Low Cost Mushroom Cultivation
- It is difficult to estimate the costs associated with home mushroom cultivation since available data tends to focus on large-scale agricultural production rather than home production and due to the wide variety of mushroom growing systems available to the homeowner. In general, however, the home mushroom grower will need to purchase the mushroom's "substrate" (a log on which shiitake mushroom fungus grows, for instance) and "spawn" of that particular species of mushroom, usually a fungal mycelium that has been propagated on a piece of cereal or other grain.
- The cost of purchasing mushroom spawn varies according to the species being grown. If you grow a particularly rare or valuable species, it may be less costly in the long term to create your own spawn rather than purchasing it. To make your own spawn requires a pressure cooker and some common and uncommon household items. The Mycological Society of San Francisco website includes a useful breakdown of materials needed to make your own mushroom spawn, so compare the total costs of home spawning to simply buying pre-made spawn.
- The other major cost of home mushroom growing is the cost of the mushroom's substrate, essentially the material on which the mushroom is grown. Materials such as hardwood logs, straw, sawdust, corncobs and shredded newspaper are "inoculated" by the spawn mixture in order to cultivate the mushrooms. Again, these costs are highly species dependent. Some mushroom can only grow on one type of substrate; others, however, can be propagated on a range of different materials, allowing the home mushroom grower to choose the lowest cost option.
- Making your own spawn at home will probably require that you purchase some specialized equipment. But for the most part, mushroom cultivation does not require any unique tools apart from what a gardener would already have. When evaluating long-term cost efficiency, remember that cultivating mushrooms at home can be more cost-efficient in the long term than simply buying mushrooms as you need them from the grocery store. Therefore even if cultivating mushrooms requires a significant initial investment, the grocery savings alone can recover the up-front costs of cultivating mushrooms.