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The traditional cuisine of China and Japan is varied and amazing. Its distinctive feature is always that food must be not only tasty, but also healthy. It was in these countries that the industrial cultivation of shiitake, an edible and healthy mushroom known for more than 2000 years, first began.
Is it possible to grow shiitake at home?
Shiitake (shiitake), or imperial mushroom, grows wild in the territories of modern China and Japan. It was there that they first began to eat it, noting not only its culinary value, but also its beneficial effect on health. Numerous studies by mycologists have only confirmed the initial hypothesis.
Shiitake is truly a natural dietary supplement that has a lot of positive properties. Therefore, attempts to cultivate, i.e. to begin to grow this mushroom under artificial conditions has been attempted several times.Over time, considerable experience has been accumulated in growing shiitake, thanks to which this mushroom began to be cultivated in many countries. Now this can be done even at home, but it will require a lot of effort and money.
Ways to grow shiitake mushrooms
Shiitake is a saprophytic fungus that parasitizes decomposing plant debris. In nature, they grow on old stumps, rotten and dead wood. It is difficult to artificially create comfortable conditions for growing the imperial mushroom, since the shiitake mycelium matures rather slowly, and it is also much inferior to other competitors in terms of endurance.
To grow shiitake in artificial conditions, either extensive or intensive methods are used. The process of growing imperial mushroom at home using both methods is described below.
Growing shiitake on logs and stumps
The extensive growing method involves creating growing conditions for mushrooms that are as close to natural as possible. This method is good only if the natural conditions correspond to the necessary ones. This concerns, first of all, the temperature and humidity of the environment. The method of growing shiitake on stumps and logs includes several steps:
- Harvesting suitable wood.
- Sterilization of logs.
- Infection of wood with mycelium.
- Further maintaining the necessary conditions for fungal growth.
- Harvesting.
The extensive method of growing shiitake on stumps is quite time-consuming, but it produces mushrooms of the highest quality.With this method of growth, the fruiting bodies contain all the same components as when growing in the wild, therefore, they are just as valuable as wild ones.
Growing shiitake on substrate
An intensive growing method involves using various plant residues rather than whole wood as a nutrient medium for the development of mycelium. This substrate for growing shiitake mushrooms includes straw, hardwood sawdust, wood chips, grain, bran, and mineral additives.
The components are mixed together in a certain proportion, then sterilized and infected with mycelium.
How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms
The process of growing shiitake mushrooms at home is long and difficult, but interesting and educational, especially for beginners. Before you do this, you should really assess your strengths and capabilities. Any room can be adapted for growing shiitake if it is possible to provide the necessary microclimate parameters in it for a long time.
How to grow shiitake at home
Of course, it is unlikely to be possible to grow shiitake in a city apartment. However, in a private home, it is quite possible to set aside a separate part of the house for this purpose, for example, an isolated basement. In this room it is necessary to provide the ability to regulate temperature, humidity and lighting. After preparing the place, you can begin purchasing ingredients, necessary tools and materials.
At home, it is better to use an intensive method of growing shiitake mushrooms. To do this, you need to purchase mushroom mycelium.You can buy it either in specialized stores or online. Traditionally, shiitake mycelium is grown on a grain substrate or sawdust. The first type is recommended for home use; experts consider it to be the most suitable for growing imperial mushrooms at home.
The technology for growing shiitake mushrooms at home consists of the following steps:
- Selection of raw materials. The most common grains used as a base are rice, wheat, barley, and rye. These components are favored by their year-round availability, as well as their relative purity. An important positive quality of grain mycelium is its fairly long shelf life without loss of properties.
- Disinfection of the carrier. Shiitake mycelium is very vulnerable. If other fungi or bacteria settle on the nutrient substrate, it will die, unable to withstand the competition. Therefore, the grain on which the mycelium is to develop is boiled or steamed for 20-30 minutes. Then the water is drained and the grains are spread out in a thin layer to dry. You can remove excess moisture using chalk or gypsum; these materials are added to the grain in a ratio of 1:100.
- Formation of blocks. The prepared grain is filled into sterilized glass jars with a capacity of 1-1.5 liters. Approximately 1/3 of the volume on top should be left free, this will make the work easier. The top of the jars is sealed with cotton-gauze stoppers, and in their absence - with boiled nylon caps.
Important! To grow mycelium, you can use special thick plastic bags with a zipper or with the ability to install a cotton-gauze filter. - Sterilization. Even after disinfection in boiling water, the grain may contain pathogens of fungal or bacterial diseases that can destroy the shiitake mycelium in the future. To avoid an unfavorable development of the situation, the grain must be sterilized, that is, all the microflora contained in it must be killed. This is achieved by heating and holding the substrate in an autoclave at a temperature of + 110-120 ° C and a pressure of 1.5-2 atmospheres. At home, it is unlikely that you will be able to use an autoclave, so more often the grain is boiled over a fire using an ordinary 200-liter iron barrel. If you keep the substrate in boiling water for 3-4 hours, the result can be quite acceptable.
- Inoculation. At this stage, the so-called “seeding” of mushrooms is carried out, i.e., contamination of the nutrient medium with shiitake mycelium. After the substrate has cooled and been kept for a certain time, dry powder containing fungal spores is added to the container with the nutrient substrate. The process must be carried out very quickly in order to protect the containers with the substrate from foreign microflora entering them. After this, the containers are placed for incubation to form a full-fledged mycelium. At this time, the room temperature is maintained at about + 25 ° C and the air humidity is 60%.
Important! All work must be carried out under sterile conditions using gloves. - Incubation. At this stage, active growth of the mycelium is observed, spreading to the entire nutrient substrate. The development of the mycelium can take from 1.5 to 3.5 months, it depends on the quality of the fungal spores, the substrate itself and the conditions of detention. For normal development, the optimal temperature is + 25 °C.All mushroom blocks at this stage should be installed on an elevated position or in a suspended state to avoid poisoning of the mycelium with carbon dioxide. A normal colonization process will be indicated by a change in the color of the substrate; it will first turn white and then turn brown. At this stage, the mushroom blocks can be illuminated for several hours a day with dim, diffused light.
Important! An increase in ambient temperature above + 28 °C greatly increases the likelihood of mycelium death due to the sharply increasing activity of mold fungi in such conditions. - Ripening and harvesting. To give impetus to the formation of shiitake fruiting bodies, the duration of illumination of the mushroom blocks is increased to 9-10 hours, while simultaneously reducing the ambient temperature to + 15-18 ° C. After the active growth of primordia begins, air humidity must be stabilized at 85%, and the temperature regime must be brought into line with the characteristics of the strain. It can be heat-loving or cold-loving, then the temperature must be maintained at either + 21 °C or + 16 °C, respectively.
After the appearance of full-sized fruiting bodies, harvesting can begin. To keep mushrooms longer, it is advisable to reduce the air humidity during the fruiting stage to 70%, and then to 50%. In total there can be from 2 to 4 waves of mushroom ripening with an interval of 2-3 weeks.
How to grow shiitake mushrooms in your garden
It is quite possible to grow shiitake mushrooms in the country, but this can only be done in a suitable climate or an artificially created microclimate. To do this, use pieces of hardwood that are free from damage and rot. You can simply cut the trunks into pieces 1-1.5 m long.The bars are laid horizontally on stands or trestles. Then the mycelium is introduced. To do this, holes with a diameter of 2-3 mm are drilled in the bars to a depth of about 10 cm, grain or sawdust containing mycelium is quickly poured into them and immediately covered with wax or paraffin.
For further development of the mycelium, the bars are placed in any room in which the desired microclimate can be provided: temperature + 20-25 ° C and relative air humidity of about 75-80%. If the necessary conditions are met, the development of mycelium can take from six months to one and a half years. Typically there are 2-3 waves of shiitake mushroom harvests. In the interval between them, it is recommended to cover the bars with a layer of special covering material that maintains optimal conditions for fruiting. In total, active ripening of fruiting bodies can last from 2 to 6 years, with about 20% of the wood mass being absorbed by fungi.
Rules for harvesting shiitake mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms are harvested when they reach the stage of technical ripeness. At this time, the caps had not yet taken on a flat shape. 5-6 hours before the planned mushroom picking, reduce air humidity to 55-60%. Otherwise, the fruiting bodies will be watery and bacterial brown spots may appear on the underside of the cap. Reducing humidity helps dry the outer skin of the cap, which makes the mushrooms more transportable and resistant to mechanical damage.
The mushroom caps are carefully cut off with a sharp knife and placed in wooden boxes or baskets in a layer of no more than 15 cm.It is allowed to twist the fruiting bodies together with the stem from the mushroom block if they are sorted in the future. The crop is covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying out, and then sent for storage. Mushroom blocks are cleaned of remnants of stems and mushroom particles, otherwise mold may develop in these places.
An interesting video about growing shiitake at home can be viewed at the following link:
Growing shiitake as a business
Growing shiitake mushrooms has long been a profitable business. Moreover, they do it not only in China and Japan, but also in many other countries. The main area of industrial production of shiitake is Southeast Asia. At the end of the last century, interest in growing these mushrooms in European countries increased significantly. Nowadays, shiitake production is established in Germany, Austria, Italy, and since the 70s of the 20th century it has been grown in the USA and Australia.
Since the beginning of this century, noticeable interest in the industrial cultivation of shiitake has begun to appear in Russia. However, one should not expect rush demand for these mushrooms. In many regions, residents traditionally prefer local wild mushrooms, the price of which is not comparable to the cost of shiitake mushrooms. In stores, the price of these mushrooms can reach up to 1000-1500 rubles/kg, which is unacceptable for most segments of the population. Mushroom growers also prefer less labor-intensive and more popular oyster mushrooms and champignons, the demand for which is hundreds of times higher than for shiitake. Therefore, in Russia, imperial mushrooms continue to remain exotic.
Conclusion
Growing shiitake at home or in the country is possible, but it will require quite significant costs. This is due to the need to provide a microclimate similar to natural growing conditions. In addition to this, the imperial mushroom is much more capricious and demanding than, for example, oyster mushroom. However, if you take into account all the subtleties and nuances, the result will be positive.
