Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Carla on August 14, 2010, 22:44
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I've read that mushrooms are really easy to grow in the straw and droppings from cleaning out my chicken coop. How do I get these started off, as mushrooms would go lovely with the eggs my ladies will (hopefully) give me when I get them. I bought mushrooms off the net once, and I needed logs to put the plugs in, had to bury it and all other manner of strange behaviour, and there was NOTHING easy about it :)
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Your previous effort with the logs was likely shiitake mushrooms that you grew. If you're thinking of the common button mushrooms usually found in grocery shops, this might help: http://www.gardenguides.com/90472-grow-button-mushrooms.html
I once read an excellent mushroom guide and remember that wheat straw was the very best for mushrooms, and I believe it was horse manure that also worked best. I suspect chicken manure is either too acidic or too high in nitrogen for mushrooms.
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If you have a local mushroom grower buy a couple of bags of spent compost off them and add to you chicken compost.
There are normally plenty of viable spores left in the spent compost which can provide lots of mushrooms.
If nothing shows you still have your moneys worth of compost. :)