A Detailed Guide to King Oyster Mushroom Cultivation Methods, Investment Costs and Yield per Mu

The king oyster mushroom (Pleurotus eryngii) is a newly developed and successfully cultivated edible mushroom variety that combines food, medicinal and therapeutic uses. It has effects such as lowering blood lipids, lowering cholesterol, promoting gastrointestinal digestion, enhancing the body's immune capacity and preventing cardiovascular disease, and is extremely popular. So how do you cultivate king oyster mushrooms? How much investment is needed? How many jin per mu is the yield? The details are compiled as follows:

How to cultivate king oyster mushrooms

The cultivation techniques are as follows:

[Cultivation season]: The king oyster mushroom is a low-temperature strain. It takes about 50-60 days from sowing to fruiting. In the Yangtze River basin, cultivation bags can be prepared from October to November, with fruiting from November to January of the following year; other regions can start earlier or later as appropriate.

[Substrate formulas]:

① 88% cottonseed hulls, 10% mixed corn meal, 1% lime, 1% calcium carbonate;

② 75% miscellaneous hardwood sawdust, 22% wheat bran, 1% sugar, 1% lime, 1% calcium carbonate;

③ 50% cottonseed hulls, 30% miscellaneous hardwood sawdust, 18% mixed corn meal, 1% lime, 1% gypsum powder. The water content of the above formulas is 60%-65%.

[Mixing ingredients and making bags]: Weigh the above substrate ingredients separately according to their proportions, place them on the floor of the mixing yard and turn them over evenly, adjusting the water content to 60%-65%. Use 17×33×0.004 cm folded-corner polyethylene bags or polypropylene bags for filling. Each bag holds 500 g of dry material, with a wet weight of about 1100 g, and is sealed by folding the opposite corners and inserting straight. After filling, place them into a large empty sterilization bundle (self-made, about 30 yuan, can hold 500-800 bags) for sterilization for 4-5 hours, then cool to room temperature and take them out. For inoculation, use an edible mushroom sterile inoculator; on the inoculation operating platform, two people cooperate to open the bag mouth fully and insert the spawn. Each 750 g bottle of king oyster mushroom cultivation spawn can inoculate 40-60 material bags. After inoculation, place them in a clean and hygienic indoor area for mycelial culture, maintaining the temperature between 20°C-25°C and the relative air humidity above 70%. Ventilate 1-2 times a day to keep the air fresh, and after about 30 days the bags will be full of mycelium.

[Arranging the mushroom bed]: For fruiting, stand the bags full of mycelium upright on the floor of the fruiting site to form a mushroom bed, open the bag mouths, straighten the bag tube film, cover the mouth film surface with a layer of newspaper, spray water to keep the newspaper moist, and regulate the temperature to 15°C-18°C and the relative air humidity to 80% to promote fruiting. From primordium formation to maturity of the fruiting body, the king oyster mushroom generally needs 13-15 days. During the young mushroom stage it grows in the microclimate inside the bag. When the mushroom body grows upward inside the closed bag to 2 cm from the bag mouth, remove the newspaper, let the mushroom body receive scattered light and extend into the space, increase water spraying to gradually raise the relative humidity to 85%-90%, prompting the mushroom body to keep growing and form a normal fruiting body.

[Timely harvesting]: When the cap of the king oyster mushroom fruiting body is flat and spread out, sunken in the middle, slightly fuzzy on the surface, and the spores have not yet been discharged, this is the suitable harvest time. When harvesting, hold the stipe with your hand and pull up the whole mushroom. After harvesting, clean the surface of the substrate, stop spraying water, and after 7-10 days of resting and mycelium recovery the second flush of mushrooms can appear, with a biological conversion rate of up to 100%.

How much investment is needed to cultivate king oyster mushrooms

The raw materials needed for king oyster mushrooms are mainly agricultural by-products and waste. Besides wheat bran and corn cobs, they also include sawdust, sugarcane bagasse, soybean meal and other crop residues. Most of these raw materials are purchased from processing plants and farmers. This is the cost, determined by local price conditions.

To cultivate king oyster mushrooms, you first need to feed materials to produce mushroom bags, then sterilize them with high temperature and high pressure, and then inoculate the spawn; after about 2 working days they can enter the culture room for mycelial growth. The mycelial growth process takes about 35 days, and then the bags full of mycelium are moved into the mushroom room. After that, the fruiting cycle of king oyster mushrooms is only 16-19 days.

However, the temperature requirements for the growth and development of king oyster mushrooms are relatively narrow, and the temperatures required at different growth stages are also different. Therefore, the cost also includes professional refrigeration and heating equipment to control the environment.

In addition, a technician is also needed, and the salary is also a cost.

If a three-dimensional cultivation model is adopted, and if scientific management is possible, the yield of king oyster mushrooms per mu can reach 25,000-30,000 jin, and the market price is about 3.5-7 yuan. The pure production cost generally requires about 50,000-60,000 yuan. Prices vary from place to place; for reference only.

One last point: you first need to explain what scale you plan to operate, the conditions and funds you already have, and then understand the cultivation model; only after determining these should you ask about costs. If you have all these ready, you can directly consult in the cultivation section of the Xianji Network forum.

Related case:

Greenhouse cultivation technique for king oyster mushrooms yields at least 100,000 per mu

At present, the market price of king oyster mushrooms is 6-8 yuan/jin. For off-season cultivation using the greenhouse three-dimensional planting model, if scientific management is possible, the yield of king oyster mushrooms per mu can reach 25,000-30,000 jin, and the pure production cost generally requires about 50,000-60,000 yuan. In recent years, more and more people are returning to the countryside, and they urgently need to find land in rural areas for projects; thus the “land broker” has emerged. “Land brokers” mainly earn intermediary fees from growers or investors. At present, Tuliu Group is recruiting land transfer service providers nationwide and building land transfer service centers. (For details, click the link: https://xiangmu.tuliu.com/)

The following briefly introduces the indoor and greenhouse cultivation techniques for king oyster mushrooms.