I used one of the transporting boxes my neighbour gave me to make a new mushroom patch in the backyard. It’s in a shady and usually a little damp spot and I hope it’ll provide good growing conditions for pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster mushroom).
The box reveived a metal mesh bottom for vole protection and since it’s about 20 cm high, I had to use a heaping wheelbarrow load of substrate to fill it up. I used:
- 40% straw pellets, soaked (pet supply)
- 40% small wood chips
- 20% simple garden soil
Unfortunately, pasteurizing the substrate with boiling water isn’t manageable for me in such quantities, so I just soaked it in clear, cold water for a couple of hours and then added it to the frame.
I got oyster mushroom grain spawn from my favorite seller, which I divided into six “hotspots”, ~10 cm deep in the substrate (like the six on a die) to give them a good start. A cover of dry woodchips is intended work as a mulching layer to prevent weed growth and help keeping the moisture inside. Let’s see…
