Learning how to grow edible and medicinal mushrooms in your home garden is a great way to increase your household’s resilience, enhance your garden’s soil – and make your tummy very happy, all at once.
And it’s safe, easy and even potentially free, once you have the basic bits you need.
The best bit about mushroom gardens? You don’t need any fancy equipment or ingredients at all – you can get started with a few foraged mushrooms (ID-ed correctly, of course) and some cardboard… and then slowly grow from there, up to an abundant garden of mushroomy goodness.
Below, there’s the recording of a live mini-workshop we just did to show you how. This technique is a snippet from inside our online Home Mushroom Cultivation course… which is open for bookings this week! The full rundown of the course is here…
Mushroom gardens are a much-loved part of our backyard growing system – they’re easy to get going, support our garden ecosystem as they grow, and then, with very little fuss, pop up as regular harvests of tasty mushrooms for our breakfast.
And you don’t even need a garden to grow mushrooms like this – a tub on your balcony or back step can work well for this DIY growing technique, too.
Over the years, we’ve learned all about the ins and outs of successful mushroom garden cultivation – and we’d love to share our tried and tested, home-gold-standard, go-to techniques with you, for maximum mushrooms for everyone.
Once you understand the basics of creating a mushroom garden, the fungi-filled sky is your limit – you can experiment with different edible species that suit this technique (not all mushrooms grow this way! But we cover that in the workshop below) and try out all kinds of varied ways to bring mushrooms into your garden – solid in the knowledge that whatever you grow will be safe to eat and delicious.
In the mini-workshop below, we cover…
- Why mushrooms gardens are such a great idea
- What edible mushrooms can be grown in gardens
- The bits & pieces you’ll need (not much)
- How to choose and prep a spot for your garden
- How to prepare wood chips to grow your mushrooms
- Four different ways to inoculate your garden
- How to take care of your mushroom garden
- How to harvest your mushrooms
- How to ensure your mushroom garden keeps giving you mushroomy love for years
- What resources to look at next for further learning
So… that’s a beginner’s overview of mushroom gardens. Keen to make one at your place? If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below and we’ll help you out.
Now – some resources for you. Firstly, here’s our free mushroom cultivation guide, which includes an overview on mushroom gardens…
Secondly, you might want to also check out our Life Cycle of Fungi guide to get a better understanding of how fungi grows – they’re pretty amazing lifeforms!
And understanding their life cycle will really help you troubleshoot and plan for a successful mushroom garden.
Great mushroom species for gardens:
Our favourite for beginner mushroom garden makers are…
- King Stropharia – Stropharia rugosoannulata
- Wood blewitt – Clitocybe nuda
And some other suitable species mentioned in the workshop…
- Pearl oyster – Pleurotus ostreatus
- Shaggy mane – Coprinus comatus (hard to get commercial spawn – use stem-butt technique)
When is the best time to start your garden?
Everyone’s climate is different and each different species of mushroom will thrive in slightly different growing conditions… so how do you know when to start your garden?
Your mycelium will take a few months to run through the substrate, so it’s best to avoid exposing it to freezing winters or hot dry summers during this early phase. Extreme temperatures could kill your freshly inoculated bed or tub, but once the mycelium is established it will be a lot more hardy.
It’s generally best to establish your garden in the milder part of the year, when the temperature is unlikely to go below freezing or above 30C (90F).
In places with hot dry summers where the soil will not freeze in winter, it’s best to start your garden in autumn/fall or early spring to give it the best chance.
In places with very cold winters, it’s best to start your garden in late spring to early summer, this way your garden will have time to get established before having to deal with very cold temperatures. If your climate is very cold you may have to protect your bed with a greenhouse of some kind, or bring your tub indoors.
More resources for how to grow mushrooms at home
- our Home Mushroom Cultivation course provides a whole mini-course on mushroom gardens (as well as growing on logs, and in buckets also)
- Milkwood book – there’s a whole chapter on Mushroom growing in here!
- All our mushroom cultivation resources
- Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation – great book by Tradd Cotter
- Radical Mycology – great book by Peter McCoy
- How to Build and Plant a Wine Cap Stropharia Mushroom Bed – video from Forest + Field
- Cultivating and Cooking Garden Giants – with Paul Stamets – great video
- King Stropharia (Wine Cap) recipes – from field and forest
And lastly – where to get spawn?
Over the years from the feedback of thousands of students from our Home Mushroom Cultivation courses, we’ve gotten to know the best suppliers of mushroom spawn.
We’ve put together an up-to-date list of grain spawn suppliers around the globe – with recommendations from us as well. (Please let us know if you have any recommendations for reliable suppliers.)
Let us know how you go? And ask any Qs you have below and we’ll do our best to answer.
Thanks to everyone who came along to the live workshop! If you’d like a note when the next one is happening, hop onto our ace Newsletter here, and we will let you know. Happy shrooming, all x
We acknowledge that permaculture (and all the other skills we share and teach) owes the roots of its theory and practice to traditional and Indigenous knowledges, from all over the world. We all stand on the shoulders of many ancestors – as we learn, and re-learn, these skills and concepts. We pay our deepest respects and give our heartfelt thanks to these knowledge-keepers, both past and present.
How can I I download this to view it off-line?
I’m sorry, i dont think YouTube allows for downloading videos? But you can load the video while somewhere with internet and then, once its fully loaded, watch it later, if you don’t close the window that the video is on?
you can download most videos on you tube you should see the option to download right under the name of the video with the other options- like/dislike thumbs up or down you can also save to a playlist or choose the watch later option.
I tried growing King Strasferia also know here in Canada as Red Caps. I soaked the maple wood chips and they were placed in a protected area but under a Black Walnut tree. I never got any mushrooms last summer. I’m thinking Black walnut and mushrooms don’t go together. Would you know if this is true? I thought I had seen some babies coming and then nothing. So I was also wondering if the squirrles were eating them?
Hmm could be squirrels, but black walnuts are notorious for being very picky about what they let grow near them… heres an article about it: https://www.growingamerica.com/news/2015/04/walnut-tree-allelopathic-effects-and-tolerant-plants …
I am super enjoying your mushroom cultivation course. Now I will be creating a mushroom garden once I finish the course! Many thanks.
Fantastic! And the Mushrooms Garden mini-course, inside your course, has a LOT more info than this in there.
The ONE thing that I crave and CANNOT find is a reliable source and method for identifying mushrooms. I am sure that we have several edible mushrooms on our property that the earth keeps giving us but I can’t find anybody prepared to identify them! Please, help!
Hey Rachel! That might be because there are thousands of species of fungi in any one place? Your best starting point would be to get a good fungi guidebook for your area, and learn to ID what you’re looking at? Where are you? There’s lots of amazing ID guides around, happy to recommend –
Hi
This is much easier for me to accomplish as the other course I did was too complicated for me as I could not do the electrical parts. Found it interesting and learnt it was not simple and appreciate the mushrooms from the local farmers market.. This one is some that I can do.
Thank you
Hello All sounds very good apart from the fact of the mushroom spores ,where do these com from,as New Zealand has some pretty tough laws as to what is allowed into our country. i see most coments com from oz , how would i get the spores here in N Z as most of the mushrooms you show do not grow here and i think you would have great trouble getting them into N Z . H0pe i am wrong but have already try to import seeds Not allowed.
Hey John, here’s a great NZ spawn supplier – https://www.sporeshift.co.nz/
Can I grow wine cap mushrooms in South Texas or is it too hot?
Hi Nettie, As long as you can stop the soil completely drying out they love the heat 🙂 Good Luck.