I’ve used a mushroom-growing kit before and seen folks growing mushrooms in those inoculated logs, but over the weekend I stumbled on a different – and versatile! – way to grow mushrooms: in a laundry basket!
Instead of the usual techniques, you innoculate straw with your mushroom spores and stuff them into a laundry basket.
The simplicity and affordability of this idea are what struck me, and I thought some of you guys might want to try this method out. I haven’t tried this yet, but you can bet I’m going to be keeping my eyes peeled at the thrift store for an old laundry basket now!
You can use the laundry basket method to grow all kinds of different varieties of mushrooms, and the coolest part for me was that this works both outdoors and indoors. The folks at Milkwood, a group who teaches permaculture workshops, shared this idea on their blog.
The Milkwood peeps say you can use the laundry basket in a shady area outdoors, and if you’re planning to grow those shrooms inside:
“…the laundry basket is usually bagged or boxed until the straw is completely colonized with mycelium. This technique has both upsides and downsides, but most importantly, it’s easy, and gets people growing mushrooms! Huzzah…”
Huzzah, indeed!
Wow! Milkwood made it to the USA :). They are most certainly worth dropping in to see if you are at all interested in growing your own food and sustainble living and even just to check out how we Aussies do things… 🙂 my way of growing mushies (Australese for mushrooms 😉 ) is to buy spent mushroom compost and spread it over my veggie garden as mulch. I inevitably end up with a plethora of whatever mushroom they were growing (usually portabellos and Swiss browns) and am able to harvest them at their peak…we haven’t purchased mushrooms in ages thanks to this side benefit. Truely sustainable…using a byproduct, mulching and feeding the soil AND getting free mushrooms 🙂
Thanks for the kind comment, and for the tip on using mushroom compost – what a great idea!
Oh wow! I never even considered trying to grow mushrooms but im definitely going to try this!
I do want to try to grow mushrooms in a laundry basket. I find it very practical!