Beginners Guide to growing mushrooms?

I have a patch of sloped shaded area in front of a tree line that tends to grow mushrooms. I also have access to a wet shaded patch (not owned by me but never traversed) behind my home. I would like to grow some mushrooms.  From my light reading, I have found that Morels, Chanterelles, Hedgehog, Psilocybin Cubensis are native to this area.  I really wanted to try chicken of the forest too, but trying to be reasonable I would like to start with something that already likes the soil and conditions here. I think a little success would give me the confidence to try again.  

Can you suggest a book that I might read that would help me?  Wood is something we have plenty of we have a friend who is in the tree cutting business and brings us more than we know what to do with often times.  

Hello Della, we have a few books in our book forum that you might want to take a look at.

How about this one ?   Growing Mushrooms

I have heard that Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation by Tradd Cotter gives really good information that is easy to understand, though I haven't personally read it.

Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets is a good resource for outdoor growing.

My favorite is Radical Mycology by Peter McCoy. It is very in depth on the fungal "queendom," but has all of the information that you need for any type of mushroom grow....plus so much more info.

I bought Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Stamets, but use it as a general resource if I want to look something up. The information in there is very dense (and possibly some of it is dated?).

Good luck! It's a lot of fun working with fungi!!

If you like videos to help you get started on growing mushrooms I suggest watching MushFarmer on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWx0Upf4IqFfgUZzS-e03Tw) if you have a lot of time to see how he does larger scale for business.

But "Lets Grow Mushrooms" (http://www.mushroomvideos.com/) (Marc R Keith) has good links and very good guidance.  His website has very good videos to download for $8 or $9.   I am learning by following his video examples and consider the investment very useful.  I just started to colonize Brown Rice Flour cakes  (pink and Blue Oyster) and today will do Rye Berry Grain inoculation (not decided on type yet).

There is also Shroomery.org but there is a lot of conversations related to illegal types (aka magic).  You can learn there are many variations on how to successfully grow mushrooms inside.

I am learning also about the anti-cancer properties of some of the varieties (National Institutes of Health has articles of interest).

Have you identified the mushrooms that already grow there?

We have a guide on http://www.jiovi.com.  Look in the fungi section, then any of the spawn or plug mushroom products.  There is a PDF growing guide there.  It's a good primer.  I'm sure a book would have more detail, especially anything by Paul Staments.  Or you could just use the guide to google more detail/videos of a specific method.  good luck!

Edible & Medicinal Mushrooms - The New Vaults - Deep Knowledge - Mycotopia

Check out the above links for a large archive of free online material relating to the amatuer cultivation of mushrooms. Grow logs, teks, Q&As, pictures and more.