If you’ve recently taken a mushroom growing workshop with us, here are your instructions for taking care of your mushroom bucket at home!
- Leave the lid on. This allows c02 to build up in the bucket and helps your mushrooms to fruit the way they’re supposed to. You’ll also risk contaminating your bucket if you keep peeking in it. Be patient!
- After a few weeks, you’ll see tiny mushroom pins trying to push through the paper tape on your bucket. Remove the tape wherever they’re trying to pop through, leave the tape on where they aren’t trying to pop through. Mist the outside of your bucket with water every day (twice a day if you’re in a dry climate or run your heat/air conditioning a lot)
- Each round of mushrooms is called a “flush” and you’ll get several flushes from each bucket. When you harvest a flush, then you can take the lid off, soak the bucket in water overnight (set it in a bin or sink and fill it with as much water as possible, put the lid on and put something heavy on it so that it doesn’t bob around in the water – mycelium floats!) in the morning, drain off the water, put the lid back on and re-tape the holes if you have paper tape on hand. After another week or so, you’ll see more mushroom pins popping out and you can repeat the cycle again.
Most gourmet mushrooms (lions mane, oyster, etc.) don’t taste like much when they’re raw, and their flavor really happens when you cook them – we’re working on uploading a bunch of our favorite gourmet mushroom recipes here (the legendary mushroom mac & cheese recipe is already on there!!) stay tuned for more great recipes coming later this week.