How to grow mushrooms under your porch

What is that growing there?  It's a couple of gourmet oyster mushrooms.  I remembered that I put them there when my son bear dropped a truck under the deck.  Here's how to grow them.

What a waste of space under that deck.  Wouldn't you rather have something growing ?

So where do you get musrhoom spawn.  I'd go to fungiperfecti's site.  It comes in a bag like this.  You have 2 options just the spawn for $16

 http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/pearl-oyster-sawdust-spawn.html

Or you can get a small instruction book with it here for $25

 http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/the-hypsizygus-ulmarius-garden-patch.html

I totally reccomend Paul Stamets books so I'd just get his book and do the cheaper option. Also I'm explaining it here arn't I?!!  I must also make the advisory that you should know what your mushroom looks like that you are growing.  Don't just pick some thing in there and eat it if you're not sure.  That could send you to the hospital or morgue.  Like I said though, Read up and feel free to email me and ask.

Here is some old spawn that I mixed with coffee grounds and put in a black plastic trash bag so students at school could watch my oysters grow.  We'll use that for the instruction instead of the bag spawn because it's easier to see the black coffee on the straw. 

Doesn't it look awsome!?  The mushroom mycellia (roots) grew totally through the coffee grounds.  Starbucks gives away grounds free and all you do is mix a bag of spawn in, put it in a garbage bag, slit it on the sides, and water it.  Shrooms grow out the slits.

Here are some still growin out of my bag.  I don't like the bag for production though because indoors is a bit too dry.  In hindsight I should have made a plastic tent and kept this guy moist.

It even grew into the cardboard.  Not gonna waste that are we.  I just got it wet and buried it in straw for an experiment : )

Ok so you get some straw, put it under your portch, and break up your shroom spawn into it.

Mix it up. Yep that's my wedding ring.  I hate jewlery and it would get caught in all sorts of craziness as you could imagine.

Then you bury it in the straw near the bottom.

 Then you water it really good.  Bear's kiddie pool is above where I put my straw so I just dumped it out.  Yeah those are buttons.  He had a lot of fun with a box of great grandma's buttons I gave him.

Then the mycelium grows in the straw. You can see the mycelium growing in this straw it's the white stuff.

Then those mushrooms grow on up.  They're fast though so watch out.  There were at least five big ones but I only got two because they went to spore.  A shroom can grow to full size in a week.  Also you should keep your straw moist.  I forgot and they still grew, but I made sure the pool was above to account for my absent mindedness.

So here's my harvest.  It doesn't hurt my mushroom patch to harvest.  The shroom part of a musrhoom is actually the fruit.  Kind of like an apple is to a tree.  The main part is actually the mycellium.

So just put in a pan with butter, salt, and pepper.  And then take it from there once you know what they taste like that way.

I shoveled these corn cobs out of a barn last week.  Can't wait to see how the mycellium grow in there!!

You can grow other kinds of shrooms too.  The little dots you see on the outside of this stump are wood dowel pieces that were inoculated with hen in the woods.  Just drill a hole and put them in for an edible stump removal!

You can see the mycellium around the dowels and under the bark.

You can do a log too.  Most hardwoods work too.  Here's a link to the plugs I used.
http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/maitake-plug-spawn-approx-100-plugs.html
Have fun!