THIS MONTH Growing mushrooms
There’s never been a better time to go self-sufficient. In our ongoing series, Sally Coulthard shares tried-and-tested tips from her Yorkshire smallholding
I spent a lot of time in northern Italy as a child. My parents were teachers and, in the summer holidays, we’d pack up the car and drive around for weeks, staying with various, long-suffering Italian families. Those were halcyon days and I remember them fondly whenever I smell warm, peppery olive and rosemary focaccia or overripe plum tomatoes with their fragrant acidity. And yet both aromas pale in comparison when I smell mushrooms.
At home, when I was growing up, I wouldn’t touch them, but in Italy, I devoured them with relish. Creamy risottos with porcini, mixed fungi pan-fried with garlic, unctuous antipasti mushrooms griddled and dressed with balsamic. Nowadays, with my own family, we’re eating more mushrooms than ever. Not only are they an excellent source of vitamin D and fibre, but they also give meat a run for its money in terms of taste and eco-credentials.
As someone who gets a kick out of pointing to someone’s supper and saying, ‘I grew that,’ it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at a crop of my own. The idea of foraging for fungi unnerves me. I’ve never been trained to do it safely, but growing them from scratch seemed low risk. I could also grow varieties like oyster, shiitake and lion’s mane, which are expensive in the shops.
There are a few straightforward methods for growing mushrooms. The easiest is to buy a kit from websites such as iwmushrooms.co.uk, merryhill-mushrooms.co.uk or fatfoxmushrooms.com. They usually contain a dense block of growing medium such as straw or sawdust that has been impregnated with mushroom spawn. You then follow the instructions to trigger it into life – usually rehydrating the block, putting it in the light or keeping it at a certain temperature, depending on the variety. In my experience, oyster mushrooms are a good starter crop and fairly forgiving. Within two to three weeks, you’ll have a troop of plump mushrooms. Most kits will give you one good crop, but you might get a second flush if you’re lucky.
Alternatively, you could grow mushrooms on a length of hardwood log. This is more involved, but not as onerous as it sounds. You drill holes in the wood and plug them with snug-fitting ‘spawn dowels’, which you tap into place with a mallet and seal with wax. Companies such as urban-farm-it.com sell kits that include the drill bit, dowels and wax, or you could just buy the dowels. There are a few provisos – some species of mushroom prefer different types of wood, and the logs should be freshly cut and 8cm to 25cm in diameter a
