Oyster mushrooms - care and phased growing at home

There are mushrooms that you do not need to go to the forest. Oyster mushrooms are one of them. These delicious, nutritious and healthy mushrooms can be grown in the kitchen or on the glassed-in loggia. All that is needed is to purchase planting material and prepare a substrate on which the mycelium will grow.

Where oyster mushrooms grow

There are almost 30 species of oyster mushrooms, 10 of them are cultivated in artificial conditions. You can grow oyster mushrooms at home:

• ordinary;
• horn-shaped;
• steppe;
• pulmonary;
• lemon-hat;
• Florida.

In nature, oyster mushrooms live on deciduous trees. Mushrooms were named for the fact that their fruiting bodies hang on trunks. They are similar in shape to chanterelles, but larger and of a different color - not orange, but gray.

The taste qualities of oyster mushrooms and chanterelles are the same. The mushroom can be fried, dried, salted and marinated.

In its biology, the oyster is the wood devastator. To grow it, you need wood or any other organic matter, in which there is a lot of cellulose. In the material from which the substrate will be prepared, there must be a lot of lignin - the substance from which the lignified walls of plant cells are composed. Destroying lignin and cellulose, oyster mushrooms feed. For the cultivation of the fungus, sawdust, straw, tree stumps, shavings, pulp and paper waste, sunflower husks, maize and corn cobs are suitable.

In nature, oyster mushrooms grow only on deciduous trees. For their cultivation, birch and poplar sawdust will suit. If there is no hardwood, you can take pine and several times soak it in hot water to wash away essential oils and resins - they slow the growth of the mycelium. But even after such treatment, the fungus will grow almost twice as slow as on deciduous sawdust or straw.

Oyster mushrooms are parasites that destroy tree trunks. In nature, they can be found on fallen and beginners rotting elms, birches, poplars and aspens.

The fungus can grow on:

• oak;
• white acacia;
• lime;
• ash;
• walnut;
• bird cherry;
• elder;
• rowan;
• any fruit trees.

A steppe oyster mushroom stands out, which develops not on trees, but on umbellate plants. Outwardly it looks as if the fungus grows directly from the ground, like a champignon. In fact, its mycelium spreads over the plant remains that cover the surface of the soil.

Ways of growing a baby

Proper cultivation of the mushrooms allows you to eat mushrooms at any time of the year. The technology is available for beginners, does not require rare materials and large financial costs. All you need is to buy a package of mycelium in the store and find some straw or sawdust.

You can grow oyster mushrooms in two ways:

• extensive - on tree stumps and trunks, as it grows in nature;
• intensive - on an artificially prepared substrate.

For room conditions, only intensive methods are suitable - growing in polyethylene bags filled with straw or sawdust.

Cultivation can go on sterile and non-sterile technology. In the first case, special equipment is required, which is difficult at home. For beginners, a non-sterile method is more suitable, in which plant waste is simply disinfected with boiling water.

Lovers grow oyster mushrooms in plastic bags designed for 5-10 kg of substrate. The volume of such imitation of a tree trunk will be about 10 liters. The package can be conveniently placed on a wide window sill or suspended on a wall in the kitchen.

Phased cultivation of veshenok

The technology of oyster mushroom cultivation is developed thoroughly, in all details. If you comply with all the rules, even a person who has no experience of mushrooming, will be able to get at home an excellent harvest of mushrooms. Especially valuable is the ability of oyster mushrooms to bear fruit at any time of the year, even in winter.

Grinding of substrate

The easiest way to cultivate oyster mushrooms is to take straw as a substratum: fresh, golden, not tarnish, not moldy. For compactness, the straws are cut with scissors or a knife into pieces 5-10 cm long.

Soak

The substrate needs to be kept in water for some time. When the mycelium will fly through the straw, it will lose its ability to soak. Therefore, it must be well-nourished with liquid in advance. For this, straw cutting is poured with ordinary tap water and left for one or two hours, then allowed to drain water.

Steaming

In the straw there are many microorganisms competing with oyster mushrooms, from which it is necessary to get rid. The easiest way to make steaming is to pour the substrate with water heated to 95 degrees and allow it to cool slowly.

Benefit of steaming:

• Cleans the substrate from mold spores;
• partially decomposes lignin, which allows the mycelium to develop more quickly.

Cooled down after steaming the substrate is well squeezed. The correct degree of moistening is checked at home by hand: when the substrate is compressed, droplets of water should appear between the fingers. If the liquid flows down not by droplets, but by streams, then the straw needs to be allowed to dry a little.

Adding nutrients

Cellulose contained in straw, for oyster mushrooms will be small. To improve the yield, bran is added to the substrate. Preliminary it is necessary to sterilize them in an oven:

1. steal the bran in boiling water;
2. pour into a heat-resistant bag, for example, a baking sleeve;
3. place in an oven heated to 120 degrees;
4. Warm up for at least 2 hours;
5. mix with the substrate.