public. Nowadays many people have begun cultivating this fungus. Today let us take a brief look at red mushroom cultivation techniques.

Red mushroom cultivation techniques

1. For a mushroom yard used for fermented-material mushroom-bed cultivation, choose an outdoor site nestled against hills and beside water, with fertile soil, facing the sun and sheltered from the wind. The bed should be about 1.3 m wide, with the bed surface shaped into a turtle-back form, drainage ditches opened around it, and a shade frame built above to maintain a light level of “three parts sun, seven parts shade.”

2. Red mushroom inoculation methods are mainly divided into bag cultivation and bed cultivation.

① Bag cultivation: When the temperature of the material bag drops below 28°C, under sterile conditions inoculate the red mushroom spawn onto the culture medium inside the bag, and seal the opening well with a cotton plug. After inoculation, move it indoors at 23-25°C for mycelial growth culture, with relative air humidity below 70%, maintaining air circulation to prevent a sudden increase in indoor carbon dioxide concentration. Mycelial growth culture usually takes about 30 days. After the mycelium has fully colonized the bag, move the bags to an outdoor shade frame, remove the bags, and lay them horizontally on disinfected beds inside the frame, then cover with 3-5 cm of humus soil. Seal the edges of the bed with soil so the fungus logs continue mycelial growth culture within the bed.

② Bed cultivation: Spread the fermented material in the bed to a thickness of 15-18 cm, and sow in 3 layers, that is, first spread a layer of material on the bed surface, sow spawn, continue spreading a layer of material, sow a layer of spawn, then cover with another layer of material, forming 3 layers of material and 2 layers of spawn. Generally use 10 kg of dry material per sq m, with the spawn amount accounting for 10% of the material amount. After sowing, level the material surface and press it down slightly. Then arch a film cover over the bed to protect against rain. When the mycelium has consumed 2/3 of the material, cover with 3-5 cm of soil. But be careful to ventilate, keeping the air in the bed fresh to favor mycelial development.

3. After covering with soil, mushrooms generally emerge in about 20 days. At this time keep the temperature at 23-26°C, and apply artificial temperature-difference stimulation, alternating dry and wet, to promote the mycelium to knot and form primordia, which differentiate into mushroom buds. During the fruiting body development stage, uncover the film for ventilation every morning and spray water once, keeping the relative humidity of the space at 90% as suitable. Keep the air in the mushroom shed fresh.

4. Wild red mushroom fruiting bodies can be harvested when 60-70% mature. Reasonable harvesting has a considerable bearing on the commercial value of red mushrooms. Six-tenths-mature red mushrooms with unopened caps fetch a higher purchase price on the market than fully mature ones. Generally, over-mature opened-cap mushrooms or those already showing signs of rot have mostly been bored by insects and infested with maggots inside, losing their commercial value; do not harvest them, but rather leave them in the woodland as a source for propagation, which helps mushrooms grow the following year.

Red mushroom cultivation techniques are briefly introduced here, and we hope this is of some help to everyone.