How to Prepare Growing Medium for Mushrooms

If you are serious about cultivating mushrooms, you will want to prepare your own blocks of growing medium from scratch. Here's how to get started.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Bleach
• Nail
• limestone
• wheat straw
• clear plastic bags
• rice bran
• pillow case

1. Find a source for clean wheat straw. It should be baled and have no seed heads. Livestock feed stores are a good source.
2. Open the binding on the bale of straw and remove one flake at a time. Wheat straw is baled to separate into ‰??flakes' for easy distribution.
3. Chop or shred the wheat straw into 1 - 3 inch pieces. Sterilized garden shears can be used for this step, or a butcher's cleaver. Make sure the surface you are working on has been sterilized with a 10% bleach solution.
4. Place the prepared wheat straw into clean, cotton pillow cases.
5. Soak the straw-filled pillow cases in hot water for 1 hour.
6. Remove the straw-filled bags from the hot water bath and allow to drain in a clean sink for several hours.
7. Remove the damp straw from the pillow cases and transfer to clean, clear plastic bags.
8. Add soil amendments (optional). 1/4 c. rice bran and 1 tbsp. of calcium carbonate (limestone) can be added to damp straw at this point.
9. Add mushroom spawn (purchased from a reputable supplier) to the straw-filled plastic bags. Close the bag and shake vigorously to incorporate the spawn throughout the growing medium.
10. Pack the straw into the bags as tightly as possible to create a brick, or block. Once the block has been formed, seal the bag tightly.
11. Puncture the plastic bag 25 - 50 times with a sterilized nail to allow air to penetrate. The nail should be sterilized with the bleach solution between puncturing each individual block.

Tips & Warnings

• Buy mushroom spawn over the Internet or buy already prepared blocks to eliminate the mess.
• After harvest, place the spent blocks into loose plastic bags to rest in a warm (68 degrees), dark location.
• A single mushroom block may produce as many as six harvests. Soak the blocks between harvest to keep them producing.
• Contrary to popular belief, do not add uncomposted manure to the planting mix. Manure may carry disease or bacterial harmful to the developing mushrooms.
• Always purchase mushroom spawn from a reputable source. Spawn collected from wild mushrooms may be poisonous.

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