Top 7 Tips For Aspiring Mushroom Growers (If You've Never Grown Before)

this video is for beginner mushroom growers so if you've never grown mushrooms before and you want to give it a try then this video is for you i'm going to let you know the top seven tips that will hopefully help you avoid some of the mistakes made by newer growers and will have you pumping out mushrooms in no time now i remember when i first started growing mushrooms there was not really a ton of good information available i mean there were some forums and some you know blogs and whatnot i remember like going to the shrew marie to try and learn how to grow mushrooms and there's a ton of information out there now especially on youtube and everywhere else so there's a lot of really good information but there's almost a little bit too much information it can be a little bit overwhelming to try and figure out where you should start or how you should just get going if you've never grown before so hopefully these tips will give you just a little bit of insight into where you should start and what you should do to achieve success in growing mushrooms so tip number one is to start with a mushroom growing kit now i've mentioned this a bunch of times before so it might be nothing new but it really is such a great tip and it is the perfect way to start and to first learn how to grow mushrooms and the reason is because the chances of success are super high it's really really easy to grow mushrooms from a kit and once you get that feeling of success once you first see some mushrooms growing through that kit and watching the mushroom life cycle you might just get addicted and want to jump into the rabbit hole and start learning as much as you can about growing mushrooms i know a lot of different mushroom growers got started that way by just having their first experience with a mushroom growing kit because again growing mushrooms can be super complicated if you've never done it before and you just start looking into it you'll think oh i need all this equipment and i need all these special you know conditions and i need to build a fruiting chamber and all this stuff but really none of that is true if you just buy yourself a mushroom growing kit and get started there's lots of these kits that are available online i'm sure if you just google a mushroom kit you'll find a lot of good ones the ones that i've used before and work really well are called back to the roots they have them both in pearl oysters or pleurosociatis and pink oyster mushrooms and they're super easy to grow and super easy to use again there's lots of different kinds if you're looking for something that isn't oysters if you want to grow like lion's mane for example you might want to check out mike tyson i've never used this kits but i know a lot of people have and they seem like they're really good and really easy to use and basically what a mushroom growing kit is is like a mushroom fruiting block and it will ship to you like this it might be in a box or something but it's a fully colonized fruiting block and mycelium is fully taken over the substrate and it's ready to go and you know basically this is the same thing that commercial mushroom growers use for growing their mushrooms and when you get it you'll take it out of the box and you'll simply just cut an x in the plastic and eventually mushrooms will grow through now this is chestnut mushrooms and i don't think you can find a kit with chestnut mushrooms you never know uh but again it doesn't matter what type it is if you start with something easy like oysters or lion's mane you'll just get a block like this cut it open you can leave it on your counter maybe spray it down a few times and there's a really good chance you'll have some mushrooms growing out of here and have some early success okay so tip number two is to get a good mushroom cultivation book and this does feel really old school because well basically everything you ever want to learn about mushroom growing is on the internet and there's tons of really good youtube videos and there's tons of tutorials and whatnot and why would you need a book but there's something about having a book this physical object that you can just you know flip through while you're drinking your coffee or sitting on your table and you'll always be looking at it and there's some books that are really good and have just a ton of information all compiled in a really cohesive way so you don't have to pick all this scattered information from all over the internet so the book that got me started and i'm pretty sure it's the book that got a lot of mushroom growers started is growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms by paul stamets so it might be a little bit outdated and there might be a lot of information in here that you probably don't need because it really is focused on almost a commercial side of cultivation but that being said it is just an awesome book and if you have it i promise you you will be flipping through this thing all the time now there's lots of other really great books as well one that i found that is really cool is called diy mushroom cultivation now this is by willoughby arevalo and it's just cool because it's got a lot of techniques in here that are you know a lot more reasonable for small scale home growers so for example like this fruiting room is just kind of you know built in a closet and you know there's just lots of information on how to make your own spawn on a small scale it also has some really good information on building your own lab or some lab techniques you can do and it also has some you know really low tech methods like growing mushrooms on logs or growing mushrooms in laundry baskets and all sorts of other things like that so this is a pretty good book but like i said there's lots of them so just search around on amazon read some of the reviews and pick up a really good mushroom cultivation book to get you inspired excited and full of knowledge so tip number three and probably the most important tip of all is to join a mushroom growing community and this is one thing that books definitely can't do and it's this idea where no matter what you're interested in there's a pretty good chance that there's a bunch of people all over the world that are interested in that same thing and if you can bring them all together in an online community you can really learn a lot and really accelerate and level up your learning so join a mushroom growing community there's lots of them there's one that we started on facebook a few years ago just called mushroom growers and i think there's like 10 to 15 000 people in there right now and it's super active and a lot of people are sharing information sharing tips that they learned asking questions getting feedback all sorts of really awesome stuff so it's super super helpful there's another one on facebook that's called mushroom growing which i think is like five or six times bigger i think maybe even bigger than that there might even be a hundred thousand members in there and that one's super active as well so it doesn't really matter what mushroom growing group that you join just make sure that it's active and make sure you play by the rules because a lot of these ones you can get kicked out of pretty easily for whatever reason um but yeah really great communities on facebook if you don't like facebook no worries i know a lot of people don't like to be on facebook there is a really great mushroom growing community on reddit so if you go to reddit.com r slash mushroom growers or just search mushroom growers subreddit it's also a really good community it's pretty large pretty active so if you have any questions or you just want to share some successes or you want to talk to other growers or you want to read what other people are doing it's a really great place to go so either mushroom growers on facebook mushroom growing on facebook or reddit mushroom growers you should be able to find some really great community there now i'm sure there's lots of other ones that you could find and it doesn't really matter again which one you join it's just a really good idea to connect with others and learn that way because much like the mycelial network a network of mushroom growers is probably the best place to level up your skills and learn faster than you ever could before tip number four is to start with a goal in mind because this will help you decide what you really need to get started and how much you really need to invest in your new hobby whether it be a hobby or whether you actually want to turn it into something like a business and start your own small scale mushroom farm because what you need to get started is going to be very very different depending on what it is that you actually want to do with mushroom growing so having a goal in mind will set you up for success even if that goal changes over time again like i mentioned earlier a lot of people might just start with a mushroom growing kit and before you know it they want to quit their job and devote their life to mushrooms and honestly i totally get that sentiment it has this ability to really kind of suck you in into mycology into mushrooms and it's just it's just awesome once you get into it um but again you maybe you just want to grow mushrooms in your garden you just want to have some mushrooms growing on your countertop that you can eat every once in a while or who knows what you want to do but starting with a goal in mind will make it a lot less overwhelming because again if you get into some of these communities like a lot of people in there are starting their own small scale mushroom farm are really trying to scale up or selling their mushrooms to the farmers market it can seem super overwhelming so it might be easier if you just say you know what i'm not into that at all i just want to get started growing mushrooms it will help kind of clarify what you need to get started and what kind of tools and equipment especially you need to really get going so the next tip is to get the right equipment for what level of mushroom growing you're at and where you want to go so i always like to think of mushroom growing or the journey of learning how to grow mushrooms as three different levels level one is growing mushrooms from a kit level two is being able to buy pre-made commercial grain spawn and level three is to actually start making your own grain spawn and build out a lab and start being able to do whatever the heck it is you want with growing mushrooms but having the right equipment at all three different stages can really make a big difference in making it less frustrating and making yourself way more successful in growing mushrooms i know when i first started growing mushrooms i literally tried everything and it just caused so much frustration i remember the first time i ever tried growing mushrooms i just like sprinkled some spores over a substrate and of course that didn't work and then i would try to make my own agar dishes from stuff i go to the grocery store and put them in like tart shells that didn't really work i always tried to sterilize substrates just on a stove in a pot without actually getting a pressure cooker and that didn't work and i learned a lot but it was a lot of frustrating experiences that i probably didn't need to go through and i probably could have learned a lot faster if i just would have the right pieces of equipment throughout the journey so the most obvious piece of equipment that you might want to get right off the bat is a pressure canner or a pressure cooker and again this doesn't have to be super expensive yeah you can spend 1200 bucks and get an all-american electric stereoclave which are awesome by the way but you don't actually need one you can get a presto pressure canner 23 quart i believe and it can fit you know four fruiting blocks it can fit up to 10 jars of grain it can do agar and you can get that for under 100 bucks and even though it's a little bit cheaper in terms of the make and the seal sometimes break they can actually last a really long time and you can pressure sterilize a ton of stuff like i used one presto pressure canner for years and really opens up the world of mushroom growing because if you can sterilize stuff you can really uh do a lot more than if you can't sterilize stuff of course when you go on to the third level when you're building out a little bit of a lab and you're doing sort all sorts of you know different ag artwork and stuff like that again this is where it really helps to have the right equipment now you can cheat and use masking tape instead of parafilm or use a knife instead of a scalpel or use a still air box instead of a laminar flow hood which is all great and there's lots of different ways to succeed but it honestly is so much easier if you have the right equipment now tip number six is to simply get outside because observing how mushrooms grow in nature observing what they do in their natural habitat can be a huge help when trying to grow mushrooms or trying to cultivate mushrooms in general because most of the vetted cultivation techniques have come from just observing mushrooms in nature and then trying to mimic or duplicate those techniques when you're cultivating them paying attention to mushrooms growing in different locations and seeing how much fresh air they need and all that kind of stuff can all be super helpful when trying to learn how to grow mushrooms whether you're doing it just in your house in a shotgun fruiting chamber whether you're thinking of even starting a mushroom farm or whether you just want to grow some mushrooms in your backyard watching mushrooms in nature is really one of the best ways to learn what they need in order to grow also mycology in general is a pretty fascinating subject so just kind of paying attention to what's going on in nature and i know once you get into mushrooms you'll start noticing things that you never noticed before in terms of how mushrooms grow where they grow what type of mushrooms grow around you and it's another really great rabbit hole to dive into even if you're not interested in growing mushrooms so finally tip number seven is to kind of just get started and don't over complicate things and don't try to do something way too ambitious i know a lot of people when they first start getting into growing mushrooms they want to do something crazy like grow morel mushrooms at home or try to grow amanita muscaria or something super hard super complicated with a difficult life cycle but just bite off a chunk that you know you can chew do something that's super easy follow a technique that's been proven start with a mushroom kit whatever it is to get a few successes and a few w's under your belt and once you start to see that success it's way easier to build off of that and learn from that and continue to have success because nothing is more frustrating i guess than constant failure and if you're continuously doing projects that just get contaminated or don't grow or don't fruit or nothing really happens then it might be easy to start to lose interest and to not be super stoked on growing mushrooms which i think you should be so if you need that early success to get started then follow a known technique start from a kit do whatever it is to get some of that success but if you just want to experiment and go crazy and have fun then i guess it doesn't really matter you can learn a lot from your failures and you will become a much better mushroom grower from that so those are my seven tips for beginner mushroom growers and if you've never grown mushrooms before in your life i hope this gives you a little bit of insight on what you might want to do to achieve success and start growing mushrooms so yeah that's it for this video again if you are interested in mushrooms and you want to see more content on the magic of mushrooms be sure to subscribe we try to do weekly content weekly videos about all things mushrooms so if you're interested in that be sure to hit that subscribe button and hit that like button as well so thanks so much for watching this video i'm tony from freshgap.com and we will see you in the next one

Channel: FreshCap Mushrooms

Views: 208,783

Keywords: mushroom growers, mushroom growing, mushroom cultivation, mushroom kit, how to grow mushrooms, mushrooms, mushroom farm

Id: P5xRvoq0I2w

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021