Learn how to cultivate oyster mushrooms at home using coffee grounds, toilet, paper, and our ready-to-fruit mushroom growing kits
Many people ask about how to cultivate oyster mushrooms at home. Oyster mushrooms are some of the easiest mushrooms to grow, so trying them at home is a great option for beginners who are new to the world of mushroom cultivation.
Today I will be going through three ways you can grow oyster mushrooms at home. Two of these methods involve common household goods, like coffee grounds and toilet paper. The other method is even easier and focuses on a ready-to-fruit mushroom growing kit, which you can order from us. Also, please note that you can grow a variety of mushroom species with our kits.
Take a look at the selection here.
How to cultivate oyster mushrooms at home using coffee grounds
One of the easier methods to start growing mushrooms at home is with oyster mushrooms on coffee grounds. Coffee is a common staple in many homes and it can be easily used to grow oyster mushrooms. This process is fairly straightforward and simplistic, with only four steps to follow.
The materials you need include a plastic container with a lid and several holes poked in the bottom of the container, oyster mushroom spawn, and a household of coffee drinkers. Let’s dive into the process now:
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First, brew the coffee. Once the boiling water has run through the grounds and filter, place the coffee grounds into the small plastic bucket/container.
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Next, add your oyster spawn spawn on top of the freshly brewed coffee and filter. Close the lid.
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Repeat daily or throughout the day, layering oyster mushroom spawn and spent coffee grounds. Keep the mushroom spawn in the fridge between uses.
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Once the container is full, allow it to sit for 2-3 weeks. Poke 4-5 holes in the side of the container and mist once daily. Mushrooms will begin fruiting within a week of misting.
Not a coffee drinker? That’s alright! We have a few other great methods for how to grow oyster mushrooms at home. The next we are going over is with another household staple: toilet paper.
A step-by-step process for how to grow oyster mushrooms at home with toilet paper
For this, we recommend using oyster mushroom sawdust spawn
Begin by breaking up the sawdust spawn. You can do this by hitting the bag a few times with your hands. Once the spawn is broken up, open the bag. I love the smell of a newly-opened bag of mushroom spawn. It’s a sweet, earthy scent that reminds me of the forest floor. A wonderful aroma!
Then, take the plastic bag and place a handful of spawn in it so it. You will only need enough for the toilet paper to cover.
Next, grab your tongs and pick up the toilet paper. Dip the toilet paper into the boiling water. I flip the toilet paper roll over to ensure that it gets completely wet. Once you’ve dipped and rotated the roll, you can pull it out of the boiling water and let the excess water drain off. It’s important to drain off as much of the excess water as possible because you do not want to have the mushroom substrate sitting in a puddle of runoff.
Once your roll is fully drained, bring it over to the plastic bag with the spawn and place the toilet paper roll right on top of the spawn. The oyster mushroom mycelium will eventually grow up from the bottom of the bag.
Now you can begin to add more spawn into the toilet paper roll tube. Fill it with as much spawn as you can, and also put spawn on top of the roll itself. You can see me do this all
in this video.
Now that the top of the roll is covered, place some additional spawn on the sides going around the toilet paper roll. One of our sawdust spawn bags will probably allow you to inoculate up to 10 rolls of toilet paper if you want a big yield while growing oyster mushrooms.
Once you’ve covered the roll and surrounded it with spawn, you can then close up the plastic bag by tying it together. Allow the bag to sit as it is for about two weeks. The
mycelium will colonize and after about two weeks the bag will begin to fruit mushrooms. At that time all you have to do is open the bag up and mist it a couple of times each day. The oyster mushrooms will grow directly out of the toilet paper roll.
How to grow oyster mushrooms at home with one of our ready-to-fruit kits
If these methods involving toilet paper or coffee grounds sound too intensive, you can always grow your own mushrooms at home with the help of our mushroom growing kits.
Our mushroom growing kits are ready-to-fruit, so you can begin using them as soon as they arrive, and you typically will have your first harvest within two weeks. All you need to do is cut holes in the kit and mist the kit with a spray bottle a few times each day. We have videos on the process that
you can watch here.
