When your friend kicks out his overaged daughter so that he can convert her bedroom into a mini mushroom farm, you might say that it is a bit over the top. However, we have heard this is surprisingly common amongst the hobbyist mushroom farming community.

Growing your own mushrooms can be addictive. And it can take over your life.

Growing mushrooms is extremely hard. But when you have success, it is highly rewarding. We developed the Mentis Mushroom Toolbox after years of experimenting with different growing methods. There are many schools of thought on the best growing method. We have a favourite. And certainly it depends on what type of mushrooms you are trying to grow. The Toolbox is essentially the sum product of our favourite method, with all the complexity already taken care of for you.

The Mushroom Farmer is a series of articles on everything and anything that is related to growing your own mushrooms. We will explain what’s involved at each of the key stages of growing your own mushrooms.

To start with, let’s consider what actually happens in nature. Very simplistically (we’ll talk in more detail about this in a future article), the mushroom’s lifecycle consists of five key stages.

1. Spore Release: Spores are released from mature mushrooms into the environment. Spores are the reproductive agents of mushrooms. They are microscopic structures that contain the genetic information of the mushrooms. 

2. Germination: Spores germinate under the right conditions. They divide and form hyphae - very fine fungal filaments. 

3. Mycelium Development: Compatible hyphae combine and interweave to form mycelium - a fungal network that absorbs nutrients. Mycelium grows exponentially and can produce protective enzymes to ward off contamination.

4. Fruiting Body Formation: The mycelium matures, comes together into hyphal knots and starts to develop into primordia (known as pinning). These primordia are the first visible form of mushrooms. Some primordia are ‘selected’ to mature into mushrooms, the fruiting body. 

5. Maturation and Spore Release: The mycelial organism channels nutrients into the fruiting bodies creating mature mushrooms. These mature mushrooms release their spore, repeating the cycle. The mature mushrooms die and become nutrition for the mycelial network. 

When growing mushrooms at home there are five stages that map onto this lifecycle that occurs in nature:

1. Reproduction ↔ Spore Release

2. Inoculation ↔ Germination

3. Incubation ↔ Mycelium Development

4. Fruiting ↔ Fruiting Body Formation

5. Harvesting (and Aftercare) ↔ Maturation

Throughout the series, we’ll cover things like - how to build your own low-tech lab, sterilisation techniques, mushroom grain spawn, making agar plates, cloning mushrooms, growing liquid cultures, substrate recipes, optimal growth conditions for mycelial incubation and mushroom fruiting, contamination risk, when to harvest mushrooms, how to store mushrooms and some tasty ways to consume them. 

Whether you are looking to enter into the weird and wonderful world of mushroom cultivation or interested in what exactly Mentis' Toolbox is doing, we hope that this series will give you some inspiration. At Mentis, we are obsessed with growing mushrooms. And we hope you will become obsessed soon!