There’s an old joke by the iconic comedian Henny Youngman that goes: There’s a man going to the electric chair. The warden says, “You can have anything you want to eat, anything you desire.” So he says, “I want mushrooms.” The warden asks, “Mushrooms?” And he replies, “Yeah, I was always afraid to eat them.”
While the fear of what the wrong kind of mushroom can do to a person can make for a clever joke in a comedian’s set, that fear is actually very common in the United States.
“We have a lot of mycophobia—or fear of mushrooms and other fungi—in North America,” Britt Bunyard, co-author of “The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms,” told The Epoch Times.
Since mushrooms are actually a fungus, and a fungus doesn’t sound appetizing at all, it’s no wonder that the general public is leery.
But growing mushrooms at home, Bunyard said, gives people the peace of mind that comes with knowing that what they’re growing (and eventually eating) isn’t going to kill them—and this is one of the reasons why the trend is on the rise.
He feels another reason for the “steady uptick” in growing mushrooms at home is their medicinal benefits.
“Some of the properties include all sorts of anti-cancer compounds found in mushrooms you’ve heard of, as well as mushrooms you’ve never heard of,” he said.
“In a lot of cases, it’s the strong antioxidant properties, but there’s also neurogenerative properties in a number of mushrooms.”
Bunyard also credits the lockdowns for the big increase in homegrown mushrooms.
“People wanted to get out into nature,” he said, which fostered a rebirth in home gardens and farmers markets.
Why Grow Your Own Mushrooms?
First of all, homegrown mushrooms are just another kind of gardening, and for centuries, people have found solace in gardening.But there’s also the financial benefit.
“If you like mushrooms, it’s a lot cheaper than buying these ‘exotic’ mushrooms in the store,” Bunyard said.
Where to Start
So you want to farm your own mushrooms, but where do you start?The easiest and least expensive option is to purchase a starter kit. Beginning at about $25, you get a box with a plastic bag in it that contains the makings of a mushroom garden.
“You open the box, tear a hole in the plastic, sprinkle some water, put it in a dark closet, come back like five days later, and you’ll see the mushrooms already forming,” Bunyard said. “Come back a few days after that, and you can start cutting your own mushrooms.
“I’ve grown culinary mushrooms from kits many times. They usually work like a charm. They’re no fuss, no muss.
“If you were to grow the little white button mushroom at home, they’re actually delicious if you pick them fresh right out of the box. They have way more flavor than the ones in the stores.”
“Quite literally, all the vegetable catalogs will have some mushroom kits, for sure,” he said.
Tavis Lynch has been growing mushrooms since he was in high school, 30 years ago. He is Bunyard’s co-author of “The Beginner’s Guide to Mushrooms” and is the sole author of “Mushroom Cultivation: An Illustrated Guide to Growing Your Own Mushrooms at Home.”
Lynch is a researcher of mushroom genetics and owns a company that manufactures and sells starter kits. He says he can barely keep up with the demand.
“It’s a surge,” he told The Epoch Times, regarding the public’s newfound interest in growing mushrooms.
Lynch, like Bunyard, credits the lockdowns as the catalyst for the increase in home gardening.
“With the lockdown, I couldn’t make kits fast enough,” he said.
Some days, Lynch worked 16 to 20 hours just to keep up with the demand—and it hasn’t stopped. He’s received orders from small farms for 50 to 100 kits and one order for 3,000 of them about a year ago.
Beyond the Kit
A more involved way of growing your own mushrooms is to grow them on some sort of a base (called a substrate), such as a tree log, straw, compost, or lawn clippings.Unlike vegetables grown in a conventional garden, mushrooms aren’t grown from seeds; they’re grown from spores, which means you’ll need to visit a supply house or order from a gardening catalog to purchase a bag of “hyphae,” which is essentially the equivalent of “mushroom seeds,” grown in a grain of some sort.
Then, you’ll sprinkle the hyphae onto your chosen substrate along with some water, and in a short amount of time, you’ll see mushrooms growing.
You can actually make your own hyphae by taking a piece of mushroom, placing it in a sterile jar of moistened grain, and stoppering it. In a few days, you’ll have homemade hyphae.
With all this talk about mold and spores, it sounds as if a mushroom garden is one big petri dish, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds.
“When you eat edible mushrooms, you are eating hyphae, plain and simple,” Bunyard said.
However, novice mushroom gardeners will need a little schooling by experienced ones in order to truly know that what they’re growing is safe, if their hyphae weren’t purchased from a supply house.
“Going beyond the starter kit, then you want to get supplies from an actual mushroom-growing supply house,” Bunyard said.
“They have products for a lot of different types of mushrooms beyond just the few types that you would find in these easy-to-do starter kits,” he said.
The cost of these supplies can range from about $100 to $300, making this route solely for the serious gardener.
For those interested in mushroom adventures beyond the garden, there are plenty of options to get started there as well.
Bunyard, who’s worked as a mycologist (a biologist with a specialty in fungi) for his entire career, is also the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of the mycology journal Fungi, which has been published five times per year for the past 15 years.
He’s also the executive director of the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival in Colorado, and leads international “mushroom-themed treks,” where he takes groups of people to look for wild mushrooms in forests worldwide.
Geographic Location
Your geographic location will dictate what you can use for substrate. Those in the deserts of the Southwest may not have oak logs or wheat or oat straw readily available to them, whereas those in the Northeast would.“I’ve heard of people growing mushrooms on pulverized palm coco coir, the pulverized coconut shell,” Lynch said.
“Another great substrate that people throw in the garbage every day is coffee grounds. Coffee grounds are great for growing mushrooms.”
That’s a good alternative for those who live in apartments, he said.
Your geographic location will also dictate what species of mushrooms you can grow. Shiitake, oyster, and wine cap will survive in a cold climate. A pink oyster, on the other hand, doesn’t fare well in the cold.
“But if I lived in Arizona, California, or Florida,” Lynch said, “pink oyster would be a fantastic mushroom to grow.”
Lynch lives in Wisconsin, where the cold temperatures are beneficial to a species he grows called nameko.
More Reasons
Lynch added more reasons to grow your own mushrooms at home.“We can use mushrooms to improve soil quality; we can use mushrooms to aerate our soil; we can use mushrooms for weed suppression,” he said.
“It’s helping your garden grow. It’s decomposing organic material, making it more usable for these plants.
“We can eliminate the need to get down on your hands and knees and weed a garden, if done correctly.”
Lynch came up with a method of doing this: If you use a sheet of cardboard as your substrate, and either cut holes in it and plant the vegetable or flower seeds through them, or if the plants are already growing, cut a U-shape in the cardboard and slide it around the plants.
Then, cover the cardboard with soil. The mushrooms break down the cardboard, but the cardboard keeps the soil shaded long enough that weeds can’t get started.
Lynch summed up growing your own mushrooms this way: “They’re cool to watch grow, you get some free food out of the deal, [and] there are some medicinal properties and some nutritional value.”
There you have it. Now, get ’shrooming!
