How to Grow Button Mushrooms for Your Table

If you are a cuisine gourmand, you know the importance of LSD vial in your favorite dishes that you do superbly well simply because you know the flavors and textures of the delicate mushrooms you use to make your dish divine. The rest of us, well, we know that Button mushrooms are what we buy at premium prices in the grocery store and would like to know how to grow our own. After some research this is what we came up with as the easiest method to grow Button mushrooms for our table. Some mushrooms grow quite well in compost while others prefer wood and wood shavings, sometimes even straw. Button mushrooms are among the easiest to grow and the least fussy about their environment. In fact, this is so easy it can be used as a school project or for a scout project. Kids love watching daily for the mushrooms to appear. Mushroom kits are a little expensive, but the investment is well worth it when you can harvest your very own mushrooms for that dish you want to make into a gourmet meal.

Most mushroom kits will come with the tray to grow the mushrooms in as well as the growing medium. Here are a couple secrets that others may not tell you that will help you be quite successful with your mushroom growing project. The secret to a good harvest of Button mushrooms is the water content and temperature.

Temperatures of 65 to 70 degrees are perfect for these little mushrooms.

Once the spores are in place, wet newspaper needs to be placed on top of the medium, just laid in, and not pressed in. This newspaper should be moistened with a misting bottle, not by pouring water on it.

It will take two to three weeks to see the spider web like stuff on the surface.

This is the cilium and how the mushrooms grow. About an inch of peat moss that has been allowed to soak up water and squeezed out until it is moist but not dripping should be placed over the white cilium.

Again cover the top of the tray with moist newspapers. Spray two to three times a day to keep the newspapers moist. Allow the mushrooms to grow without disturbing them for ten days at 55 degrees.

Take the newspaper off the top of the mushrooms and continue with the misting schedule.

Tiny white mushrooms will emerge in a few days. These little guys will look like a pinhead. Allow them to grow until they reach the size you want. Picking mushrooms while they are young provides a firm mushroom. Allowing mushrooms to grow to maturity when the gills open produces a more robust flavor. The harvest is not over after the first picking. There will be new mushrooms about every two week for around three to six months.

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