5 Ways That Mushroom Farms Benefit Communities | GroCycle

Many growers choose to set up a mushroom farm to grow for profit, but the benefits of mushroom farming are far wider reaching than this! In this video, we visit two mushroom farms whose aims are to grow and benefit communities where they live. Mushroom farms, along with other small scale food producers, bring a full spectrum of benefits to a community, including the sharing of knowledge, economic empowerment and improvements in mental health. Our thanks go out to everyone at Margate Mushrooms and Myco Mushrooms, Manchester... Margate Mushrooms: margatemushrooms.co.uk facebook.com/margatemushrooms instagram.com/margatemushrooms_/ Myco Manchester mycomanchester.com facebook.com/mycomanchester instagram.com/mycomanchester/

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What you'll need for large-scale mushroom growing

This article will tell you about all the different things you'll need if you want to go in for mushroom growing on a large scale. This will take a little trouble, but if you do it right, will ensure that your family always have fresh, organically grown mushrooms, a food both nutritious and exceedingly high in protein. I can see that you're already interested, so let's just cut to the chase. Now mushrooms can take a week or two to grow, or sometimes even more, depending on the richness (or otherwise) of the growth medium.

As such, you'll want to ensure that you have the most mushrooms growing at once, because this means that you'll have a regular supply for your loved ones, or to distribute among acquaintances, or even to put up for sale. You'd be surprised at the number of people who are interested in buying fresh, organically grown mushrooms. Now the first thing you need to arrange is a room in which to do your growing. Don't put this right in your home if you're going to do some large scale growing, though the basement might be an acceptable place if you can maintain the temperature.

At this stage of mushroom growing, you need to make sure that the temperature remains within ten degrees of fifty five degrees Fahrenheit, so if your basement gets much colder than that, you'd have problems growing mushrooms there. If you can maintain the temperature, however, it might be an ideal place to grow mushrooms. If you have an outhouse, garage, or barn, they might also be nice places in which to grow mushrooms. There's one more thing that's needed besides a stable temperature range, and that is the absence of light. Mushrooms don't like light, period, so if you choose a place that you can keep completely dark, they'll be more likely to grow successfully.

Lastly, you need to keep the wind out - mushrooms don't like winds either, especially if they carry any chill along with them, and if you put them in windy places, don't be surprised to find your mushrooms dying after a draught. However, you can just put them in closed boxes with removable lids, and if you do this, they should be fine so long as you maintain the temperature and humidity. Mushrooms in the early stages of growing love lots of water, though once they sprout you'll need to push back on the humidity a little. Spores, growth medium and even trays to plant mushrooms in are available everywhere, and mushroom growing is very much easier than most people think.

The secrets to mushroom growing

If you always liked mushrooms, mushroom growing is a great way to assure your family of a regular supply of this excellent food. Many people think that growing mushrooms takes some special kind of skill, or at least extremely specialized growing conditions. But this is absolutely not true. In reality, mushrooms are as easy to grow like anything else and can be a good deal easier to grow than many kinds of food.

They often need less care and require growing conditions that potentially allow even a person in a city to grow them. Did you know, for example, that mushrooms can be grown in your own flat? I know of city residents who have grown mushrooms in a box in their homes. Of course, if you live in the countryside you have the option of growing mushrooms on a far larger scale, simply because you have so much more space available. But even if you live in the city, and have a garden shed, you could grow your mushrooms in it.

Now, all mushroom growing takes is some growth medium and some mushroom spores or spawn, as they are also called. Yes, that's all that it takes to grow mushrooms. Now, while mushrooms may not take too much space, and may not require too much care, the ambiance you provide them with can be all important.

Mushrooms do not like light, so make sure you keep light away from them. If you're growing them inside your house, you can grow them in a closed box that will keep the light out, and the temperature inside the box stable. If you are growing them in a shed or in your greenhouse, you will need to ensure that there is a very minimum of light falling on them, and also that you exclude draughts. You will also need to maintain a stable temperature range, because mushrooms are very susceptible to changes in temperature. If you do not maintain a stable temperature range, and it varies beyond around fifty to sixty degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, your mushrooms are in trouble.

On the other hand that's all that it really takes to grow mushrooms. You just need spawn and the growing medium. Place the spawn in the growing medium and place it in a dark, moist place. Water it regularly every day, and pretty soon your mushrooms will be ready for harvest. There really isn't all that much to mushroom growing.

Tips and tricks that can help you towards successful mushroom growing

How you go about mushroom growing can directly impact how successful (or not) you are at growing them, of course. If you go into this without sufficient information, you may end up with a lot of wasted effort. On the other hand, if you do a little research (something that's so easy to do with the internet as available as it is) you can easily make it a vast success. Because the simple fact of the matter is that it's extremely easy to grow mushrooms. You just have to do things right. To start with, it's best not to use mushroom spores directly.

While it's possible to buy mushroom spores, these spores are actually so tiny that they're microscopic. This means that they can be quite difficult to handle, at least until you get used to things. You can also harvest spores from mature mushrooms, simply by cutting the cap off and placing it on a large sheet of paper or on a sheet of glass. However, I would advise against using spores, not only because they are inconvenient to handle (a single breath of wind will scatter them all over the house or yard), but also because they're vulnerable to contamination, and if they contaminated with spores from wild, poisonous mushrooms, the consequences could be disastrous.

Preventing contamination is also the reason why it is recommended that you always go in for mushroom growing indoors. Indoor growing greatly reduces the chances that a few wild spores might come to rest in your mushroom beds, and grow up among your safe mushrooms. If the mushrooms that grow from the wild spores turn out to be poisonous, it could cause serious problems for anyone who eats them. And that's just one reason why you shouldn't grow mushrooms outdoors.

Another reason is that the growth medium is so rich that a lot of germs and unhealthy algae and fungi can start to grow in it if it's left in an open environment. In a closed environment, things are more controlled, and this means that your mushrooms can be relied upon to not only not be poisonous, but also not to carry any disease producing pathogens. Of course, you will wash the mushrooms before cooking them, but considering the growth medium that mushrooms grow in, it's better to be safe than sorry. These are just a few tips that you can use to help you with your mushroom growing.

Preparing the growing medium when growing mushrooms

Mushroom growing can be both lucrative and fun. It all depends on how well you can manage to grow them, and on the amount of space you have available. And of course, it depends on the quantity you wish to grow. If you're just getting started and would like to study the process, I would suggest that you buy one of the mushroom starter kits. These mushroom starter kits usually provide you with a container to grow the mushrooms in, a growth medium, and, of course with the mushroom spores or spawn. Generally speaking, growing mushrooms from such a kit is extremely easy.

All you have to do is place the growth medium inside the box and place the spawn in it. Then you just keep the box closed in a room in your house which is safe from draughts, and the mushrooms just grow. It's really just that easy. You have to water the mushrooms, of course. This involves misting them with a water spray. You wait for the mushrooms to grow sufficiently, and then harvest them. After you harvest them, you keep misting the growth medium again until the next batch grows.

You can sometimes get a good many mushrooms from a single batch of growth medium and spawn, and they can provide some very nutritious and tasty meals for your family. So a mushroom growing kit is a great idea if you like mushrooms, or even if you want to learn the basics of growing them. But if you want to grow them on a larger scale, you're going to need more space. Of course they don't take up too much space, but you still need the bare minimum. I would suggest the garden shed as the best possible place to grow them, or a greenhouse should you have one available.

Bear in mind, though, that mushrooms will never stand the excess of light available in most greenhouses, and you'll have to find a way of darkening the greenhouse, or at least of darkening a certain section of the greenhouse. If you can do that, you can have quite a few batches of mushrooms set up and growing right at once. You can either buy a growing mixture and spawn, or you can make your own growing mixture and buy the spawn, just as you wish. Making your own growing mixture is likely to lower your operating costs if you're at all thinking of commercial mushroom growing.