How to Start Your Very Own Garden Giant Mushroom Patch!

Intro: How to Start Your Very Own Garden Giant Mushroom Patch!

We bought a mushroom growing kit from Fungi Perfecti which included The Garden Giant Mushroom Patch, The Elm Oyster Mushroom Patch, and The Shitake Mushroom Plugs.

This Instructable will talk about how to pick out a good location for your mushroom patch and what are the necessary steps needed to start it. This mushroom kit is easy to start and anyone can do it!

STEP 1: Materials

You will need:
- 12 gallons to a truckload of woodchips (we used about 4 wheelbarrows)
- One Garden Giant Mushroom Patch Kit
- Purchasable from http://www.fungi.com/kits/outdoor.html
- Access to an abundance of water - you must water your patch for 10 minutes after you're done preparing it
- Tools
- A metal rake to spread the woodchips
- A shovel to scoop the woodchips

STEP 2: Picking Out a Spot

The place where you put your Garden Giant Mushroom Patch should be:

1.) Not exposed to direct sunlight
2.) Not windy
3.) Naturally humid
4.) Has a ready access to water
5.) Has an abundant supply of non-aromatic, diciduous and/ or conifer chips
6.) Is frequently visited - So you don't forget about it!

We picked out a place that was secluded, shady, and very moist.

STEP 3: Clearing and Preparing Your Bed

Once you found yourself a nice place to plant your Garden Giant Mushroom Patch, use a nice and sturdy metal rake to clear it of any unwanted undecomposed organic debris such as twigs, straw, uncomposted yard waste, etc. We lined our bed with rotten logs do distinguish a nice border.

Then, go ahead and dump a 1-2 inch layer of moistened wood chips on your bed.

STEP 4: Adding the Inoculated Woodchips

On top of the 1-2 inch layer of moistened woodchips, add your bag of inoculated woodchips and spread them around.

Then, cover the inoculated woodchips with another 1-2 inch layer of moistened woodchips and mix the three layers vigorously.

STEP 5: Watering Your Bed

Now just sprinkle your mushroom bed with water for 10 minutes and you're done!

Wait three months and check your bed by carefully digging down into the bed of wood chips to check for dampness and mycelium activity. If the chips are dry, then moisten the bed thoroughly and every few days, particularly during dry, hot weather, lightly water the bed. When the woodchips have become thoroughly run through with white, ropy mycelium, your bed is nearly ready to produce its first crop.

Begin watering your bed for at least 30 minutes a day with a sprinkler, preferably 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. You should start to see mushroom within 2 weeks.

We'll soon update this instructable to report our results since this is our first time too.

Comments

[Gomi Romi]

What do you do about pesky flies all over the patch

[Twistedkaos]

So how did the patch turn out?

[SHOE0007]

what about other fungi that may be poisonous. I had this happen about 4 years ago when I tried growing oyster mushrooms. A poisonous species grew quite near it and I think it was yellow stainer. So I did not want to grow mushrooms this way.

Have you ever grown them in petri dishes?? They need by absolutely free of any contamination!! I am trying oyster mushrooms much cheaper 1/5 the cost for plates and I will grow them with garlic and sodium dichloroisocyanurate salts mixture with nutrients designed for the fungi. Hopefully this will work.

[tim_n]

Brenpat, have you looked again since posting the instructable? Last comment was in 2010, a friend of mine did similar things and found them a year or so later.

[Brenpat]

I'll take another look now to see if they'll surprise me.

[tim_n]

I doubt they'd do anything this time of year unless it's autumn/fall in your part of the world!

[robborobborobbo]

would it be too late to right now in Minnesota to start the bed do you think?

[Brenpat]

Sorry bout the late reply but honestly i'm not too sure, as i might've said earlier these beds were a huge failure and we will try again some other time.

[jokerlz]

 Wow I had always assumed there was not much room (mushroom) for error when growing mushrooms. From the joke in my previous scentence you can see that I'm a fun guy (fungi)

Sorry

[seandogue]

Cool...what fun that is,...when I was ten or eleven, I got a button mushroom farm (a flat with pre "seeded" soil) at Christmas and really enjoyed growing them and of course, sautee-ing them once they came up...yum!.

[lemonie]

Any badgers in your neighbourhood?

L

[Scubabubba]

Badgers!?!? We don't need no steenking badgers! (sorry) Hey Brenpat, are you in the US? If so, do you know what USDA agricultrual zone you're in? We tried one of those mushrom blocks once but we're in zone 8 and that seems to be too hot.

[Brenpat]

Sorry for the late reply. And if it means anything to you, i'm in zone 5b. But our mushrooms still haven't shown and this my first time growing mushrooms. So I don't know if being in this zone will affect my mushroom patch in any way. Go to www.fungi.com for more information because thats where i bought my kit.

[dioblo2345]

i dont know what zone im in but i get tone,s of unkown and known mushrooms under my pine tree but i think u need places that rain often like where i live and and that are humid while it rains and not so dry thing with the mushrooms like wood chips ps that kid on the box was holding a huge mushroom.

[lemonie]

badgers

L

[strmrnnr]

Are these shrooms able to come back every year, or do you have to redo the patch every year if you want more?

[Brenpat]

I'm no expert but my intention/hope is that if you leave some mushrooms every year, they should grow back because of the underground network of mycelium. But what could happen is that all the nutrients in the woodchips and soil might get used up which would ultimately kill off all the remaining mushrooms.

As i said i'm no expert so for more information check out the website where we bought the mushroom kit in the first place:

http://www.fungi.com/

[zascecs]

Cool. Mushrooms are cool.
That was really random.
=)
5 stars (Mushrooms are awsome!)

[Brenpat]

Thanks XD

[austin]

any pictures of the bed once the mushrooms have grown?