Grow Mushrooms In Just 8 DAYS! Mushroom Growing Kit Review (anyone can do this at home...)

so without a doubt one of the easiest ways to grow mushrooms at home is by using a mushroom growing kit this allows you to grow fresh mushrooms in your kitchen without any expensive equipment without any specialized tools all you need to do is get a mushroom growing kit and basically let it do its thing in this video we're gonna be growing mushrooms from a kit and I'll show you the whole process from opening the kit up and preparing it all the way to harvesting fresh gourmet mushrooms so this is the kit we're going to be using this is a back to the roots mushroom growing kit this is pearl oyster yeah I'm not affiliated with this company or anything like that but I have using these kits before and they do work pretty well so mushroom grow kits come in a variety of different sizes and in a variety of different species but they're basically all the same they're basically just mushroom fruiting blocks which are you know substrates typically hardwood sawdust and bran or some kind of other thing that mushrooms like that I've already been colonized with mushroom mycelium and as you can see this one the mushroom mycelium is completely overtaking all of that substrate so basically all the hard work has been already done for you all you need to do is take it out of the box and go ahead and fruit and grow the mushrooms now if we follow the instructions on this kit what it says to do is to cut an X on the top of the block to kind of reveal that mycelium and then take a fork and scrape off some of that excess mycelium or some of the older mycelium on the top to kind of expose fresh mycelium and then hydrate it or rehydrate it by soaking it in water overnight and this is gonna rehydrate the block but also kind of initiate that painting or initiate that process where little mushrooms will start to form on top of this block so yeah we're gonna go ahead and follow these instructions once all that's done we can put it in an area that's nice and humid that gets kind of some ambient light earth IPU so ambient light and fresh air and just watch these mushrooms grow so a simple easy process but let's go ahead and get started okay so I've gone ahead and cut an X on the top of the block and you can see now it's totally exposed and right away when you open it up you can you can smell a nice fresh oyster mushroom mycelium you can always tell if your block is contaminated or if your mushrooms are contaminated because it would smell kind of rancid but fresh nice clean mushroom spawn or mushroom mycelium has a very distinct smell and once you know it you know exactly what what good mushrooms smell like for lack of a better word so okay now I got the kit opened up again don't think to use like my hands are clean I did wash them but at this point the mycelium is pretty resistant to contamination or the block is pretty resistant to contamination because it's already been fully colonized so there's no you know nutrients left or nothing left for bacteria or mold spores to land on and start to contaminate so at this point it's the same with fully colonized grain spawn like once so much for mycelium is fully taken over then it's relatively resistant to contamination so yeah like the instructions say I'm gonna go ahead and kind of scrape it with a fork so scrape off that top layer of mycelium exposing some of that you know fresher mycelium underneath so yeah looking at this I'm not sure exactly what the substrate is that was used for this fruiting block typical substrate would be something like hardwood sawdust and bran or maybe soy hulls this looks like it could be something like I don't know coconut husk or something I really have no idea I don't want to reach out and see exactly what it is but I mean obviously the mushrooms liked it because this block is you know beautifully fully colonized and ready to go so yeah now we're just gonna put it in water and soak it overnight so your fruiting block or your mushroom kit will float in the water so just make sure you put it upside down so that the X or the part that you cut is facing downwards and completely submerged in the water if you want you can always put something heavy on top but this one looks like it's totally fine totally submerged so yeah we'll just kind of leave it like that overnight and in the morning and it'll be ready to put into fruiting conditions so these mushroom growing kits are super easy to use and the intention of them is just to be able to put that bag kind of back in the box and be able to put that pretty much anywhere that has nice diffuse lighting and keep it humid by just using a spray bottle in fact the the box actually comes with a tiny little spray bottle that you can use to kind of keep your mushrooms humid because if at any time it dries out at the top of the block gets too dry if the mushrooms get too dry when they're growing there's a good chance that they'll stop growing or maybe even not grow at all because mushrooms do require a lot of humidity and oysters in particular require a fair amount of fresh air in order to grow and maintaining that balance of fresh air and humidity is actually you know somewhat difficult so depending on where you live depending on the climate inside your house it can actually make a pretty big difference on the success that you have with these kits so if you live in a much more arid environment or a dry environment there's a chance that this mushroom kit might not work all that well for you but if you want to kind of cheat the system and make your own mushroom fruiting area or mushroom fruiting chamber it's pretty easy to do and that's what this thing is behind me this is a shotgun fruiting chamber and basically it's just a environment that will provide enough humidity and you know you can put enough fresh air in there by opening the lid and and you know waving it down so it gets enough fresh air so that you don't have to worry about your mushrooms drying out so I'll show you real quick what a shot that fruiting chamber is and we're actually gonna be using the shotgun fruiting chamber to grow this mushroom kit instead of just growing it in the box on the counter so yeah a simple shotgun fruiting chamber is really easy to make it's basically just a clear tote that I've peppered with holes every couple inches with a quarter inch drill bit and then we took a bag of perlite we soaked it in water allowed the perlite to soak up that moisture allow that to drain and then fill the bottom couple inches of this tote with that moist perlite which will kind of release that moisture over time keeping the inside of the box humid and then in order to grow the mushrooms you just need to kind of pay attention to the inside every once in a while come by fan it down so we get some more fresh air in there and maybe spray it with a spray bottle if you find your mushrooms are getting too dry now I've also got this plastic sheet underneath the shotgun fruiting chamber because there is holes on the bottom so eventually there will be some water that kind of drips out at the bottom so I've got that plastic sheet just to protect wherever it happens to be now where you put your shotgun fruiting chamber is pretty important as well again mushrooms want humidity and fresh air but they also need a little bit of light not direct sunlight you don't want it to heat up or anything like that but nice diffuse lighting so if you can put it maybe near a window away from any drafts but also away from direct sunlight so we'll get that nice ambient light that the mushrooms need to grow but not that direct sunlight that might heat it up too much or maybe cause it to dry out [Music] [Music] so it's only been a couple days now since I started seeing the pins and if we look at it today the oyster mushrooms are growing really really really fast but you can already tell that they're starting to grow really kind of tiny caps and thin stems and again this is just a result of oyster mushrooms needing a lot of fresh air they're kind of notorious for doing this and for growing weight differently depending on how much fresh air they actually have so if waster mushrooms are grown for example outside where they're getting a lot more fresh air it almost looks like a completely different species where the cap of the mushroom will grow just massive whereas when they're growing indoors you know they're a lot more restricted and how much fresh air they can get so they take on a whole different look so the challenge here is managing to give the oysters enough fresh air while still trying to maintain that high humidity so basically what I'm doing now is just making sure I'm Fanning the Box down as often as I can what continuing to spray it and even just leaving the corner of the lid open a little bit in order to more easily allow the mushrooms to kind of exchange air and get that co2 level down and grow as normal looking caps as possible [Music] ok so it's been about another 24 hours now since the last update and as you can see the mushrooms are continuing to grow really really fast it's just incredible how fast these things actually grow from initial pin to full size mushrooms in just a couple of days we're still getting some pretty decent great looking mushrooms and the block is flushing wonderfully there's a lot of fruit bodies and a lot of mushroom that's growing off of this tiny little block so we're probably not that far away from harvesting it probably gonna harvest it and maybe a day or so but I just want to show you quickly - if you want to improve the automation of your shotgun fruiting chamber a piece of equipment you can use that you can put on a timer so you don't have to spray it or fan it down nearly as much so this is a rep defogger and you can get it at pet stores and what it's used for is to increase the humidity in you know terrariums for geckos and stuff like that but it works really well to humidify mushrooms on a small scale basically all it is is a you know bottle of water that you fill up and there's a little ultrasonic humidifier in there and a little fan and it will pump in humid air through this hose so you can just simply turn it on and I have it on a timer so it goes on a timer every 15 minutes sorry every hour it goes on for about 10 or 15 minutes and you can see when it's turned on once it gets going here we'll just crank it up a little bit more so you can see what it gets turned on it's pumping in some nice humid air with that ultrasonic humidifier so not only is that increasing the humidity inside this shotgun fruiting chamber but since it's blowing it in it's also bringing in some nice fresh air so it'll really reduce the amount of time you need to spend opening up your chamber spraying it down and Fanning it down so it's a nice little piece of equipment that can kind of automate your grows a little bit I like to kind of put it down near the bottom and just kind of drape it over the top and it will pump in some nice humid air into your fruiting chamber and help your my shrooms grow and help your mushrooms get the conditions that they need and then in terms of the lid you can just kind of live leave it on top kind of cracked open a little bit leave some room for that hose and just leave some room for the shuck and fruiting chamber to continuously exchange fresh air so I'm just gonna let these mushrooms grow for another 24 hours or so and then we're gonna harvest them and make a nice meal out of them and then I can let you know what you can do with the mushroom grow kit after you've harvested the mushrooms okay so it's the big day these mushrooms are now ready to be harvested and you can see just how well this turned out and how many mushrooms we got up this one tiny little block and they actually look pretty good they got some nice big caps and we ended up getting a huge bounty of oyster mushrooms and what's amazing to think is that we only cut the X in this block eight days ago and it only started showing pins about four days ago so you can see how fast these mushrooms really grow and they're totally ready to be harvested now in fact they're a little bit later than a typically like the harvest oyster mushrooms see with oysters you want to harvest them kind of right before the cap starts to curl up which is the oyster mushroom telling you that it's reached the end of its lifecycle and it's ready to drop its spores so these ones have started to curl up a little bit but they haven't started to drop a lot of spores yet which means it's a perfect time to harvest them so we're gonna go ahead and harvest these mushrooms and all we're gonna do to do that is basically take a knife and cut the whole clusters off right off the top and block and then kind of remove any of that excess material that's still on the block and the reason we want to do that is because this isn't the only crop or the only harvest that we can get off of this block in fact once we harvest it we can hydrate it again and put it right back into fruiting conditions and you'll get a second flush and maybe even a third flush of these big beautiful oyster mushrooms so you can get a lot of food off of these tiny blocks and actually if you had the right equipment to do it you can remove a tiny piece of this mycelium put it on agar make brain spawn and make your own fruiting blocks in perpetuity because you can basically save this culture and just keep growing it out and making your own fruiting blocks but that does require some specialized equipment and you definitely don't need to do that to enjoy your kits and to get lots of mushrooms off your kits so we're gonna go ahead and harvest this block and then cook up some tasty mushrooms yeah so all we're gonna do to harvest this block simply grab whole clusters of moisture mushroom and kind of cut it right off the base of the block [Music] and then what you want to do on this block is just kind of remove these extra pieces of mycelium and any kind of fruiting bodies that you aren't going to use just because then you can rehydrate the block and if you don't remove these these will just end up kind of decomposing when you try to get your second flush so it's best to remove all of this excess material before you try to rehydrate it and get your second flush so we got about 262 grams of mushrooms and that's pretty incredible to think that it came off that tiny little block but by far with oyster mushrooms the best part is the cap that's gonna be tender and just delicious where is the stem can be quite a bit chewy and definitely not as good so we're gonna prepare these by removing much of the stem and then just cooking up the cat part [Music] [Music] so that's it I'd say that was a huge success now we got tons of these beautiful oyster mushroom caps and for these ones there's a million different ways that you can cook Oster mushrooms but basically we're just gonna fry them up and some butter with some herbs and you can add them to you know pretty much any kind of dish and it's such a great way and an easy way to grow food at home so we got a nice little bounty of oyster mushrooms here we're gonna cook these up and then I'm gonna rehydrate that block and put it right back into the fruiting chamber to try and grow another flush of mushrooms so yeah that's it for this video I really hope you enjoyed learning how to grow mushrooms from a kit if you're interested in growing your own kit I have some links to some mushroom kits in the description below but until then I'm gonna go cook these up and enjoy these mushrooms so thanks so much for watching I'm Tony from fresh cat mushrooms and we'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: FreshCap Mushrooms

Views: 145,205

Rating: 4.9263611 out of 5

Keywords: growing mushrooms at home, how to grow mushrooms at home, growing oyster mushrooms, mushroom grow kits, back to the roots review, back to the roots kit review, shotgun fruiting chamber, easiest way to grow mushrooms, back to the roots

Id: YXsR_vgD_7o

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020