Learn how to grow wild and exotic, medicinally important, sustainable, and deeply delicious mushrooms right at your own home, just as people throughout the world have been doing for centuries.
Mushrooms are healthy, packed with vitamins and antioxidants; rich with flavour, an excellent source of the fifth flavour known as umami; and can be used medicinally in teas and tinctures. By growing your own, you can enjoy these benefits while also enriching your soil, speeding up your composting, and even suppressing weeds-though the biggest draw may be the magic of watching this unique form of life grow.
Understanding how mushrooms grow is crucial to successfully cultivating them, and Mushroom Cultivation offers photo-illustrated instruction both on how mushrooms grow and how you can cultivate them yourself, with a focus on six types of mushroom – shiitake, oyster, wine cap, hericium, blewit, and Agaricus. You'll learn how to:
- Grow mushrooms, step by step, in a variety of different mediums: logs, straw, wood chips and sawdust, and compost
- Troubleshoot problems, including identification, underwatering, overwatering, and insects
- Store, dry, and freeze your mushroom harvest
- Cook with mushrooms, including variety-specific cooking tips and 8 tasty recipes
- Find supplies and more information with the resources listed at the back of the book
After reading Mushroom Cultivation, you'll discover that growing a mushroom is really no more difficult than growing a tomato. You just need a slightly different set of skills. Picking your own fresh mushrooms at the peak of their flavour and nutrition is within your reach with this comprehensive, step-by-step guide.
Tavis Lynch has been studying mushrooms for over three decades and teaches several mycology classes throughout the Upper Midwest. He is a regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio and has been featured on "Around the Farm Table" on PBS. He owns and operates a large-scale mushroom farm in the north woods, growing mushrooms with a unique method that he developed. He is the author of Mushroom Cultivation and the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms.
" [...] a great overview of which mushrooms to grow at home and how to go about doing it."
– The Suburban Jungle Blog
"Lynch's book really gets down to serious details in the chapters on how to grow mushrooms in each unique substrate: logs, straw, sawdust and wood chips, and compost. Step-by-step instructions and fabulous photographs provide the reader with information needed to be successful."
– Oregon Live
"Mushroom Cultivation convinced me that growing mushrooms in my home garden is not a crazy proposition, nor is it a difficult one. There are several easy methods by which mushrooms can be grown at home [...] and Tavis Lynch illustrates each of them deftly, with instructions for setting up and maintaining the mushroom beds in easily understandable language."
– Little House in an Old Town
"you can dazzle dinner guests with dishes made from the recipes in this book"
– Country Gardens
"This book is great for anyone wanting step-by-step instructions and expert tips for growing, preparing, and cooking your own mushrooms."
– International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms