Mushrooms Growing in the Cabinet

For Christmas this year, my Lovely Mother and Stepdad sent us a grow-your-own-mushrooms kit. Really! At first, I was a little unsure about it, but yesterday I re-read the directions and decided that since it would only take one hour of active work, and then 6-8 weeks of growing in various places (warm, dark cabinet to start with), I would go ahead and get going with growing my own shrooms.

Just in case you're interested, here's where they ordered the mushroom kit. I'm growing Teepee Oysters on toilet paper. Are you intrigued yet? I thought I might document the process, at least for the first little bit.

The first step, of course, is to collect thematerials. For this particular project, I just needed the oyster kit (which included the oyster grain spawn, 7 filter disc bags, and 7 rubber bands), plus 7 rolls of toilet paper, a big pot full of boiling water, a pair of tongs, and some cooling racks.

Then I boiled a huge amount of water and dipped the toilet paper rolls, one at a time, into the boiling water. You would be SHOCKED at how much water a roll of toilet paper can absorb and hold. I ended up having to boil a second pot of water for the last two rolls.

I placed the soaked rolls on a cooling rack (with a kitchen to

wel underneath to soak up the drippage).

After the tp rolls had cooled to the point where they were no longer steaming and I could comfortably touch the interior, I placed each roll inside a special plastic bag (they have some kind of air filter built in) and filled the cardboard of the roll with spawn.

I used the rubber bands to close up the bags, and placed them inside a dark cabinet, where they will sit for 3-6 weeks. There are more instructions to follow once that time span has elapsed, but I'll keep you updated when the time comes instead of writing more here.

I'm thinking that at some point we will have more mushrooms that we can ever use, but I can probably dry them or freeze them, or some such.