How To Grow Mushrooms The EASY Way (No Sterilization!)

[Laughter] if you look behind me i have this overgrown section of trees doesn't get much light i can't really grow much in there besides poison ivy and maybe a few raspberries so i want to grow mushrooms in there a lot of people are growing them in five gallon buckets inside especially with the ones i'm gonna be growing the blue oysters which are also the easiest to grow i'm going to attempt to grow them inside here on a straw bale so let's take a look at everything we're gonna need and let's get started growing some fungus so here is my straw block so i have some string i'm gonna be cutting these straps i'm gonna loosen it up a little bit and to get the spawn which we have here sawdust spawn blue oyster five pound bag definitely very important you're gonna need that to get that into this straw i'm gonna be prying it apart with this piece of pipe you can use a shovel or any anything to pry it apart and now let's take a look at the location we're gonna use a lot of people are really confused why i haven't grown mushrooms yet because i am such a fun guy walking in the woods got this guy set up right here i'm going to use a pallet because i want to get some air flow underneath this straw bale some people put cardboard down flat and then do their bed that way but air flow is really important for these mushrooms got the straw bale in place look how tight this thing is i do not like that if you get the right straw bale you're not gonna have to worry about this but because of my situation i'm gonna take some string tie it around this in a couple spots kind of loose and then when i cut these it's going to open up and my new string is going to hold it from going everywhere give her a snip and see what happens a little bit better i get my fingers in there got a nice gap to work with to get this spawn inside this straw bale now that the bale's set it's time to get this straw bale soaking wet this part is going to take a while this straw bale is going to eat up all that water [Music] i forgot to mention when you're doing this make sure your cut ends are up you see these are going a long ways these are the cut ends they already have hollow areas in them you want that water to seep inside there with the water in there this guy is really starting to grow so i had to loosen the string up a little bit and tie it off really good there's a lot of pressure here i've been opening this up with this pipe just to get some spaces in there to make sure this water really gets down in there if you look in there it's still really dry inside there we don't want that we want this whole bale to be soaked so i'm gonna keep spreading it spraying water in there move it around do the same thing all the way across this bale it's going to take a long time but it's what we got to do looks like i'm pretty close we got water coming out the bottom means it's soaking in pretty well i think it's good to go now nice and wet now it's time to inoculate this bale with this grain spawn [Applause] for this i'm going to be using this pipe pry this guy open and we're going to jam the spawn as far as we can inside here we want to get it at least halfway down this bale and we're going to move around this bale and keep adding the spawn and then when we have some left we're going to come back we're going to do the sides we're going to use this whole bag inside this bail just going to take it break it up put some inside there use my fingers push it down feed it down in there move on a little bit and we're just going to keep doing the same thing i think i got it pretty good this goes down deep had some little pieces that are sticking on top just took my fingers and drove it down a little bit to the top to the sides now we're gonna cover this i'm gonna use the piece of plastic that came with it but you can use a plastic tarp as well this is going to keep a lot of this moisture in but you still need air flow so we're going to leave the bottom uncovered at this point now we just got to wait but i want to make sure it stays moist has airflow and sunlight is not hitting it if i find sunlight hitting it i'll probably take another pallet toss it on top just to give it some shade and now we let her eat i'm three days in now and i've been checking my bail and if you look here i'm starting to get a little bit of white mycelium growth which is a good sign i've been checking this daily and it seems like it's drying out i'm just gonna mist it with the garden hose lightly not gonna drown it a little bit over a weekend now i've added a pallet here for a little extra shade i got some sun peeking through here shady for the most part though i also swapped out my tarp because i noticed with the other one i was starting to dry out a little bit and i was getting sick of watering it two or three times a day i'm really hoping this super hot weather is not screwing up my mushroom growth it's a little bit cooler in here so we should be okay with it let's take a look at it and we definitely got a lot more mycelium coming in now it's looking pretty good so far we'll get another couple weeks and take a look at it again it's been about a month and a half now and we finally have success with our mushrooms the problem with blue oysters are they do not like the heat so planting these mushrooms at the time of year i did in late june early july really didn't work out that great i would have been better off using pink oyster mushrooms which actually like the heat and humidity but we had about a week or so of cooler temperatures and the mushrooms have just flourished when you do your daily mushroom check you're going to want to look for what is called pinning these are a little bit over pinned they're going to be smaller in this but once you notice this it is time to take the tarp off of your straw bale here's a little better example right there these little mini mushrooms coming up mushrooms need a little bit of light and they definitely need air flow i gave up on my mushrooms because of the heat i thought it was a total failure and then i was doing a mushroom check and i came out here and saw this i had a lot of pinning that came up that just dried out and died and then the moisture really got in there from these cool damp mornings and they have blown up that is pretty cool some of these guys are ready to go look at this nice little cluster right there these mushrooms are ready to get eaten if i would have started this project in the spring or fall which is the actual time that these mushrooms actually come out in the woods this process would have taken probably 30 days or so to complete the hot weather slowed us down it took about a month and a half to get where i'm at right now and i knew since it was inoculated i can see all the spawn filling this out that i probably still would get mushrooms in the fall and it just goes to show you that you do not have to follow the rules when it comes to gardening if i would have done that i would have looked at the temperature limitations on blue oysters and i would not have even given this a shot so i'm glad i gave it a shot because it did work out when i was doing my mushroom research the problem was there's so many different sterilization techniques that you're supposed to use to grow these especially indoors when you're doing them in bags or in fake logs however you want to grow them i didn't like all that that seemed like too much work for something that grows naturally outside so using this straw bale really worked out good besides the hour or so it took to set this up i really haven't done much besides keeping this thing moist if you've got a shaded out area your property and you want to grow something and you're looking at all the different plants you could possibly grow give mushrooms a thought i think this way is going to yield a lot more mushrooms too than the other ways like growing in bags and stuff indoors it just doesn't seem like you're getting the most out of your mycelium these mushrooms got this whole straw bale to eat here if you look i mean they're ready to go they're starting to chow down this whole thing this is just my first flush i got all these other pins coming up this whole thing is going to be covered with mushrooms i even got a little mushroom sneaking out the side right there as long as this bale's here these mushrooms are going to have food to chow down on and i think i'm going to get a lot more mushrooms well into the fall and then when these mushrooms are shot and they're done chowing down this is going to go right into the compost and feed my other plants very cool hope you guys enjoyed this blue oyster mushroom growing video it's a little different than what we're used to here there's not enough straw bale mushroom growing videos on youtube with the straw bale anybody could do this if you enjoyed this video make sure you subscribe to the channel and let me know in the comments like and follow the facebook page to see bonus content that does not make all these videos and as always thanks for watching

Channel: Fast Gardening Michigan

Views: 454,957

Keywords: how to make a mushroom bed, grow mushrooms outdoors, grow blue oyster mushrooms, grow mushrooms in garden, growing mushrooms on straw, grow mushrooms on straw, homemade mushroom bed, cultivating blue oyster mushrooms, cultivating mushrooms, mushrooms without sterilization, grow mushrooms at home, grow oyster mushrooms, mushroom cultivation, organic mushrooms, permaculture, food forest

Id: Qk2tRAt6bGw

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022