HARVESTING WHITE BUTTON MUSHROOMS SPORES

22nd day when harvested

I have now reached the stage where I am going to try my own method of harvesting spores from three of my big size, white button mushrooms which I’ve cut fresh this morning when harvesting the rest for chicken and mushroom soup later today.

I found a smooth piece of see-through glass in my hubby’s workshop which I’ve cleaned and placed on my blue plastic chair and then placed the trimmed mushrooms with their open gills on top of this glass.
I also cleaned a glass bowl and placed it over the mushrooms, to start collecting the dropped spores inside it.

The stems of these mushrooms were first cut off as close to the gills so the “brown veils” were free to drop the spores/spawn onto the top of the glass. The glass bowl placed over the mushrooms was to stop any contamination happening to the mushrooms’ spores.

Wait for at least twelve hours for the mushrooms to drop their spores. I’ve started with this process at 10am this morning so by tomorrow morning early, I should have a little heap of spores visible to the naked eye, to harvest with a clean flat blade type of knife which I will then scoop these spores up into a cup and fill it half with distilled water. The contents of this cup I will throw over the home-made mushroom kit’s torn and soaked cardboard boxes, shredded newsprint paper and well made sifted worm compost with a wet layer of newspaper over it. This should be sufficient for the spores/spawn to grow on top of this lot. When a greyish thin layer of webbing is showing, I can then throw over it the casing which consists of wet and previously sifted worm compost. I will then proceed every day as at the start of my mushroom growing by spraying the home-made kit twice a day with a fine-spray bottle of water.

Please keep your fingers cross that something exciting will happen to the above experiment – something like future mushroom growing perhaps for me?

Comments for
HARVESTING WHITE BUTTON MUSHROOMS SPORES

Starting a home-made mushroom kit
by: Natalie Rowles

I’ve just completed creating my home-made mushroom kit in a cardboard box, hoping to grow future mushrooms from the White Button Mushroom Spores I’ve harvested five minutes ago!

I’ve used torn and wet cardboard boxes inside this box, with some wet newspaper sheets on top of it, then poured the 1/2 cup of distilled water with the spores/spawn inside it, over this lot.
I’ve also placed the three mushrooms with the spore side down on top of this lot of cardboard pieces, hoping that somewhere some bits of spores will stick to the cardboard/newspaper bedding, and start producing pinheads of mushrooms soon.
From now on I will start spraying a small bottle of water twice a day to keep the inside bedding wet enough for mushroom growing purposes.

Let us keep fingers cross that something will grow inside it, if not a mushroom fungi, maybe mildew perhaps?
After giving it a few days to grow into a grey web-like surface on the surface, I will throw my sifted and wet worm-soil over the whole lot, hoping that it will serve as a sort of casing for new mushroom spores to grow out of.