May 2007

Fun with Fungi
By Paula Piatt
Master Gardener Volunteer
Essex County

Each spring when my husband digs out his morel mushroom hunting books and promises to scour the North Country on his hands and knees, the gardener inside me screams....

“Wouldn't it be easier to just grow them!”

Rather than finding the piece of land, the right types of trees, making sure you have permission, walking hunched over for hours on end and then running the risk of eating something called “Death Angel” instead, it has to be easier to throw some spores on the compost, shut the door and do something that's actually fun. I can grow powdery mildew on my phlox, why can't I grow a fungus for the table?

You would think, looking around in the North Country woods, that mushrooms are easy to grow. Fungus probably is, but ‘shrooms that you can actually eat and those that won’t kill you take a little extra time.

Time you’ll probably want to invest.

Where do I start?
Many get their start with some of the popular mushroom kits now available through garden catalogs and on the Internet. For those curious gardeners who are looking for “something a little different,” this might be the best way to go. Once you’ve got your first crop of fresh fungi with a kit and you’ve learned a bit about the mushroom’s life cycle, the next challenge will be moving to a more natural garden setting.

Mushrooms are unlike any other plants in your garden. Without chlorophyll, they depend on other plants for their food source, which is why the compost, or growing substrate is most important. And, for the beginning mushroom grower, it’s important to know that different mushroom varieties have different compost needs.

Not your average perennial
But first, a little about the lowly mushroom. It begins as a spore on the underside of a grown mushroom, which drops to the ground and, if the conditions are right, germinates into a tangle of hyphae, known as mycelium. As time goes on, thousands of hyphae grow down into the ground – or compost, just like the roots of your perennials. From the mycelium comes the fruit of the mushroom – the cap with which we are all familiar.

The mushroom’s life cycle is highly dependent on growing conditions. Large-scale mushroom growers have it down to a science, usually using computer-controlled mushroom houses called doubles to provide the perfect habitat.

Once the white mycelium layer forms on the compost, the temperature is dropped to 60 degrees and the humidity increased to about 95 percent to spur the fruiting and production of the caps we eat. And, of course, it's all done in the dark. The whole cycle takes between 10 and 15 weeks.

Kits make it easy
With home kits now available, you have everything you need to grow mushrooms at home. Many of the kits on the market today are mushroom specific – you can grow Shitake or oyster 'shrooms and there are even kits out there for the ever-popular morel mushroom. They all include instructions and some also offer greenhouses to provide the necessary controlled growing environment.

Kits will provide the compost, or in some cases, hardwood logs that have already been filled with mushroom spawn – essentially a mushroom “starter.”

With a typical kit, you'll put a thin layer of peat moss on top of the compost, water it and put it in a safe place, depending up the type of mushrooms you're growing. Temperature is the big determining factor. Just like your seedlings, some mushrooms need warm temps; others do best when it's a little colder. Generally, 60-70 degrees will do it.

The key to the kits is not letting the compost dry out and, while it doesn't need total darkness, it can't handle direct sun.

You should see the white mycelium in 1-2 weeks, followed quickly by formation of the mushroom caps. By three weeks, they will be ready to harvest.

Keep in mind that the home kits have a limited shelf life and won't produce mushrooms indefinitely. Eventually, you can throw the whole thing on your compost pile and start again.

Out in the elements
If you're a hard-core gardener, chances are you're not willing to just “add water and wait.” For some, there has to be more of a challenge than that.

If you'd like to try incorporating mushrooms into your garden, it is possible to grow them outside, although you'll have less control over the growing conditions and, possibly, a more sporadic crop.

Outdoor shroom gardening involves finding a shady garden bed and piling it with mulch, as much as nine inches – it can be fresh hardwood chips, hay, leaves or compost. As mentioned before, different mushrooms required different kinds of compost. The mycelium is then planted in the substrate and watered.

For those with a little more patience, mushrooms can also be “planted” in freshly cut logs. Mycelium-coated plugs are placed in drilled holes, and then the holes are plugged to keep in the moisture. It takes a year or two for the mycelium to grow through the wood and mushrooms to grow, but it will bear fruit for up to four years.

That's four years you won't have to spend on your hands and knees scouring the woods, hoping to find the perfect mushroom that won't make you sick.

References
The American Mushroom Institute
Penn State University Mushroom Research, Department of Plant Pathology
Cornell University Mycology Department

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