Growing Golden teacher mushrooms in your backyard isn’t a very tough job. In fact, it’s a job that any person who is willing to grow his/her food in the home should think about. However, it requires a bit of care. Since they’re low in calories and fat, they’re a healthy addition to our daily diet. Additionally, growing them at home is easy and doesn’t require a lot of hardwork. The best conditions for growing mushrooms can be maintained indoors because we get more control over light and other factors that affect its growth.

Given below is the five step procedure of growing mushrooms:

1. Determine the type of mushroom that you want to grow: Three types of mushrooms that can be grown easily at home are shitake, oyster and white button. The method used for growing all these mushrooms is similar. However, source material differs. White button mushrooms grow best in composted manure, oysters grow best in straw while shitakes grow best in sawdust. Which type of mushroom you choose to grow depends completely on your preferences of taste and health.
2. Buy mushroom spawn or spores: These are the “seeds” for growing mushrooms. Mushroom spawn serves as the root structure of fungus. Basically it includes sawdust permeated with mushroom mycelia. Several online retailers sell it or you can purchase it from your preferred offline gardening supply store too. On the other hand, spores also do the same but require a bit of practice and expertise in comparison to spawn. In short, if you aren’t a seasoned mushroom grower you should always avoid the spores and opt for spawn instead.
3. Spread mycelia into the growing medium by heating it: Before you start growing your favorite nutritious mushrooms, you’ll need to spread the mycelia equally and thoroughly in growing medium. Heat can help you out in this matter. For doing this place your preferred growing medium into a pan and mix mycelia into it from your hands. After mixing it place the pan on a heating pad that has temperature set to 21° C (or 70° F), which is the finest temperature for encouraging growth of mushrooms. After this you can leave the whole setup in a dark environment for 3 weeks.
4. Fuel the growth by providing proper environment: After 3 weeks you’ll have to place your setup in an environment that’s dark and cool. Your basement may work fine in many cases, but in winters a cabinet in unheated room will also be able to do the same job. Cover your growing medium with potting soil and spray of water. For preventing moisture loss you can place a wet towel over the pan if necessary. The key thing worth remembering here is that your medium should remain moist and cool as mushrooms grow. Keep checking them periodically and spray water if necessary.
5. Harvest them when they’re grown: Finally, by the end of a 3 weeks long period your mushrooms will be ready for harvesting. At first you’ll see small mushrooms appearing… keep encouraging their growth by keeping environment dark, moist, and cool. Harvest them once their caps get separated from the stems. You can easily pluck them from your fingers. Rinse them with water and they’re ready to be cooked!