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Cultivating Blue Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus)

Oyster mushrooms are one of the easiest of mushrooms to grow. They grow on hay, leaves, paper and even coffee grounds. Oyster mushrooms are very aggressive growers which means that they will out compete most other fungi and such. Below is pictures of my procedure.

I'm going to try cultivating Blue Oyster mushrooms on spent daylily scapes, stay tuned!

 

Hay was used for the mushroom "food" I heated the hay to about 170f, to kill any stray fungi that might compete with the Oyster mushrooms

I poured off the water and allowed the hay to cool. Once cool I packed the hay into large ziplock bags.

In this picture at the top, you can see the prepared bags and the mushroom spawn which is growing in millet seed.

I got the mushroom spawn from North Spore of Maine

 

After about 3-4 days the mushroom mycelium are starting to spread throughout the hay.

By week 2 the mycelium have completely colonized the hay, and at this point it is ready for fruiting. In order to stimulate fruiting I moved the bags to a well lit location and cut some 2 inch criss cross holes in the bags, to allow lots of air into the bags

Within 4-5 days fruiting has begun. The mushrooms start out small but increase in size in a matter of hours.

Here you can see the Oyster mushrooms popping out of plastic bags.

Here is what the final harvested mushrooms look like.