As with growing anything, the ideal method for you will rely on a variety of criteria including your time, space, budget, environment, and other such considerations.
However, mushrooms, as we all know, will find a way. Almost always. You just have to determine which methods work best for you and start growing.
Mushroom Woodchip Garden
If you have a moist, dark place in your yard where you don’t know what to plant – perhaps under a fruit tree or behind the laundry – try this strategy.
A mushroom woodchip garden can be set up anywhere, as long as there isn’t a lot of regular foot activity.
Logs of Shiitake
If you’re short on space but have access to some fresh logs, shiitake spawn, and a drill, growing mushrooms on shiitake logs could be an option.
Shiitake mushrooms grow best on oak, poplar, and beech logs, but any hardwood will do.
When it’s time to pick shiitakes, make sure to put them in the sun to boost the amount of vitamin D they have.
Mushroom Gardens in a Basket or Bucket
Another of our preferred mushroom gardening methods for those with a limited amount of garden space is bucket growing.
In order to complete the fruiting process, we often place our fruiting buckets outside in the garden somewhere shady and damp.
Integrated Gardens
Tucking mushrooms into corners of the garden is one of the best ways to grow them.
Currant bushes, for example, are a great place for enokitake mushrooms to thrive. Under pines, saffron milk caps thrive (and only increase).
There are a plethora of methods for promoting growth. As our friend Speedy (or Paul Ward, as his mother calls him) recently discovered, you can inoculate a few nearby oaks by mixing together a slurry of porcini mushrooms (old ones that weren’t fit for human consumption).
Make a mushroom garden bundle (another Speedy invention), which is a beautiful way to introduce fresh life to the un-shroomed nooks of your patch.
Make a Mushroom Garden Bundle
What you’ll need is:
- Made at home or purchased Mushroom spawn, or a few fresh mushrooms of the variety you choose.
- Cloth made of untreated hessian or cotton
- Natural-fibered string
- Root cuttings and/or moss trimmings, if desired
- A bucket of water
Method:
Make a hessian sausage by stuffing spawn or mushrooms into wet hessian. Then, using natural string, form a spiral bundle and fasten it.
Root cuttings from comfrey, a forest garden groundcover, and other support species like moss can be tucked into the middle, as well.
After that, put it in a pail of water and let it soak for a while.
Afterwards, brush off any extra water and place it under a specific sort of tree, on some wet woodchip, or… whatever makes sense for that species.
This method works best with saprotrophic mushrooms, such as:
- Wood Blewits
- Stropharia, the King of Thrace
- Mushrooms with Oysters
It doesn’t matter which method you use; do your homework, obtain what you need, and give it a go.
You won’t see results immediately, but in time, you should have a steady supply of delectable mushrooms to round out your seasonal diet.
