The process of growing honey mushrooms at home. Growing winter honey fungus on a windowsill Growing honey fungus mycelium in apartment conditions

Growing honey mushrooms in the garden allows you to delight yourself and your loved ones with delicious mushroom dishes from June to September. In addition, such a neighborhood does not pose any threat to garden crops, since honey mushrooms live mainly on a dead tree.

A shady, level place under the canopy of trees or under a special awning is allocated for a mushroom plantation on the site. If the logs are installed under open air, they must be covered with a dense layer of dry straw, hay, or recently cut grass (and it must be replaced with fresh grass at least every 3-5 days).

Planting material

In a number European countries(Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, etc.) cultivation of honey mushrooms at home is practiced so widely that you can even purchase professionally prepared paste-like mycelium there, which is freely sold through gardening centers. In our country, on store shelves you can occasionally find bags of sticks soaked in mycelium of summer or winter honey fungus. However, from my own experience I will say that their quality does not stand up to criticism, so best option- stock up on planting material during one of your trips to the forest.

Growing honey mushrooms on stumps

Which wood to choose

It is best to grow honey mushrooms on round birch logs, since after felling they are saturated with moisture, and the thick bark effectively prevents its evaporation. Logs from poplar, alder, aspen, apple, and pear are also suitable. Moreover, this type of mushroom grows very reluctantly on pine, spruce and other conifers.

The optimal size of logs is from 20 to 35 centimeters in length, from 20 to 30 centimeters in diameter and of arbitrary height. Stumps that appear on the site after cutting down old ones will also work. fruit trees- in this case, within 4-6 years of active fruiting, honey mushrooms will be completely and completely destroyed.

In the case of a freshly cut tree, it can be infected with mycelium without any additional preparation. But if the logs have already dried out, they need to be soaked for one to two days, and the hemp should be thoroughly poured with water from a watering can.

Summer honey mushrooms can also be grown on various wood waste. For this, various branches, twigs, snags, etc. form into tight bundles with a diameter of 10 to 25 centimeters and introduce the mycelium using one of the methods described below.

First method

For it you will need the caps of adult honey mushrooms found in the local forest. They are placed in a saucepan and filled with melted water or rainwater. After infusing for 12-24 hours, the liquid is poured through a fine sieve into another container and generously irrigated with stumps or rounded wood logs. On the upper and side parts of the tree, notches are made in advance according to a 5 x 5 centimeter pattern. To make the infection more successful, place several caps of honey mushrooms on moistened logs so that the plates are directed downwards. However, after a couple of days they will need to be removed.

At this method Growing honey mushrooms requires the mycelium quite a lot of time to master the entire volume of wood, so you will collect the first mushrooms only next year.

Second method

The second method uses pieces of old wood that are already infected with spores of this fungus. They can be cut from forest stumps from the beginning of summer. In this case, areas are selected where there is a strong growth of mycelium in the form of light brown and whitish threads and an intense mushroom aroma is felt.

Stored wood chips are inserted into holes made in logs, logs and stumps and covered with pieces of bark, sphagnum, and shingles. You can also secure these caps to the tree using nails. Next, the plantings are covered with film and left in this form until June of next year.

If you nevertheless purchased special wooden sticks infected with fungal spores from a gardening store, they are also introduced into holes drilled in the wood with a diameter of about 1 centimeter and a depth of 5 to 10 centimeters. In this case, the holes are arranged in a checkerboard pattern in the amount of 10 to 15 pieces per block.

And in the case of the stumps of fruit trees, you can do it even simpler - plant the mycelium brought from the forest close to a freshly cut tree. It is placed in a shallow hole, a mound of loose soil is poured on top and watered with warm water. After a couple of days, when the soil has settled slightly, this place must be additionally covered with garden soil and fallen leaves.

It is best to introduce mycelium on cloudy days in early June or early autumn. Although, in principle, this can be done throughout warm season(excluding periods that are too hot and dry).

Planting care

After infection with mycelium, the logs are placed in a vertical position in holes located at a distance of 40-50 centimeters from one another. In this case, there must be at least 15 centimeters of wood above the soil surface. The space between the logs is generously watered and mulched with a layer of sawdust to prevent excessive evaporation.

To receive best result Chocks can also be placed in a greenhouse or greenhouse, where it is easier to control air humidity.

What is the harvest

Summer honey mushrooms produce two waves of harvest - summer and autumn. As a rule, mushrooms produce the entire nutritional resource of wood in 5-7 years. But if you use round timber with a diameter of more than 20-30 centimeters, then you will harvest for up to 10 years.

In general, the yield depends on many nuances - the speed of spread of the mycelium, the vicissitudes of the weather, the type of tree used. Thus, the amount of mushrooms collected can vary from 300 grams to 6 kilograms per summer period from one piece of wood. As a rule, the first wave is the weakest, but subsequent waves give three to four times more mushrooms.

Growing honey mushrooms in a jar

To grow honey mushrooms at home, you will need three-liter jars and a substrate consisting of one part wheat bran and three parts sawdust. The mixture is soaked in clean water during the day and fill the jars exactly halfway with it. Next, a hole with a diameter of about 2 centimeters is made in the center of the jar to its bottom.

At the next stage, the container with its contents must be sterilized in a water bath for one to two hours. To do this, place it in a wide saucepan with slowly boiling water. The next day, disinfection is carried out again.

After this, mycelium is placed into the holes at the rate of 7% of the substrate used. The jars are closed with lids and transferred to a dark but warm (up to +24 degrees) room.

As soon as a whitish coating forms on the sawdust, the lids on the jars are replaced with gauze or thick paper, and the containers themselves are moved into the light to a place with a temperature of at least +10 degrees. At the same time, you need to make sure that they are not exposed to direct sunlight.

As soon as the mushroom caps begin to rest against the paper/gauze lids, they are removed and the honey mushrooms are allowed to come out freely. From time to time they need to be sprayed with a spray bottle. Overgrown mushrooms are cut off and the hard stems are removed. The jars are closed again with lids and put away in the dark until the second wave of fruiting occurs.

Growing honey mushrooms in a pumpkin

The method is indeed very unusual, but it has a number of undoubted advantages:

There are no harmful bacteria or other nasties inside a freshly cut pumpkin.
It creates an optimal level of humidity.
Pumpkin pulp is very rich in nutrients.

To introduce the mycelium, a large, well-ripened fruit without signs of mechanical damage is selected. Having disinfected a sharp knife with alcohol or vodka, cut off the cap from the pumpkin so that a fairly wide hole is formed. Next, wheat grains infected with mycelium are poured into it.

For an average pumpkin weighing about 6 kilograms, you will need 1-1.5 tablespoons of grains. As a rule, mycelium is sold in packages of 50 and 100 grams. That is, this quantity is enough to populate 5 and 10 fruits, respectively.

The hole is covered with sterile gauze or a clean piece of film with perforations. The edges of the material are fixed with adhesive tape or medical tape.

All of the above actions must be carried out as quickly as possible and work with sterile gloves. In the future, the pumpkin with mycelium is kept in a warm room - this promotes the rapid development of fungal spores.

After about a couple of weeks, dark spots form on the surface of the fruit, which are the rudiments of future mushrooms. After this, the pumpkin is moved to a cool and damp place. It is not recommended to keep it warm, since in this case the mycelium inside may burn out.

To collect your mushrooms for several months, 10-14 days after the first infection, you can fill another vegetable with honey mushroom mycelium.

" Mushrooms

Honey mushrooms are one of the most popular mushrooms, since they can not only be collected in the forest, but also grown independently in your dacha or balcony. Summer and winter variety Honey fungus is best suited for breeding at home. They are not fancy and do not require much effort even for a beginner.

Conditions for the growth of honey mushrooms are easy to arrange both at home and on summer cottage or garden. Best time for disembarkation planting material outdoors this is in April-May or August, and in the house (warm balcony, basement) throughout the year.

Air temperature at different stages growth should be from +10 to +25°C.

With uniform and high level humidity, the mycelium develops quickly, which has a beneficial effect on the growth of mushrooms. The building should be well ventilated, this could be a window or built-in ventilation. The light needed for mushroom growth is not bright; it can be grown in almost darkness. Only then will the caps of the mushrooms be pale, but this will not affect their taste. At the dacha, it is better to choose a shady place for planting honey mushrooms so that the wood on which the mycelium is located does not dry out.

Methods of growing honey mushrooms at a summer cottage

You can grow honey mushrooms using the following methods:

in the basement on bags;
on logs;
in greenhouses;
in banks;
on the stump.

In the basement on bags

The premises must be disinfected before planting. In the basement all year round should be good ventilation. IN winter time it needs to be heated.

For soil for sowing mycelium use:

crushed straw;
foliage trees;
woody sawdust;
husk sunflower seeds;
ready-made blocks substrate.

All herbal ingredients are steamed hot water for 12 hours for disinfection from pests and mold. After cooling, add honey mushroom mycelium (according to the manufacturer’s instructions) and mix thoroughly. Then spread the mixture into dense plastic bags from 5 to 50 kg. The tied bags are placed on racks or hung in the basement.

After three days, holes about 5-6 cm long are cut in the bags. After 14-20 days, the mushrooms will germinate and become noticeable.

For normal growth of honey mushrooms at this stage, good lighting, high humidity and a temperature of +14 to +16 ° C are necessary.

On logs

They can be used to grow mushrooms both outdoors and indoors at temperatures from +10 to +25°C. A log from a larch tree should not be rotten, but moist and with bark. Length 300-500 mm, diameter 200-500 mm. If it is dry, then it is soaked in water for two or three days. Then they take it out and let the water drain.

There are three ways to grow honey mushrooms on logs:

Holes are made in logs 1 cm in size, 4 cm long and 10-12 cm apart. Mycelia on wood sticks are inserted into them. Hands must be absolutely clean. After this, the logs are wrapped in plastic film, making several holes in it so that air can pass inside. They are then transferred to a damp, dark room. At 20°C, the log will be overgrown with honey mushroom mycelium within 3-4 months.
On personal plot from the shadow side dig a hole 15 cm deep and water it. Then wood with a mushroom stick is placed in it in a horizontal position. Sprinkle the soil around the planting wood ash to repel snails. Watering is carried out regularly so that the soil does not dry out. Cover with leaves for the winter.

The prepared log can also be plant in a tub or barrel with soil, and put it on the balcony. For normal growth, you need to constantly maintain a temperature of +10 to +25°C and high humidity.

A hygrometer is used to determine the percentage of humidity.

In the greenhouse

Greenhouses and greenhouses are well suited in terms of temperature and humidity level for growing mushrooms. Logs, stumps, logs are moistened and placed in a greenhouse. After that, holes are made in the wood and honey mushroom mycelium is planted, or they can be watered with a solution containing fungal spores. The planting is watered regularly to maintain moisture, and also monitor the air temperature. You can also grow mushrooms in greenhouses in jars, bags or on substrate blocks.

In banks

This method of growing honey mushrooms allows you to do without garden plots. The jar can be placed on the balcony or on the windowsill.

A substrate is made for the growth of mycelium– a mixture of sawdust (preferably larch) and bran in a 3:1 ratio. For one day it is filled with water, then squeezed out and not compacted much.

To prevent infection of the mycelium with mold, the jar with the substrate is sterilized in hot water within an hour.

After the mixture has cooled, use a clean stick to make a depression in it to the bottom of the jar and place the mushroom mycelium. The container is closed with a lid with holes and covered with wet cotton to maintain humidity. The jar is placed in a dark and warm place. As the cotton dries, moisten it.

The mycelium will germinate in a month, and after 15-20 days the first mushrooms will appear. As soon as the mushrooms sprout, the container is placed on the windowsill on the north side, or darkened from the sun. When they reach the lid, it is removed and the neck of the jar is wrapped with a wide strip of cardboard. This will help the honey mushrooms hold on while they grow. To maintain moisture, mushrooms are sprayed with water. As the crop grows, it is cut off and the remaining stems are pulled out. In 14-20 days, new honey mushrooms will grow.

Growing on a stump

Planting of mycelium on a stump is done in the warm, but not hot, season. In the forest, mycelium is found on old stumps or tree trunks and part of it is separated along with a piece of wood. For planting, notches are cut in the hemp and pieces of mycelium 1-2 cm in size are placed. Then cover with damp moss or sawdust. The soil around it is watered, not allowing it to dry out.

Spore breeding method

Caps of overripe mushrooms with a dark brown color underneath are selected. Place them in a container and fill them with clean water for 24 hours. Then, without taking them out of the water, rub them with your hands. The resulting mass is filtered. A solution containing spores is poured over stumps or logs with notches made in them. Thanks to them, the wood is better saturated. After which they are covered with damp moss or sawdust. Spores take a long time to germinate, mushrooms will grow only after 1-2 years. After the mycelium has grown on wood or stumps, it can be propagated. To do this, part of it is carefully separated and transplanted to a new place.

You need to buy mycelium only in specialized stores, since they store the goods in the right conditions. If, while growing winter mushrooms in containers, the temperature rises high, then they should be put in the refrigerator for several days. The temperature should be no more than +8°C, but not less than +4°C.

Of the entire mushroom kingdom, honey mushrooms stand out not only for their beautiful taste qualities And rapid growth, but also suitability for artificial cultivation. Moreover, this process is so accessible and exciting that even children can engage in mushroom growing. How to organize a mushroom garden and get consistent income from it bountiful harvests- we will tell you further.

Technology

Breeding honey mushrooms at home is possible in several ways. Often, cans, plastic bags, felled logs or greenhouses are used for this. The choice of technology depends on the production method seed material.

Did you know? Fungi appeared before dinosaurs - about 400 million years ago. In fact, along with ferns, they belong to the oldest inhabitants of the planet.

To sow honey mushrooms, you can use the fruiting body of the mushroom or mycelium. Each of the options is distinguished by its efficiency and minimal costs.

From the fruiting body

To propagate mushrooms from the fruiting body, you will need to remove the caps from old, overripe specimens. As a rule, their diameter reaches 8 cm, and reverse side stands out with a dark brown color.

After preparing the raw material, it is soaked in water, and after 24 hours (without preliminary straining and washing), the mushroom caps are kneaded directly in a bowl to a paste-like consistency.

Then the resulting slurry is passed through two-layer gauze. The role of seed material will go to this chatterbox, which is collected in a glass container, and then watered with it on wood on stumps or logs.

Experienced mushroom pickers advise making small depressions on the workpieces before sowing. They are needed so that liquid with fungal spores collects in them. When the stumps are seeded, all grooves on their surface must be covered with damp moss or sawdust, without touching the ends.

The method is excellent for growing honey mushrooms indoors at any time of the year.

Video: how to obtain mycelium from the fruiting body of a mushroom

Did you know? As strange as it may sound, mushrooms can tan; at the same time, they produce vitamin D. Under conditions good lighting The cap becomes evenly tanned.

From mycelium

If, during a “quiet hunt” in the forest, you managed to find a small piece of rotten wood with mycelium, you can try to grow honey mushrooms from it at home. To do this, you need to divide the forest find into pieces measuring 2x2 cm. They will serve as grafting material, which must be placed in the holes made on the sides of the stump.

After sowing, they are covered, as in the first option, with moss. In this case, it is important to wrap the end sides of the stump plastic bag. It will help maintain the required heat and humidity levels.

The use of mycelium is effective only in autumn period. Consequently, with the onset of cold weather, the wood with the mushroom garden will need to be covered coniferous branches. If the stump is located outside, in the spring with the onset of a thaw, the mycelium may be damaged by melt water. To prevent this from happening, it is important to monitor the ends of the stump and protect them from excess moisture. For this purpose, you need to regularly clear snow from wood and spruce branches.

It is necessary to remove the covering structure from a log seeded with mycelium in the second ten days of June - for summer mushrooms, and in last weeks July - for winter. During this period, the mushrooms enter the fruiting phase.

The advantage of this technology is the ability to grow honey mushrooms outdoors.

Video: how to grow honey mushrooms from an old stump

Beginning mushroom growers should take into account that of the many varieties of honey mushrooms, only summer and winter variations are suitable for artificial cultivation. In cramped areas, the latter option is especially popular, since it does not require special conditions for germination.

Summer mushrooms, unlike their winter counterparts, need special cellars, hangars or boxes. In addition, a favorable microclimate will need to be created in the room. If large-scale mushroom production is not part of your plans, it is enough to acquire massive branches, old stumps or ordinary shavings.

You can go the other way - install particles of an infected stump in a hole.

Next, tie several short logs of the same height and “plant” them in the hole.

Place such “stumps” at a distance of 1-1.5 m

Terms

If you place a log seeded with mushroom mycelium in your apartment and expect a harvest from it, it is unlikely that anything will come of it. In order for honey mushrooms to bear fruit consistently, you need to take care of favorable conditions. For this you need:

free area of about 15-20 square meters (a greenhouse, a cellar, an open area in the yard and even an ordinary window sill will do);
high air humidity (ideally 70-80%);
constant temperature at 10-15°C in winter and 20-25°C in summer;
uniform, but not too bright lighting (if we are talking about the cultivation of honey mushrooms on open areas, stumps are recommended to be placed in shady areas of the yard - mushrooms should not dry out and be exposed to direct sunlight);
possibility of ventilation (otherwise excess accumulated carbon dioxide will not allow the mycelium to develop).

Did you know? Mushrooms are considered the largest living creatures on globe. This theory is confirmed by findings recorded in the states of Wisconsin and Oregon. In the first case, in 1985, local residents stumbled upon a giant white mushroom that weighed 140 kilograms. To grab himtwo adults I needed to join hands. Second find- a huge Oregon mycelium that occupied an area of 900 hectares and weighed several hundred tons.

Stable temperature and high humidity in the basement are ideal for growing honey mushrooms

Substrate preparation

Mushrooms will not grow in anything. For their successful cultivation in an artificial environment, you will need to prepare a special soil. As a rule, it is placed in glass jars, bags, or in special greenhouse blocks.

The substrate for the mushroom garden is prepared from 2 parts of small sawdust (can be replaced with husks sunflower seeds) and 1 part of shavings. All ingredients are mixed well and then boiled in water. Then the sawdust-shaving mixture is discarded in a colander and cooled.

You should end up with a mass with a mushy consistency. You will need to add starch, as well as corn and oatmeal. The amount of all nutritional supplements is calculated in the proportion 8:25:25 per kilogram of substrate. This substrate is ideal for cultivating honey mushrooms in jars.

If you have the opportunity to engage in mushroom growing in greenhouse conditions, you will need to cook substrate block from sawdust, oats or barley, chalk or limestone. It is important to use sawdust from hardwood trees.

Video: components of the substrate for growing honey mushrooms in a jar, sowing

Important! Summer honey mushrooms are planted from May to August.

All components are mixed in a certain sequence:

First, 200 g of dry sawdust is poured into 2 liters cold water and cook over low heat for about 2 hours.
Add 70 g of oats and 1 teaspoon of chalk (or their substitutes) to the mass that has cooled to 25°C.
The mixture is thoroughly mixed and packaged in plastic bags.

Methods

Based on the conditions of the artificial environment in which you plan to grow honey mushrooms, choose suitable way. Glass jars, greenhouses and ordinary stumps are especially popular among modern mushroom growers. Note that the first method can be implemented using kitchen window, the second - in a special room, and the third - on a personal plot. Let's take a closer look at the technology for cultivating mushrooms for each of them.

At the bank

The advantage of jar production of honey mushrooms is that large areas are unnecessary, the technology is low-cost and accessible. It is effective only for winter varieties of mushrooms (flamulin) and is carried out as follows:

Fill the jars 2 thirds full with the prepared substrate and compact it.
Then glass containers sent for sterilization. Banks put in large saucepan with boiling water and simmer over low heat for about 60 minutes. The procedure is needed to disinfect the soil. It is advisable to repeat it in the morning.
When the containers have cooled, you need to make a hole in the substrate to the very bottom. To do this, you need a sterile wooden stick of appropriate length. This creates a hole for the mycelium. Ideally, its diameter should not exceed 2 cm.
The mycelium is placed into the hole using a medical syringe.
The jar is closed with a nylon lid with holes and placed in a warm place where the air temperature is not higher than 24°C. In this case, humidity is important at the level of 85-90%. Therefore, to ensure constant humidity, the lid is covered with wet cotton wool.
Shoots will appear in about a month, and 2.5 weeks after that the first honey mushrooms can be seen. When the sprouts grow, the jars will need to be moved to the northern windows. It is advisable that in the room temperature regime was at 14-15°C.
The lids are removed when the mushrooms begin to reach the neck of the jar. It is important to wrap this part of the container with a strip of cardboard from the inside. This technique will help keep the mushrooms in place when the mycelium grows strongly.
As your mushroom garden develops, sprinkle it with water periodically. This will help maintain the desired level of moisture.
You need to harvest the crop by cutting off the stems. Their remains are pulled out. And after 14-17 days new honey mushrooms appear.

From one three-liter jar you can collect about 1.5 kg of mushrooms.

Video: how to grow honey mushrooms in a jar

Important! If it’s a pity to spend jars on mushroom production, you can try cultivating honey mushrooms in a pumpkin. To do this, a hole is made in the fruit, where the mycelium is placed without a substrate. The “vegetable garden” is placed in a warm place, covering the hole plastic film. After a month it is moved to cool conditions, and after 2 weeks it is harvested.

In the greenhouse

Greenhouse conditions are good for mushroom cultivation because they always allow you to maintain favorable microflora for mycelium growth. The method is implemented as follows:

The first step is to select several old stumps and transfer them to the greenhouse. If you don’t have such material on your farm, raw wood scraps that need to be put in a bag will do.
Subsequently, the prepared half-rotten wood is watered with liquid containing fungal spores and left until shoots emerge.
The development of mycelium can be accelerated by periodically irrigating the stumps. Experienced mushroom growers recommend sprinkling for five minutes every hour. The procedure begins in the afternoon and ends at 17:00.
The first mushrooms will appear in the second half of June and will delight you until autumn.

Another way greenhouse cultivation again consists in preparing special blocks. They are constructed from bags filled with substrate (we mentioned methods for preparing soil above). They make holes in them and plant spores there. And they tie it on top with a plastic bag.

Before tying the bag, you need to make a stopper from sterile cotton wool. It will protect the material from drying out. In the future, these containers are folded for the germination of mycelium. This will take a month. When the surface of the substrate becomes lumpy, remove the polyethylene and reduce the temperature from 20°C to 12°C.

This method is implemented using mycelium or mushroom body. The growing technology involves harvesting old, but not rotten, logs. It is best to plan sowing honey mushrooms in mid-spring, when it is warm outside, but high humidity remains. Then the harvest will ripen in a year.
To do this you need:

Find a mycelium in the forest or prepare a spore chatter from caps.
Place suitable tree stumps in shady areas of the yard.
Make small grooves on the surface of the wood and fill them with seed.
After sowing, the recesses must be covered with damp sawdust or moss.
It is important to maintain high humidity in the stump. To do this, you can cover its side zones with polyethylene or regularly moisten the soil around it.
With the arrival of cold weather, the log is covered with spruce branches.
in spring with tree garden you need to shake off the snow and monitor the melt water, the excess of which may not be the best way to change the acidity of the piece environment.
In June, the spruce branches are removed.

Video: how to grow mushrooms on stumps When the stumps become covered with mycelium, they need to be taken outside and buried. The first harvest will ripen in a year and the stump will bear fruit until it completely disintegrates.

Honey mushrooms are one of the popular mushrooms for growing at home. They are the most productive, grow quickly, and their taste and nutritional qualities make it possible not only to provide a family with mushrooms without going to the forest, but also to create profitable business, selling grown products. The growing process cannot be called elementary, but it is quite economical, and if you follow the technology and follow the instructions, the result will be stable yields even in a limited space in your garden. Before you start mushroom growing, you need to learn everything about growing honey mushrooms. This can be done in various ways, each of which is suitable for certain existing conditions.

Choosing a place and method of cultivation

You can grow geographically cultural honey mushrooms:

in the apartment;
on outdoors;
in a greenhouse;
in the basement.

To decide on the method, you first need to select the variety most suitable for the existing or created growing conditions. Of the numerous subfamilies of these mushrooms in the artificial environment, two species bear fruit best:

summer honey fungus;
winter honey fungus.

Winter mushrooms are the most productive because they require a minimum area to grow. They can be cultivated in any way, without special financial costs. For summer ones, you will need a specially equipped room in which suitable climatic conditions are created, or a garden area equipped with stumps.

Winter honey fungus (also known as flammulina) is most suitable for cultivation at home. In nature it is late. It differs from the summer one in having a velvety stem and a light sand-colored cap, the diameter of which can reach 8 cm. The cap has a smooth skin. The pulp is light yellow.

Unlike its wild forest relatives, the cultivated honey fungus has a soft and delicate structure not only of the cap, but also of the legs.

If there is insufficient lighting, for example, when growing at home, the color of the mushrooms can be very light, almost white, but the taste and useful qualities this will not affect the product.

Breeding methods.

On the stumps.
In the greenhouse.
In glass jars.
In bags.

Hemp and fungi

Growing on stumps is chosen by mushroom growers who do not have special premises or large areas.

Not all hemp is suitable for this task, but only those that have dense wood. It is best to choose spruce or birch. Summer honey fungus grows well on deciduous trees, winter honey mushroom grows well on coniferous trees.

The stump must be “fresh”, not spoiled by bark beetles, with intact bark and core, not rotten, not infected with rot.

Growing from spores

First, the stump must be moistened. It's good if it stands for several days in heavy rain. If rain is not expected, you will have to arrange a long-term artificial shower. You can water the stump from a watering can or lower it into a container of water. The main thing is that it is wetted completely to the core, darkened and moisture is released from the fragment of wood removed from the central part.

Planting can be done all summer - from the beginning of May to the end of August. Sowing is done with the fruiting body of the mushroom (cap), which can be bought in a store or obtained in the forest.

When collecting in the forest, it is advisable to take not only the mushroom itself, but also the surrounding wood of the stump, infected with mycelium, on which honey mushrooms grow. Choose hats that are mature, but not wormy. They should be darkened underneath.

About 20 caps, with a diameter of at least 10 cm, must be placed in a bucket filled with filtered water. You can use bottled, frozen and thawed, well or rainwater. From the water supply - it will not work, since it contains heavy metals and chlorine. Mushroom caps should sit in a bucket for 24 hours.

Then the fruiting body is kneaded with hands in water to obtain a porridge-like consistency. The more thoroughly you grind the caps, the more spores will get into the water. Everything is mixed, filtered and passed through a sieve or cheesecloth.

Moistened stumps are watered generously with a solution contaminated with spores, after sharp knife making shallow cuts-cuts on their vertical surfaces (about 10-12 pieces per stump in random order). The solution will take about a liter for each stump. After replanting the spores, the recesses are filled with wet sawdust, and upper part the stump remains open.

This method is one of the simple ones, but it takes a long time - the first harvest can only be obtained in the next year, or even a year and a half. But then, within five years, the stumps will bear fruit regularly and abundantly. Then the stump will naturally begin to collapse, the mycelium will move to the ground and the roots of the nearest tree, if there is one nearby. You can place other wood around, such as saw cuts or logs.

Growing from mycelium

The second way to grow honey mushrooms on stumps is by sowing from mycelium. Unlike the spore method, the harvest can be obtained much faster, within 8-10 months.

At the beginning of June, you need to remove the shelter if summer honey mushrooms are grown. For winter, the spruce forest is removed at the end of the first summer month.

Greenhouse mushroom farming

If outdoor harvesting depends on weather conditions, in the greenhouse the process will be more stable, because there is always optimal humidity and temperature conditions.

In the corner of the greenhouse, logs, saw cuts or large pieces of wood are stacked in a low pile.
Everything is watered with a chatter of spores, or mycelium is planted, as when growing on stumps.
Everything is carefully watered periodically with rain or well water.
In the greenhouse, crops can be harvested from May to September.

Honey mushrooms from a jar

If you don’t have a plot of land and really want to have a mushroom plantation, you can triple it right in your apartment on the windowsill. You will need glass jars, which must be filled with substrate and mycelium. You won’t get a luxurious harvest from such a plantation, but it will be enough to satisfy your family’s immediate food needs.

The method of growing in jars is suitable only for winter honey fungus. The mushrooms will be small (up to 5 cm cap diameter). They can serve as original designer decoration in the kitchen, as they strangely stretch out of the jar towards the light on long curved legs.

When you see that the mushrooms have grown to the lid, remove it. At this time, it is time to start spraying the mushroom caps to maintain the necessary moisture and speed up their growth.

You can cut honey mushrooms like flowers, garden shears, removing the remaining legs. In their place, half a month later, new specimens will begin to grow.

Ideally, if everything is done correctly, up to 1.5 kg of mushrooms can be collected from one three-liter jar.

Basement, bag, sawdust

For growing in a basement, garage, hangar, cellar - any closed, cool room, most of all a suitable method planting in bags filled with sawdust mixture.

To fill one two-liter bag you will need 200 g of dry sawdust. You can take pine and all deciduous trees, just don’t use oak.
30% of the substrate should be fillers, such as barley, barley oats, buckwheat or sunflower husks. Also add a teaspoon of chalk to the mixture.
Everything is mixed dry and soaked in water for an hour.
Then, in the same water, the substrate must be sterilized for ¾ hour by boiling.
Drain excess water, the mixture is placed on a baking sheet and dried in the oven for about 20 minutes (low heat).
Then the substrate, which must remain moist, is cooled and packaged in two-liter thick plastic bags.
The mycelium, which must first be divided into small fragments with clean hands, is poured into a bag on the surface of the sawdust, about 20 g each.
The mycelium is covered with cotton wool and the bag is tied.

All this equipment is transferred to the basement or cellar. The temperature must be between +12°C and +20°C. You don't have to touch the packages for a month. Then bumps should form on the surface, in places where the fruiting bodies of future mushrooms form.

At this time, the bags are untied and the cotton wool is removed. Mushrooms will grow in the direction from which it comes air flow. To keep the legs short, additional lighting will be needed.

If you make holes in the bag in the places where the fruiting bodies have formed, honey mushrooms will grow from there, but the bag will resemble a hedgehog, whose needles stick out in all directions, so it will be inconvenient to collect them.

Growing honey mushrooms at home or in the country is an interesting and rewarding activity. These mushrooms do not require complex care and special conditions. They grow on their own, actively and abundantly bear fruit, and the quality and taste are not inferior to, even superior to, the taste of wild mushrooms. You can grow many mushrooms at home. , chanterelles, even white ones. But the most productive of forest species when grown artificially, honey mushrooms are present.