Propagating Store Bought Mushrooms: How To Grow Mushrooms From Ends (2024)

FAQs

Propagating Store Bought Mushrooms: How To Grow Mushrooms From Ends? ›

Cut the ends into small pieces. The best size for growing mushrooms from store bought stems is ¼ inch (6 mm.). You can use a cardboard box, paper bags, or even a plastic bin to layer your medium. Place some of the straw or other moist material at the bottom and add mushroom end pieces.

Button mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, portobello mushrooms, and maybe even some fancy shiitake mushrooms if you're lucky. Thankfully, it's possible to grow all of these mushrooms from scraps. 'The stems retain mycelium, which can be cultivated to grow new mushrooms,' explains Calum Maddock at HomeHow.

The process of cloning mushrooms is relatively simple, and basically the same whether cloning wild species, cultivated species, or even store-bought fruits. All you need to do is harvest a piece of tissue from a mushroom fruitbody, place it on agar, and allow the mycelium to grow out until you have pure culture. Easy!

Yes, you can grow mushrooms from fresh mushrooms because mushrooms consist of tightly packed mycelium, the same thread-like material that makes up the vast underground portion of a fungus. Even after you pick a mushroom, the mycelium that makes up the mushroom's flesh is still alive and able to reproduce.

Moreover, that stump isn't going produce another mushroom in the way that a severed plant's stem might regenerate; rather, it's sort of a single-use structure that's going to rot away after you leave it.

The best variety for home growing is oyster mushrooms, though you can use any type. Store bought mushroom propagation is quite easy, but you should choose fungi from organic sources. Propagating store bought mushrooms from the ends just requires a good fruiting medium, moisture, and the proper growing environment.

Start with a grow kit

Spray-and-grow kits, a block of colonized substrate inside a small box, make for the easiest way for beginners to get started. “They're inexpensive. You get a lot of mushrooms out of them. And they're super easy,” says Lynch.

You can cultivate these tasty fungi on a small patch of your kitchen counter! Grab some mushroom substrate like horse manure or compost mixed with straw and sterilize it using a pressure cooker to clear out unwanted microorganisms. Next, sprinkle the white cap spores across the moist substrate.

After a mushroom block stops producing, you can bury it to get some more flushes from the soil surface!

Transfer 1-2 desert spoons of the spawn into your 1 litre jar of sterile grain. Quickly, push a small amount of cotton wool through the lid's breathing hole and attach to the jar. Finally, shake the jar vigorously to disperse the grain spawn throughout the jar. Place on a shaded shelf within the clean room to incubate.

Can you propagate fungi? ›

A mature mushroom is said to contain up to 16 billion spores and so this gives plenty of opportunities to propagate. It is relatively easy but quite time consuming to collect your own spores as all you need is a mushroom (but make sure it's a known edible variety), some paper and glass.

The simplest way for beginners to start growing their own mushroom spawn is using the stem butt method. You can take the stems of oyster mushrooms and put them in a container with some damp cardboard. In a couple of weeks you'll have your own spawn.

No matter what shape you want, the key is to first trim off the stem of your shrooms. This not only removes any woody, dried out, or dirty sections, but more importantly it also creates a flat base for your mushroom to rest on, making slicing much easier and safer.