A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home Jacob Hawkes, Paul Grossl, and Melanie Stock Welcome to the wonderful world of mushrooms! Mushrooms are not only nutritious and delicious but also provide a myriad of known medicinal benefits, such as protection against cancer, protecting brain health, stimulating gut health, and supporting a healthy immune system (Valverde et al., 2015). Lately, psychedelic mushrooms have been receiving considerable attention as a promising treatment for mental health conditions, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and end-of-life anxiety among the terminally ill. This publication provides a simple guide for beginners interested in growing basic gourmet and medicinal mushrooms at home for personal use using easily accessible, relatively inexpensive materials.
I. Fungi A mushroom is the visible reproductive fruiting body of a certain fungus. The vegetive portion, mycelium, consists of a root-like network of fungal threads called hyphae (Figure 1). The relationship of a mushroom to the mycelium is analogous to an apple to the tree. The extent of the mycelium network is remarkable. It is so pervasive that a cubic inch of topsoil contains enough fungal cells to reach 8 miles if placed end to end, and every footstep can impact more than 300 miles of mycelium (Stamets, 2005). In fact, the largest living organism on earth is a fungal species, Armillaria ostoyae, growing in the Malheur National Forest in Oregon, USA, that spreads over an area greater than 3.5 square miles (Schmitt & Tatum, 2008). Fungi were originally classified as part of the plant kingdom. It wasn’t until 1969 that ecologist Robert Whittaker suggested fungi have their own kingdom (Whittaker, 1969), which formally became the fungi kingdom in 1980. The fungi kingdom includes mushrooms, yeast, and molds. Genetically, fungi are actually more closely related to animals than plants. As the well-known mycologist and author Paul Stamets said, “Fungi and animals share a more common ancestry than with any other group. Humans share nearly 50 percent of their DNA with fungi, and we contract many of the same viruses as fungi.” Also, unlike plants, which produce their food through the photosynthesis process, fungi and animals are heterotrophs and consume organic carbon from other sources for their food. However, fungi do not ingest their food like animals but rather live inside their food. They burrow their hyphae strands into their substrate and feed 1
Figure 1. Fruiting Body of a Fungus