How to Grow Mushrooms? A Complete Guide to Methods and Techniques

There are many types of mushrooms; here we introduce the cultivation method for oyster mushrooms. First, build a mushroom house, inside which bed frames should be set up; the bed surface should be covered with wooden boards, bamboo poles, or straw curtains, etc., and then thoroughly disinfected. Then prepare the nutrient material, put it into plastic bags to make mushroom bags, and then inoculate the mushroom spawn into the mushroom bags. Finally, keep the temperature at 15-18 degrees, keep the humidity above 70%, maintain scattered light, and ventilate on time.

1. Building the Mushroom House

You can build a new mushroom house. The mushroom house should face south with its back to the north, be on high ground, be close to a water source, and have convenient drainage. You can also use an existing empty room, basement, etc. and convert it into a mushroom house. You can also build a simple mushroom house, that is, a semi-underground mushroom house 1.5—2.0 meters below ground level. The cultivation area of the mushroom house should preferably be 20 sq m. The roof and walls should be thick, and the inner walls and floor are best whitewashed with lime powder and smoothed with cement.

2. Arranging the Mushroom House

Bed frames can be set up inside the mushroom house. The bed frames should be arranged in north-south rows, not against the walls on any side, with a 60 cm wide walkway between the bed frames. The upper and lower bed surfaces should be 50 cm apart, the lower layer should be 20 cm above the ground, the upper layer should not exceed the windows, and the bed surface width should not exceed 1 m. The bed surface should be covered with wooden boards, bamboo poles, or straw curtains, etc. If the mushroom house is to be used, it must first be disinfected; especially old mushroom houses must be thoroughly disinfected.

3. Preparing the Nutrient Material

You can mix cottonseed hulls, bran, sucrose, urea, lime, superphosphate, compound fertilizer, vitamins, fungicide, and insecticide in a ratio of 85:10:0.5:0.5:3:0.5:0.02:0.01:0.001, then mix and stir the raw materials and water in a ratio of 1:1.3.

4. Sowing the Mushroom Spawn

You can sow from late August to late April of the following year. Put the nutrient material into plastic bags to make mushroom bags, then inoculate the grown third-level mushroom spawn into the mushroom bags for mycelial culture. Generally, the mycelium grows well in 25—30 days, and then you can carry out fruiting management.

5. Fruiting Management

When small mushroom buds begin to appear, the temperature should be 15-18 degrees, the humidity should be kept above 70%, scattered light should be maintained, and you just need to ventilate on time. If the temperature and humidity are not maintained well, the small mushroom buds will dry up and die. When the oyster mushroom caps have basically unfolded and the color has changed from dark gray to light gray or grayish white, and the spores are about to be discharged, they can be harvested. When harvesting, you can use a knife to cut them off at the base of the stipe, close against the surface of the substrate.