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Rocky Mountain Gardening

Growing Mushrooms in Colorado?

12 years ago

I've been studying botany a bit this season and am fascinated by fungi. My understanding is that they are somewhat difficult to grow and I'm curious what experience other Coloradoans may have had. It looks like you can do them in doors, but I don't have a ton of space. I think I'll try some oyster mushrooms in jars, but would like to know if anyone's had success with stumps outdoors.

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Comments (6)

Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
12 years ago
I'm a mushroomer, was up last weekend shrooming (too early this year). I've grown them indoors. Here it is too hot in summer, so you want to do it over winter unless you have awesome insulation. Here, stumps outdoors are problematic without property for a couple appropriate trees for shade, the right stump, and a decent space for proper moisture (meaning not downtown). Since we don't know where you live we can't help in that regard.

Dan
colokid
12 years ago
My old memory is bad, but I seem to remember some years ago some one was going to start a commercial mushroom farm near Eaton. They were to use a "potato caller" since at that time all most every farm had one. I have no idea how it came out.
Greeley Tribune maybe in the 1950s ?????
Old man Kenny
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First of all thanks for sharing the mushrooms with us (at least to taste visually :-) and I hope you had good luck on your spore collection. My question is about spore handling. I watched the link you posted and yes he is creepy sounding. He kept stressing sterilization. Now nature is far from a sterile environment and mushrooms grow just fine in nature. Does anyone know the importance of sterilization when spore collecting / processing ? I wondered if it was the 'type' of mushrooms he was dealing with. I can understabd it for the edible ones. For me I would want to do edible mushrooms and possibly a few non-edible. We have recently learned about using mushrooms to help decompose wood chips which we will have a bunch of soon. What I learned was that if you add mushroom spores to the chips it helps them decompose better. After seeing the cost of mushroom syringes I cringed. I would pay that for edibles but would probably buy a kit instead. I was considering walking around and collecting spores of normal mushrooms via the print method you described and using them on the wood chips or simply taking those shrooms and dropping them down on top and letting nature do the rest. If I need to take prints I really did not want to go through so much trouble for the non-edible ones. Would someone with experience in shrooming touch on my question and ideas or offer better/less expensive ways of getting shrooms to assist the decomposition of the chips ? thanks !
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david52 Zone 6
12 years ago
Linked is the website for Rakhra mushrooms, grown in the San Luis valley - for those not familiar with the place, its a high desert environment known for growing potatoes and migrating Sandhill Cranes .....

Anyway, clicking around the link gives some interesting stuff.

Not mentioned at the link, they collect chicken house litter, compost it themselves to sterilize it, then inoculate it for mushrooms. We can sometimes buy the used, "mushroom compost" for a couple bucks a bag at the local Safeway.

I also thought it was interesting that the company is owned and managed by a Sikh family, and many of their employes are from a single village in Guatemalans - just not something one would expect in the San Luis Valley. But then they also have alligator / tilapia farms there as well :-)

We buy and eat them all the time.

Here is a link that might be useful: link
Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
12 years ago
Yup we purchase their shrooms too. You can also find that mushroom precursor in older neighborhoods in lawns. The operation is sorta like a quonset hut design to keep the moisture moving. I prefer mushroom compost in the garden.

Dan
HU-137733545
3 years ago
How do you get the millet from becoming mushy?
gjcore
3 years ago
Well this is a really old thread in fact some of the posters have passed away.

You might have better look having your question answered elsewhere. Looks like there's some videos on youtube.

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