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Growing mushrooms indoors is a lot of fun because these immune system–boosting treats grow very fast (in as quickly as two weeks). Let’s have some fun with fungi, as we explain how to get started with growing mushrooms at home.
Learning how to grow mushrooms indoors is not hard, and you can practically watch mushrooms grow before your veryeyes.
The easiest varieties to grow are oysters, shiitake, wine cap, and lion’s mane. Most people often start out using store-bought “ready-to-fruit” kits that come with complete instructions forbeginners.
These healthy mushrooms are great in any meal—even breakfast with eggs; in fact, they’re the breakfast of champignons. They’re all delicious; that’s the morel of the story (Sorry if these puns were in sporetaste!)
Start with a MushroomKit
We’re going to start off with some mushroom kits: one for growing oyster mushrooms (which uses a two-gallon pot stuffed with straw) and another ready-to-go kit that uses coffee grounds as its growingmedium.
The instructions are below but it really helps to watch the video to see ademonstration.
Note: Do not eat just any mushroom which may not be edible. Only buy your mushroom spores and kits from reputablesources.
A couple of U.S. supplies are:
Oyster MushroomKit
The kit uses alarge pot of around 2.5 gallons, or you could use two pots of half this volume each. The growing medium is straw, pressed into pellets, and ready to berehydrated.
- Prepare the pot: Clean the pot, then sterilize it with a dilute household bleach solution. Cover the drainage holes with a circle of cut-to-size cardboard, pushed to the bottom of the pot. Cut in holes into the sides—three holes of around a half inch in diameter, using scissors. Space them evenly around the circumference and also evenly from bottom totop.
- Prepare the strawn and grain:Break up the grain, which has the spawn of the mushrooms in it. Empty the straw pellets into the pot then add the broken-up grain kernels to the straw pellets and mix well to distribute evenly. Make sure to use very clean hands for this so you don’t introduce any unwanted germs! Best to do this outside to make amess.
- Water: Measure out about a gallon of water and then very slowly trickle-pour half of this over the spawn mix. Allow the water to become fully absorbed—around half an hour—then add the rest of the water slowly. Once the straw pellets have fully rehydrated to fill the pot, push back the straw from your three holes to leave a cavity. This will keep this area moist and protected so the mushrooms can properlydevelop.
- Make the lid:The lid will stop everything from drying out. A simple way to make one is to cut out a round of stiff cardboard to fit it, then wrap it in clear food wrap or plasticwrap.
Now it’s prepared; we just need to offer warm conditions for the mycelium—or mushroom ‘roots’—to grow. Room temperature is ideal, but keep the pot away from direct sources of heat. If it’s the summer, you could keep the pot outdoors, somewhere sheltered and out of directsunlight.
To keep things going, simply mist-spray the holes a couple of times a day. This will stop the straw from getting too dry, offering that moist environment that mushroomsneed.
And here it is after two weeks, with the straw now totally white with mycelium. At this stage, our kit’s ready to produce its first flush ofmushrooms!
Continue to mist the holes twice daily, and within a week or two, you should notice small clusters of primordia—the beginnings of the fruiting bodies—the mushrooms—that we’ll be picking. At this stage, misting becomes even more important as you really don’t want these to dry out. They’ll soon swell into full-sized mushrooms, and this shouldn’t take more than about a week after spotting theprimordia.
The best time to harvest oyster mushrooms is before the caps have fully flattened out when they will dump lots of spores everywhere! Twist free the whole cluster at once—the mushrooms will be different sizes, and that’s fine—and trim any stump out with a sharp knife right back to fresh straw. Continue misting, and you can expect new mushrooms to sprout from the harvested hole in due course. They should keep cropping every few weeks for up to around tenweeks.
Coffee GroundsKit
I hate waste, and your daily cup of Joe creates quite a bit of it in the form of these: coffee grounds. Try a kit that uses coffee grounds mixed with a little straw to create the ideal growing medium for our mushrooms. Let’s get itstarted.
Cut open the front of the box and cut out a cross into the front of the bag. Then soak the bag overnight, let it drain off, then pop it back into the box. Mist the front of the box that’s cut open with water twice a day. Keep the kit on a windowsill or work surface out of direct sunlight and, again, avoid direct sources ofheat.
And here you can see the primordia—about seven days after opening your kit and starting it off. These grow very quickly—doubling in size almost every day! Again, harvest the mushrooms when the caps have just started to open out but haven’t yet flattened out. Flattened-out mushrooms don’t store for quite as long and aren’t quite as firm and flavorsome. To harvest, simply twist and pull them away with your hands likethis.
You can grow a follow-on flush of mushrooms, too. To do this, allow the kit to rest for two days following harvest, then just soak the block in water just as you did when you started it off. Weigh it down if necessary. Lift it out, allow the excess moisture to drain off, then pop it back into the box and mist regularly, as before. The second crop should follow within a couple of weeks or so. And once you’ve had that harvest, repeat the process oncemore!
Cooking withMushrooms
Mushrooms are so versatile; they are great with eggs, in a pasta dish, or in an Asian soup. If you’re vegetarian, mushrooms help achieve a warm, savory meal without meat. A simple recipe for your first harvest is searedmushrooms.
Seared Mushrooms with Garlic
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high until just beginning tosmoke.
- Cut up mushrooms in large pieces and arrange in a skillet in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, until the bottom side is golden brown, about 3minutes.
- Season with salt and pepper, toss mushrooms, and continue to cook, tossing often and reducing heat as needed to avoid scorching until golden brown all over, about 5 minutesmore.
- Optional: Reduce heat to medium and add a couple of tablespoons of butter and a couple of crushed garlic cloves if you wish. If you have fresh thyme, add chopped thymeleaves.
Here are a few more recipes to try withmushrooms:
- Mushroom-SpinachQuiche
- Noodles andMushrooms
- StuffedMushrooms
Mushrooms are pricey. At least, decent mushrooms like these are. But by growing your own, you can be sure of perfect shrooms at peak freshness—and for a lot less than the grocerystore.
They’re so powerfully good for you, too: great for the immune system and for fighting off diseases. Have you grown mushrooms before, and what’s your favorite variety? We’d love to hear fromyou.
