The Ultimate Food: How to Grow Mushrooms

Imagine a food that is low in fat and calories, but is rich in vitamin B and C and has more protein than any other food. Imagine this food can reduce cholesterol, inhibit tumors, and benefit the immune system. This miracle food is also relatively quick and easy to cultivate-even indoors. For these reasons, the culinary and medicinal properties of mushrooms have been enjoyed throughout history from the early Greeks, Aztecs, Mayans, and Japanese to modern cultures.

Since their early use, mushrooms have been studied enough to develop simple and reliable cultivation techniques. Many types of mushrooms can be propagated in the appropriate settings by growing mycelia, or live fungus tissue, in a nutritious substrate, using the fungus to inoculate less nutritious substrate, adding a thin layer of a moist, non-nutritious substance, and harvesting the mushrooms that sprout. The first step is to obtain spores or a culture of the species one wants to cultivate.

Mushrooms reproduce through spores or live fungus. Therefore, in order to grow mushrooms, one needs to either find or buy live mushrooms or spores. Many online stores exist that sell spore prints, spore syringes, and live tissue cultures. Spores can even be obtained from free spore rings that will mail out free spores if the recipient pays for the shipping costs.

Once the spores have been obtained, they can be used to grow fungus in a nutritious substrate. There are many different substrates to choose from. Most grains, like brown rice and millet, can be ground into flour and mixed with vermiculite and water and put in a jar, forming a substrate cake. Although grains can be used whole to make a better substrate, they are harder to sterilize than flour. If whole grains are used, they should be soaked for 12 hours and rinsed under a faucet prior to sterilization. Once the grains are soaked and rinsed or the flour is mixed with water and vermiculite, they are packed into jars with a small hole in each lid to allow steam to escape and gasses to exchange.