Fruiting Mushrooms: A Fruiting Room Example From Commercial Growers [Video]

A discussion on fruiting mushrooms, including room conditions, that demonstrates the process used by commercial mushroom farmers

We decided to create a video to show you a room where we’re fruiting mushrooms.

 

The fruiting room is an incredibly important part to any commercial mushroom farmer. It would be impossible to grow mushrooms indoors commercially without a proper system and strategy in place.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important components used in a commercial mushroom fruiting room: misting system, lighting, air movement and shelving.

The misting system is a big part of fruiting mushrooms inside

A high-pressure misting system we purchased through Aeromist. The pump hooks to a hose, connected to a water source. Then it connects to an electrical outlet. We put our misting system on a timer so it goes on every seven or eight minutes for one minute intervals. If you wanted an alternative method, you could hook it up to a thermostat.

The room slowly fills with a fine mist once the high-pressure misting system is on. However, I barely get wet as I walk through the room. We like having the conditions this way for our mushrooms. The very fine mist allows the room to stay humid, but the mushrooms don’t get wet.

The room for fruiting mushrooms has risers that go throughout the room, which is where the mist comes from.

The lighting we use for fruiting mushrooms

We use LED strip lighting in our grow rooms. We run the LED strips throughout the length of the rooms. Each shelf that houses mushrooms in the fruiting room has its own LED strip supplying appropriate lighting. This way all of our mushrooms get light in the fruiting room.

The fruiting room we show in this YouTube video is a 53-foot trailer that we converted into a mushroom fruiting room. The LED strips we buy are 150 feet long, and it cost us about $200 on the lighting for this grow room.

The intake and exhaust fans we use for fruiting mushrooms indoors

The intake fan we use now has been working for years! It’s a 10” that we got from CanFilter.

Some growers attach a tube to their intake fan and run the tube the length of their grow rooms. This allows for better air distribution.

Our other fan is an exhaust fan that we keep down at the bottom of our grow rooms. It’s a shutter fan so it closes when it is not in use.

The shelving system we use for efficiency at our farm while fruiting mushrooms

We keep it simple with shelving of two-by-fours with electrical conduit on each side. This design allows us to position bags of mushrooms in between the two-by-fours. The rooms we use for fruiting mushrooms are filled with these shelves along all walls and with a row in the middle of the room. Having shelves on wheels that can be rolled around the mushroom fruiting room is ideal because it allows you to clean the area more easily. 

Fruiting mushrooms: Parameters to follow for fruiting oyster mushrooms

The most exciting and visually stimulating part of mushroom cultivation is the process of fruiting mushrooms. Once the mycelium reaches full colonization, meaning it has grown over the available substrate, the bag is moved into the fruiting room. A basement where temperatures are stable is the ideal place for a fruiting room. Barns, warehouses, tunnels, greenhouses, and other structures can work well as a fruiting room. Not much space is needed to fruit a large amount of mushrooms. A 10’x18’ space can easily grow 100 pounds per week. A simple greenhouse like structure can be erected to act as a fruiting room. Use 2x4’s to create a frame and staple 6 mil plastic around the inside. This creates a durable, cheap, easy to clean room for growing mushrooms in. Corrugated plastic can also be a great building material to use for the walls of a fruiting room. Remember, you must have a moist environment if you want to be fruiting mushrooms successfully. Humidity should be kept between 80-90% depending on the stage of development.

To initiate pinning a higher humidity is necessary close to 90%. During fruit body development a lower humidity can be tolerated. The tricky part of humidification is getting the air to be humid without directly spraying the mushrooms with water. Mushrooms act as sponges sucking up any liquids they touch. If water is consistently sprayed or poured onto them they will turn into a soggy puddle. We have studied and tested oyster mushroom strains to determine the best ones to use for commercial production. We like to utilize strains that are workhorses and can produce the types of high-quality, delicious oyster mushrooms while reaching the yield goals we have.

Are you interested in building your own commercial mushroom farm? We can help you with the process. Email us today.