Easiest Way to Grow Mushrooms

Oyster Mushrooms

• Oyster mushrooms can easily be grown through mushroom growing kits, which consist of a mass of sticky white mycelium that has colonized a tower of straw. Keep this in a perforated plastic bag, and soon small oyster mushrooms will explode into life and create two good flushes of mushrooms. As for the remaining mycelium that hasn't yet come to life, stuff that in an outdoor compost heap or a woodpile. Soon enough you will have naturally growing outdoor oyster mushrooms.

  Also try stuffing sawdust, coffee grounds and a little straw into a perforated plastic bag with some of the mycelium and store it in a cool, dark place, such as a basement. You'll probably have a few nice fruitings a few months later.

Shiitake Mushrooms

• The shiitake mushroom, one of the finest mushrooms consumed regularly, is best grown on logs outside. Shiitake mycelium can be grown with sawdust, enriched cottonseed meal and fresh logs, by drilling holes in the log and inserting the mycelium into them along with sawdust and cottonseed meal, which provides nutrients to help the shiitakes begin to grow. Also, regularly sprinkle sawdust all over the log itself, helping to spread the colonization out of the holes and across the surface of the wood.

  Once the shiitake sprouts begin to form and grow, moving the log to a humid greenhouse where you can control their moisture and humidity will help the mushrooms grow faster. Beyond their delicious taste, the shiitake mushroom is also considered quite beautiful to look at and can become a part of your decor.

Wine Cap Mushrooms

• Wine cap mushrooms grow vigorously in all sorts of climates and can easily be grown right in your garden. Order a kit or patch of them in late winter and give them a head start indoors, allowing them to grow at room temperature for a few weeks.

  Once the outdoor temperature of the soil in your garden has reached 50 to 60 degrees, plant chunks of wine cap mycelium wherever you want them to grow, and encourage their growth with compost or wood chips. Be sure to harvest the wine caps early so they aren't vulnerable to insects, who love to eat them.