Mushrooms can be pricey, especially decent
ones like these! But by growing them yourself, you can be sure of picking 'shrooms at the peak
of perfection - and all for a lot less than the grocery store! They're also real powerhouses
of goodness, great for the immune system and for fighting off diseases. Hi I'm Ben and if
you're a fungi fanatic like me, you're going to absolutely love today's video! Ladies and
gentlemen, make some 'shroom for the mushroom! So in front of me here I've got two mushroom
growing kits for growing oyster mushrooms. And oyster mushrooms are great for beginners and
that's because they grow so fast: in as little as two weeks from preparation to picking! Now many
of them will happily grow indoors, (which is what we're going to do today) but others can be grown
in logs and stumps to create an edible feast. They're very easy to grow and will grow on pretty
much any growing medium, including old books! This kit here uses straw as the growing medium
and this box kit here uses coffee grounds. Fungi after all are nature's original recyclers! Great, so let's get on with our first kit; the
oyster mushroom kit. And we're using 10 liter (or two and a half US gallon) pots for this. You
can actually use two parts of half the volume if you like. This one I've already used before,
hence the holes and I'll show you more about that in a moment. Then the growing medium: what are
the mushrooms going to grow in? Well, straw! And these are straw pellets. They're nice and sterile,
dehydrated and we've got to rehydrate those first ready for the mushrooms to grow into. And then
there's the spawn itself, (the seeds if you like) of the mushrooms. These are on barley pellets
here, barley grains. And they're all inoculated, hence it's white. So they're primed and ready to
go. The first job though is to sterilize our pot so it's nice and clean. Just use a dilute solution
of household bleach for this and wipe it around the clean pot just to remove any germs. And then
just let it dry. Different mushroom-growing kits will have different instructions. This one calls
for holes to be made into the side of the pot so that the fruiting bodies (the bits you'll
actually eat) can come out. And the easiest way to do that is to get a sharp pair of scissors and
insert it through the thin walls of the plastic pot and then twist it to cut a round of about
one and a half centimeters (or half an inch). You'll want to make sure that the straw doesn't
escape from the drainage holes in the bottom, so for that we just pop in a cut-to-size piece
of cardboard. And just pop that straight into the bottom. Now we need to fill the pot with our straw
and our spawn. First thing though is to break up all the bits of grain here to make it nice
and loose so they're all in individual pieces. This makes it easier to mix the spawn
with the straw pellets. And in they go! And then in go our spawn grains. And then they
just need a really good thorough mix up. Make sure you've got perfectly clean hands for this
because you don't want to introduce any germs of course! And then to rehydrate the straw pellets,
I'm adding four and a half liters (or roughly a gallon) of water; half now and half shortly. And
it's got to be trickled on really slowly to give the straw a chance to absorb it. If you fill
the pot up while it's in a sterilized tray, this will allow the excess water to be
absorbed up through the drainage holes as well. And then after about half an hour, you can add
your second lot of water; again very slowly to help it all sink in. Once the straw pellets
have fully rehydrated, make yourself a lid. The easiest way to do this is to cut out a piece
of cardboard to fit and wrap it in some sort of food wrap like cling film. Once you've done that,
pop it over the top. That will help to retain the moisture and keep the straw nice and damp. The
other thing to do is, where you've got a hole, just push the straw in to create a sort of cavity.
That creates a moisture environment at that entry point there, keeping the conditions perfectly damp
for your mushrooms. It slows evaporation as well. Now it's prepared, we just need to offer warm
conditions for the mycelium (or the mushroom roots if you like) to grow. Room temperature is ideal
but keep the pot away from direct sources of heat. 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 mushrooms need. And here's the kit just two weeks after starting
it off. You can already see that the straw is completely white with mycelium. This is now
poised to produce those delicious mushrooms! 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). They'll soon swell into full-sized mushrooms and this shouldn't
take more than about a week to 10 days after spotting the primordia. The best time to harvest
oyster mushrooms is before the caps have fully flattened out, (when they dump lots of spores
everywhere!) Twist free the whole cluster at once. The mushrooms will be different sizes and that's
fine. 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 10 weeks. I hate waste! And our morning cup of Joe
creates plenty of it, in the form of these: coffee grounds. But what if you could turn them
into these?! This is what this kit does here; it uses coffee grounds mixed with a little bit
of straw to create the perfect growing medium for our mushrooms! Let's get it started.
The first job for this kit is simply to remove the perforated front here to access the
bag with the growing medium in. It just comes off nicely, like that. Now you'll find many different
types of mushroom kits and do use a proper mushroom kit from an approved supplier because
you don't want to inadvertently get poisoned or anything like that! They come with all sorts of
growing mediums. We've looked at the straw one; this one uses coffee grounds and straw but just
use what is available in your area. I'll pop a link to a few suppliers in the video description
down below. Right so we've opened it out and the next job is to just cut open the front here,
by simply cutting an X into the bag like this. And now we just need to remove the bag from the
box and soak it overnight in water. Just pop the bag in the water. And because it's quite light,
at this stage you'll need to weigh it down with something heavy, like that. And look at this!
This is the same kit just one week after starting it off and if you look closely you can already
see that the primordia have started to grow. These will grow really really fast, doubling
in size pretty much every day! I only noticed them as tiny pin pricks this morning and now
just a few hours on they're very much visible. And here's the kit just three days on. Yes,
really! And here it is five days on! And look how much it's grown! I reckon it's almost
ready to harvest. I'll give it one more day. Hey look! And here they are another day on. Let's
get on and harvest! And to harvest all I'm simply doing is gripping them firmly where they come out
of the kit and then just twisting and pulling, like that. Get the whole clump off like that.
Gosh, there's an awful lot here! This is going to be a fantastically delicious and extravagant
dinner! Right, oh yes! What absolute beauties! There we go, that's not a bad harvest is it
for my first cut?! Now I've harvested them, while they're still slightly curled over (because
when they're flat they do dump their spores - so at this point is just perfect) what about
the kit that's left here? Well I'll trim off any old bits here. Then I'm going to take
it out of the box, re-soak the bag overnight, pop it back in and then mist spray regularly as
before to expect to harvest within another couple of weeks or so. And I may even get a third and
even a fourth cut if I'm lucky, by just repeating the process! All I've got to think about now
is how I'm going to cook these for my tea.... There are of course plenty of other
mushrooms you can grow at home. They're all delicious that's the 'morel'
of the story! [Daughter:] Oh daddy! Really I should button it... In our next episode, we'll be looking at tools and
how to take care of them ready for next growing season. Don't miss it! Subscribe and turn on
notifications to be sure. In the meantime, why not check out this video?! Have fun
guys! And I will catch you next time.
