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Best Beginner Mushroom Varieties

 
steward
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If you were recommending a mushroom variety or varieties for a beginner, what would it be and why?
 
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I might have success with wine caps grown in spent coffee grounds. I would recommend that for a first timer. Sterilization is a byproduct of making coffee. It can be done indoors in a bucket. The timeframe is quick and you can easily see the progress.

I say " might" cause they haven't fruited but it looks like it is getting close. I have failed with morels in the ground and shitakes in oak logs. That's the limit of my attempts. I have tried for years.....
 
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I'm trying wine caps in my garden right now and I want to try growing oyster mushrooms in fall leaves but I still need to get the area setup. Both are supposed to be easy to grow--I did grow oyster mushrooms from a kit that I got for my birthday and that worked well but it was just a basic indoor kit.
 
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Steve,

I have to agree with Daron and go with Wine Caps.  My reasons are as follows:

1). They are easy to grow.  They grow on just about any non-pine wood.  They are not especially picky about growing conditions.  They actually prefer to have some moderate sunlight so they don’t have to be kept in total darkness.  They thrive on neglect.

2). They grow aggressively.  It might well take a full year to get actual mushrooms, but when they decide to pop up the actual mushrooms, they do so with abundance.  

3). They are incredibly easy to identify.  For those worried about picking a poisonous mushroom, relax.  Wine Caps are absolutely huge!  They easily get to the size of a hand with fingers outstretched.  They might get to the size of a dinner plate.  Granted, they don’t taste great when they are huge, but for the sake of identification, these are a piece of cake.

4).  They are tasty, but pick them before they get huge.

5). They leave behind an amazing compost.  Wine caps leave behind an amazingly fertile, bountiful bedding material.  This in fact is the main reason I started with wine caps in the first place.  All of my garden beds are raised beds and at present either filled with wine cap compost or are in the process of converting to wine cap compost.  Two years ago I had a huge abundance of wood chips left over from a major brush clearing project.  I quite seriously did not know where I was going to put these chips nor how I was going to get them to break down.  Initially I was going to use some left over 10-10-10 fertilizer to encourage rapid bacterial decomposition.  The reaction I got from Permies was to go the fungal route and I never looked back!  Not only did those wine caps aggressively break down the chips, but I am wondering how I can get more chips.

In case you can’t tell, I overwhelmingly support wine caps!

Eric
 
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It depends. (LOL) I did oysters, worked well in straw. Indoors... Might be easier in winter. But... What Eric says sounds better than just easy.
Why i would vouch for Wine caps in general is because i've seen a you tube of the edible acres, and that man managed to keep them going all through his garden over a year if i remember well. He said that he just buries mycelium everytime he dumps a load of woodchips on a path or as a mulch. It stays alive, agressive and productive. And that is a cheap option. Something to consider Steve, keeping costs down to buy more plants, what's not to like.
 
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I grew oysters in bags, and also inoculated garden beds made of used coffee grounds and straw. The beds produced that year, but the next year they didn't produce anything even though there was plenty of un-colonized material in the beds still.

Over that summer, the birds and other critters took to turning the beds over, maybe eating the mycelium, or worms I'm not sure. But by fall there was very little mycelium to be found in those beds.

So although I was successful growing oysters, they didn't turn out to be viable long term. Log inoculation is probably much better suited for them, however it's a lot of work.
 
Eric Hanson
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Nick, that is curious!

I don’t have any personal experience growing oysters, but I am thinking about trying some oysters next year or the following.  The would be applied to the wine cap leftovers.

My wine cap compost was amazingly fertile last summer.  I am in the process of converting all of my garden beds into mushroom compost beds.  In practice, the plan is to top off each bed every year with fresh layer of chips that will serve as food for new wine cap spawn and replace the bedding losses from the previous summer.

I was really considering the use of oysters to follow the wine caps as I hear they like to play nice together.

At any rate, I think that wine caps are a pretty bulletproof starter mushroom.

Eric
 
Steve Thorn
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Thank you all for all of the great recommendations so far! Excited to try some of these soon hopefully!
 
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I would say wine caps are easiest. Very simple to just mix spawn and chips and create a few colonies. I would put them as a 3/10 on the flavor scale, though, and they are hard to clean. I always have a bunch of grass pieces in them.

If you have open cell wood like poplar oysters are almost as easy and incredibly productive. I had a bad summer for most species but the oysters went fine and we are eating a whole bunch.
 
Eric Hanson
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Hugo,

At present I have active growing colonies of wine caps growing in all three of my beds.  I plan to introduce blue oyster mushrooms to the composted remnants of the wine cap compost in the near future.  I have been told that this is one of the rare instances where the two mushroom species actually play nice together.  Further, I have been told that they make the resulting compost even better.  This is almost hard to believe as the present compost is pretty amazing, but I am certainly game for it.  Finally, I want to see what the blue oyster mushrooms taste like!  I have never had one before but I have been told that they are great for eating, and that from an actual mushroom standpoint (as opposed to the underlying spawn/mycelium) they are extremely productive, better than even my current favorite the wine cap!

From the time standpoint, I am probably looking at sowing with blue oyster mushrooms the summer after next (2021).  In my bed #3 (third bed to get inoculated), I half-heartedly sowed some wine caps in last summer.  I had about one left-over pack of wine cap spawn so I decided to use it.  I know it needs a lot more chips, but it will be very interesting to see if I get any mushrooms at all.  If I don’t, I am not especially worried.  I will just dump a bunch more woodchips and add in more spawn.

My bed #3 had hosted a chip pile for several months.  I did this for a couple of reasons.  First, it was a convenient place to store the chips.  Secondly, the chips and underlying soil benefit one another.  The chips get inoculated with a bunch of soil biota while the soil benefits from having a bunch of woodchips decay on top of it.  After a few months of nothing more than sitting, it became difficult to discern where the chips ended and the soil began.

Bed #3 will be my final bed to completely inoculate.  Assuming that I don’t get an early flush of mushrooms then I will go ahead and add more wine caps after I make the bed edges and fill with more chips.

Assuming that Bed#3 goes according to plan I will start over in bed#1 the following spring/summer and grow blue oyster mushrooms as I add on the woodchip top off.  It will be interesting to see how the blue oyster mushrooms work!

Eric
 
Steve Thorn
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It seems like two varieties mentioned a lot so far are wine caps (Stropharia rugosoannulata) and oyster mushrooms (
Pleurotus ostreatus).

Here's a few pictures from Wikipedia of these two varieties.

Wine Cap Mushrooms



Source Wikipedia article on wine caps mushrooms


Oyster Mushrooms



Source Wikipedia article on oyster mushrooms
 
Tj Jefferson
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Steve I have four species of Pleurotus, and they are different fruiting times. There are additionally many strains of P. ostreatus and they also have differentfruiting times. Phoenix oyster (https://mushroommountain.com/products/oyster-mushroom-plug-spawn-pleurotus-spp/) P. pulmonarius will fruit on pine which is a big deal since not much will.

Yet another reason why the various oysters are my current favorite.

None of these we have discussed store very well. The easiest mushroom to dry has been shiitake, and reasonable easy to cultivate on logs. I'm trying a bunch of other species this year (enoki, nameko, piopinni) all with my fairly neglectful method and will report back.
 
Eric Hanson
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TJ,

You have a good point about storage, none of my wine caps got stored for any meaningful length of time.  To be fair, I hardly even picked any wine caps as most of them fell victim to something that ate them right out of the garden.  I did have a bunch of mostly eaten mushrooms in the bed.  I wonder how many mushrooms grew but I never saw because something ate them completely before I ever got a glance at them.

Also, I am going to have to be more vigilant about picking early and often.  I often found mushrooms that grew HUGE before I ever got to them.  And when huge they taste like leather.  Pick them smaller and they taste much better, something like a portobello but a bit woodier.

I wish I could grow shiitake mushrooms, but I am one of those people who can’t tolerate the taste of Shiite.  I have tried them only a couple of times.  Most recently it was at home.  We occasionally make our own mini personal pizzas.  I like to put mini portobellos on mine.  One day the store was out, but my wife picked up some shiitake mushrooms to see if I liked them.  I tried a couple and sure enough, they tasted pretty good so I loaded up my pizza with them.  In the middle of eating the pizza, I started to burp a little bit (TMI?  Sorry) and the aftertaste was utterly repulsive—for the next 3 days!  Yuck!  I hope to never eat another shiitake so long as I live.  Not everyone has this issue and as I understand, some people have the genetics to taste this whatever compound in mushroom.  I am certainly not an expert and if I have something off here, feel free to correct me, but for my purposes, I don’t eat shiitake mushrooms.

Too bad though as I sort of want to try it out.

Eric
 
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I wondered the same thing, I know I like the taste of Oyster mushrooms, so I went to the supermarket and found some wine caps to try. Blergh not nice at all. I did oysters on straw/rye grain in plastic bags inside the house seemed to work very nicely and was easy. Since I can't get hold of woodchips easily It's oysters all the way here.
 
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i started a seeder bed of wine caps in spring about 5 yrs. ago now. i filled a low lying shady spot with 6in. of wood chips from a firewood business. the bed was 4'x6'. i took 2   5 lb. spawn blocks. broke them up into 1in. pieces in a wheelbarrow the thoroughly mixed them into the chips . even digging up a little soil. i then mulched the beds with 6in. of straw and soaked thoroughly. i only watered when the garden needed it. the following spring the whole bed was white with mycelium. i dug it up and placed it like a much around all my trees and bushes. then covered that with 6in. of fresh wood chips. by late summer i had shrooms popping up everywhere! every spring i remulch which keeps feeding them and they give me shrooms all summer. over 5 yrs. now and they still haven't slowed down. i put some blewit spawn into my on ground compost heap. one spring. next spring i spread the compost and mulched on top the same way. now i get a mix of the 2 mushrooms! wine caps in summer,  blewits in fall. i also have summer and fall oysters from logs i inoculated then used the following spring as borders for my raised beds. flavor wise i love oysters the most. so cool to look across the yards and see flushes of shrooms after a good rain!i trade what i don't eat. i dehydrate some in the dehydrator for winter use.
 
Eric Hanson
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Steve, I owe you a special thanks as you guided through the basic steps to get both the mushrooms and compost.  Thanks mightily.  At the time I was still thinking in a bacteria mode, just substituting mushrooms for bacteria.

In thinking bacteria, I was planning on Inoculating a huge, heaping mound, just like you would make a compost heap,  Steve, you talked me into making a layer and it worked wonders!  Thanks for talking me out of my mound idea.  Mushrooms need layers.

I too am thinking about adding oysters to the mix, both for taste and for the resulting compost.  The mushrooms are nice, but I do this mostly for the compost.

Thanks again Steve!

Eric
 
steve bossie
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you're welcome Eric. good luck! post your results for others.
 
Eric Hanson
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Steve,

I have been documenting my progress here:

https://permies.com/t/40/82798/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter#1016719

Its been a great journey thus far.

Eric
 
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Eric Hanson wrote:Two years ago I had a huge abundance of wood chips left over from a major brush clearing project..



Hello, I want to dabble and try to grow myself some wine caps, but I am too lazy /busy to get wood chips. My wife recently bought a bunch of stuff for our newborn so I have a bunch of cardboard boxes, could I use those instead to grow wine caps? Cardboard boxes and wood chips are similar right? haha.



cardboardboxes.jpg
[Thumbnail for cardboardboxes.jpg]
 
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What does the wildlife think about mushrooms?  Do they eat them or leave them alone?

Seems to me that pigs would like them.

What about deer and raccoons?
 
Eric Hanson
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Several wild critters like my Wine Caps so my advice is to pick early and often.

Eric
 
steve bossie
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slugs get them here.
 
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Many varieties of wildlife eat mushrooms. Deer, bear, raccoons, skunks, opossums, squirrels, chipmunks and even turtles.  Squirrels sometime store them in trees.

 
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I'm a professional mushroom farmer, if any of yall need help just let me know
 
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Anyone needing wood chips: chipdrop.com or simply watch your area for tree work and stop and chat up the workers. My husband found a company that would have to haul their chipped wood 30 miles away and they now dump on our land. Free firewood for multiple families and more wood chips than a couple families can use, win win!
 
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Wine caps , for a beginner is best, I think: king stropharia in straw  and in the shade of other veggies are a pretty safe bet. I use the tightly compressed straw that has already been cleaned. I put the spores on the ground and rake a bit, then put a good layer of clean straw and water abundantly. Hardwood chips will keep the bed producing longer. In early June you should start to have some nice specimens.
What I like about wine caps is that it makes a big, clean mushroom that cannot be confused with anything else. With wine caps, you can also expect to keep the garden bed productive  a couple of years by allowing old mushrooms to decay in the bed, adding more straw on top and keeping it watered. They survive the winter in Wisconsin zone 4b.
I would like to grow morels [Morchella] too and I bought some sticks to plant. I need to grow them in beds as well so I can give them everything they are yearning for.
Here, we have poplars that give us oyster mushrooms Pleurotus ostreatus . I only need to keep hubby away from them so they can reproduce: He would keep harvesting every single one of them if I let him!
I keep trying to encourage the hen of the woods  Grifola frondosa and somehow they seem to fruit when we are not looking.
Honey mushrooms Armillaria mellea are also abundant, but hubby doesn't care for them.
Chicken of the woods Laetiporus sulphureus is another one we have found and like. When you cook it, it can easily substitute for chicken.
Parasol Macrolepiota procera is another one that grows naturally around here and we both love them. We used to get more, but again, hubby is the Attila of mushrooms!
How successful you are will depend on the strata in which your mushroom is expected to grow. Make sure you match the strata with the kind of mushroom you wish to get, keep things well watered and keep looking for little miracles...
 
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I vote with the wine cap as easiest.  They actually LIKE benefit by the presence of other mycelia.  Once you get them established outside, then you’ll have them in perpetuity, as long as you keep adding chips or straw, and yes, I think corrugated cardboard would be acceptable food to them, and likely they would decompose chop and drop.

I liked having them in my garden because, in addition to everything else, every time I dug up a plant to give away, the wine caps got started where ever the plant went.
 
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Matthew Fien Gretton wrote:I'm a professional mushroom farmer, if any of yall need help just let me know



I would like some help, be it from Matthew Fien Gretton or anyone else. I cannot invest in spawn right now, can anyone share any tips on making the cheapest and easiest way to produce some mushrooms for a beginner? Or direct me to a forum with such information if I'm in the wrong place?

I have (in stores) oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms and shimeji mushrooms (not adding here shitake, because that would mean logs). I have loads of coffee grounds, containers and a balcony. Also a severe bleach allergy, so cannot use it for equipment sterilisation. I know that the chances for success are lower, but I'd like to try anyway.

Thanks in advance!
 
Cécile Stelzer Johnson
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Darya Sevastópolska wrote:

Matthew Fien Gretton wrote:I'm a professional mushroom farmer, if any of yall need help just let me know



I would like some help, be it from Matthew Fien Gretton or anyone else. I cannot invest in spawn right now, can anyone share any tips on making the cheapest and easiest way to produce some mushrooms for a beginner? Or direct me to a forum with such information if I'm in the wrong place?
I have (in stores) oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms and shimeji mushrooms (not adding here shitake, because that would mean logs). I have loads of coffee grounds, containers and a balcony. Also a severe bleach allergy, so cannot use it for equipment sterilisation. I know that the chances for success are lower, but I'd like to try anyway.
Thanks in advance!




You may want to try oyster mushrooms because they are more aggressive in getting established, so less prone to contamination.. I'm not sure if this method would work for other mushrooms though. You would have to try. I like that it uses the butt pieces of oyster mushrooms, so you can still eat the cap/ top
https://grocycle.com/diy-mushroom-spawn/#:~:text=How%20can%20you%20grow%20your,ll%20have%20your%20own%20spawn.
Depending on how much you want to make, you could play with this recipe. For the cardboard, you may want to use brand new cardboard boxes that are sold for packaging. This way, you can choose clean cardboard, and also cardboard with less ink. Home depot sells quite an assortment.
Boiling the cardboard longer will make it sterile enough to grow the mycelium, so you don't have to resort to bleach. If you have a pressure cooker, that is even better: It will definitely kill the competition.

Wine caps are another one that should be easier. I do buy the wine cap mycelium to get started: I like that wine caps keep coming back season after season if you leave some mushrooms to senesce in the bed. The best strata is straw for that. I use the super clean tightly compressed straw as it has already been sterilized. It is a bit more than run of the mill straw but the results are so much better...
Keep adding this type of straw to extend the number of years of harvest. Keep moist.
 
Darya Sevastópolska
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Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:


You may want to try oyster mushrooms because they are more aggressive in getting established, so less prone to contamination.. I'm not sure if this method would work for other mushrooms though. You would have to try. I like that it uses the butt pieces of oyster mushrooms, so you can still eat the cap/ top
https://grocycle.com/diy-mushroom-spawn/#:~:text=How%20can%20you%20grow%20your,ll%20have%20your%20own%20spawn.
Depending on how much you want to make, you could play with this recipe. For the cardboard, you may want to use brand new cardboard boxes that are sold for packaging. This way, you can choose clean cardboard, and also cardboard with less ink. Home depot sells quite an assortment.
Boiling the cardboard longer will make it sterile enough to grow the mycelium, so you don't have to resort to bleach. If you have a pressure cooker, that is even better: It will definitely kill the competition.

Wine caps are another one that should be easier. I do buy the wine cap mycelium to get started: I like that wine caps keep coming back season after season if you leave some mushrooms to senesce in the bed. The best strata is straw for that. I use the super clean tightly compressed straw as it has already been sterilized. It is a bit more than run of the mill straw but the results are so much better...
Keep adding this type of straw to extend the number of years of harvest. Keep moist.



Thanks for the tips! I've already tried oysters before, and through at first it was working they got contaminated by a fly that got through one of the orifices of the bag and died in there - but I will keep trying using your ideas!

Unfortunately I don't have a bed to put the wine caps in, but if I do one day, I'll be sure to try.
 
Cécile Stelzer Johnson
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Daria, I will grant you that "loads of coffee grounds, containers and a balcony" makes it a bit difficult to grow mushrooms, but you could "scale down", while you are learning how to do it. A small box, bought mushrooms and straw or shredded cooked cardboard won't take so much room. Depending how your balcony is oriented, in Portugal,  it may prove too hot for your mushrooms. They don't really need a lot of sunshine. Indirect light is great. though, so other rooms could prove more inviting for your project.
If you think about it, the learning curve will be cheaper is you start very small. Good luck on your project. We are pulling for you!
 
Thekla McDaniels
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Darya, what happened to the bag of oyster mushrooms that was working well before getting contaminated with a dead fly?  Once the mycelium growth gets to a certain stage, a few other organisms don’t usually bother the colony or prevent fruiting.

Did something happen, or, seeing the fly did you think the whole thing was ruined, and dispose of it?
 
Darya Sevastópolska
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Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:Daria, I will grant you that "loads of coffee grounds, containers and a balcony" makes it a bit difficult to grow mushrooms, but you could "scale down", while you are learning how to do it. A small box, bought mushrooms and straw or shredded cooked cardboard won't take so much room. Depending how your balcony is oriented, in Portugal,  it may prove too hot for your mushrooms. They don't really need a lot of sunshine. Indirect light is great. though, so other rooms could prove more inviting for your project.
If you think about it, the learning curve will be cheaper is you start very small. Good luck on your project. We are pulling for you!




It really is, yes it was exactly how I was thinking of doing. I have indirect light in my balcony (pointing to the East), it has two trees right before it giving some shade. Hmmm, maybe I should wait for autumn, then, when the heat passes. It's still April and yesterday we had 34 Cº (93.2 F), so I guess we practically won't have spring this year.
That's quite right! If not all goes well, the investment wasn't that big either. Thanks!
 
Darya Sevastópolska
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Thekla McDaniels wrote:Darya, what happened to the bag of oyster mushrooms that was working well before getting contaminated with a dead fly?  Once the mycelium growth gets to a certain stage, a few other organisms don’t usually bother the colony or prevent fruiting.

Did something happen, or, seeing the fly did you think the whole thing was ruined, and dispose of it?



Well, you see, this was a very small-scale DIY bag with mushroom bottoms and cardboard that I made, not a grow bag that I bought. I think it hadn't grown to that certain stage to be able to take that fly and be happy with it. Instead, the small signs of the white, beautiful mycelium that had grown started to get darker and the smell changed too. Maybe I was too quick to discard it, but as a newbie I didn't want to take any chances. Also, I'm pinning the blame on the fly, but there is a possibility that I didn't sterilise the cardboard as well as I should.
 
Thekla McDaniels
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Ah, yes.  Thanks for explaining.  Small size does make everything more sensitive….

Would a 20 liter size plastic bucket with some holes drilled in the sides be manageable for you?

I’ve heard of people using those for mushroom culture…

An alternative to starting with the mycelial threads at the base of the mushroom “stem” (stipe I think) is to take a spore print, and use those spores.  If you wanted to get really involved, you could germinate the spores on sterile agar medium in Petri dishes, and separate mycelial threads out from any contaminants, onto new Petri dishes until you had some robust clumps to inoculate your medium…. (or an intermediate growth stage in sterilized medium in 500ml canning jars) before going on to your bucket or bag.

You could also try growing the mycelial threads from the base of the stipe on sterile medium in the Petri dishes.

It would cost more to start, and be more involved, but you would get practiced at sterile technique, you would have more varieties of mushrooms to select from, and you would have some opportunities to leave contaminating species behind.
 
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Well color me inspired! Does anyone have a good resource for when different mushrooms fruit, and how mushrooms play well together? I know winecaps and oysters were mentioned earlier, and someone else was talking about successive harvests in the spring and fall. Is there a database I can use to plan such things?
 
Cécile Stelzer Johnson
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Thea Flurry wrote:Well color me inspired! Does anyone have a good resource for when different mushrooms fruit, and how mushrooms play well together? I know winecaps and oysters were mentioned earlier, and someone else was talking about successive harvests in the spring and fall. Is there a database I can use to plan such things?




Those are the 2 that inspire me too. Wine caps grows very quickly on clean straw and can be planted either in the spring or in the fall. If planting in the spring, it should fruit in the fall and if planted in the Fall, you should be able to harvest in the spring. For us in Wisconsin, a great company is Field and Forest, out of Peshtigo and this video shows you how. They have great videos for just about any kind of mushroom they sell spores for!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3DZV22HVeA
For oyster mushrooms they grow well and without much help on our poplars and come in the Fall. They can be grown on straw as well, and seeing that they are carnivorous on nematodes that are found in the ground, I just might try them near my tomatoes as my garden soil seems to have lots of nematodes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_ostreatus
There is one that fruits in the spring too: https://ngxchange.org/may-mushroom-of-the-month-the-spring-oyster-pleurotus-populinus/, so it depends on the species of pleurotus
 
Kevin Hoover
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Eric,
You’ll appreciate this.  We put in a new flower bed last spring and mulched it heavily.  Just had flushes of wine caps at four separate points in the bed.   Must have been some mycelium in the mulch, though I’ve picked wild wine caps here.
 
When people don't understand what you are doing they call you crazy. But this tiny ad just doesn't care:
Willow Feeder movie
https://permies.com/t/273181/Willow-Feeder-movie
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