i found a website that tells the ratio of water to use with the wood pellets so there is no excess water to worry about. do a search it should pop up. should be one for straw as well. oysters are pretty aggressive colonizers but you still want to make everything as sterile as possible before you add the spawn.
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If you go to North Spore they have a bunch of informative videos. There are some really easy ways to grow. I just chip maple saplings off my property and make a pile with the spawn lasagna style do it in a shady area on a base of cardboard. I also do the bucket method
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for some reason its easier to grow shrooms outdoors on soil which is the opposite of the sterile conditions needed for growing indoors. any shroom grows better with ground contact. ive done elm oysters in hardwood sawdust in my raised beds around my veggies.
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I finally got my Wine caps!
What is interesting, they didnāt grow where I expected them to grow. I had an empty raised bed 4āX9āX10ā'. The middle of it (2X7) I filled with wood chips and sawdust spawn and straw per instructions. The perimeter of the bed I filled with soil , planted some impatiens and mulched with shredded leaves. I hoped to have flowers on the sides and mushrooms in the middle. Guess what? Not a single mushroom on the middle. They all appeared between the flowers. Strange.
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they have a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. they will grow without plants nearby but prefer to grow amongst the roots. take some of that mycelium and put it around your mulched plants and give them fresh woodchips every spring. i had flushes of them for 7 years before they finally petered out. elm oysters will do the same. i also have wood blewits coming up near my compost pile and around my chicken run in the fall.
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Interesting! Do you have a link for a tutorial? Would love to try this!
No, but it isnāt too strange or difficult. Just get some mushroom plugs and plug them into a live stump the same way as you would regular logs (plenty of tutorials on those!). Then keep an eye on the stump for the next year or so and periodically give the mushrooms an advantage by ripping off any new growth. Youāll likely find that the new growth is much weaker than if you hadnāt added the mushrooms, and if youāre lucky youāll get mushrooms as well 
the stump will eventually die on its own.
You would need to make sure that the stump is something your mushrooms like. I have a lot of mulberry in my yard and mainly use oyster.
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What is the common oyster sold in grocery stores?
Do pink oysters really taste like bacon as descriptions state?
I have a small commercial mushroom farm. I grow around 1000 pounds per week and have grown hundreds of different oyster mushrooms from different sources like NorthSpore, Maine Cap n Stem, Field and Forest, many small farms like mine, and I have a breeding project here trying to create something better than whatās out there.
Now, for commercial oysters found in grocery stores. All farms grow different oysters, so it would be anyones guess, but typically a type of Blue Oyster.
Pink Oysters donāt taste like bacon and lions mane doesnāt taste like crab. Their textures on the other hand do match favorably. So if you season them properly you can make them taste like that. Naturally they donāt.
My two favorites for oysters are golden oysters and a wild strain from Tennessee. Check out Mossy Creek Mushrooms. He sells spawn or liquid cultures and he has that wild strain. He named it āold road.ā It has a very rich flavor for an oyster.
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Is there not much taste variance between all of the oyster varieties? Iām getting ready to do up some willow I cut. What common oyster would you recommend?
Iām only two years in on the mushroom game. Winecap, Shiitake and White Oyster are what I have now.
Most oysters taste similar. The blues, whites, elms. Sweet anise, some umami. 3/10 flavor
Goldens definitely have their own flavor, more nutty. I donāt taste much variance between goldens. Golds fruit best at warmer temps. 7/10 flavor. I am most fond of Northspores golden oyster strain.
The Old Road variety I mentioned above is a natural grayish-brownish colored oyster that has beautiful umami flavor. This mushroom grows best at warmer temps. 9/10 flavor.
The polar oyster from field and forest is also good and likes to fruit at cooler temps. 6/10 flavor
The Comb Tooth, which is a hericium that you want to buy from Maine Cap N Stem has a sweet almost maple syrup flavor which is rare for mushrooms. 8/10 flavor. My father in law compared this to a morel when cooking it.
I do grow everything in a climate controlled building on sterilized substrate.
When I grew in greenhouses insects were a major pain. Oysters are insect magnets, so growing varieties that fruit in cooler weather like the polar oyster would be a benefit as the insect pressure is less. Shiitake seem to be less desirable to insects as well, so Iād definitely continue them.
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my winecap produced a ton last year, this year I got a few pounds in spring but only one or two tiny caps since.
I topped with Aspen shavings and wood chip (mixed stuff from chip drop) then a bit of straw. I can see the mycelium in there but I think itās been too hot and dry ā¦
they seem to come up best where thereās partial, not total shade.
last year they went wild, these photos are from June through August.
this year? I got some in late May through early June, nothing since.
same care, same beds. I might add more inoculate in spring to start them up again, but itās really hard to come by hardwood in any form where I am. itās all pine.
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Thanks for that info. Insects have been a problem, but woodpeckers have been worse. I ended up ordering Grey Dove oyster, a colder fruiting variety. Do you have any experience with it?
same hereā¦
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they do like to pop up when the weather changes. a drop/rise of ten to twenty degrees does it. here that usually means a storm, rain. but it can happen even if itās dry.
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I have never grown grey dove. Polar is hard to beat for cold weather though. Iām sure itās fine as I think Field and Forest has some very nice strains in general.
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Looked at that, but Iāve got a white now and couldnāt remember which one I ordered. Went with the Grey Dove to be safe. Wanted to get the gold, but you are right about the insects. Even my shiitake get beat up. Thinking itās cold strains from here on out.
so does north spore.
I ordered morel for the fall. will be spreading winecap next month and will start a morel patch under the ponderosa. plan to put all ash and burnt materials into a small area with pine straw and see how it goes.
via north spore for that one
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What mushroom that grows on wood taste the most like Portobello?