How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms on Aspen Shavings (2024)

FAQs

How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms on Aspen Shavings? ›

Simply add hot water to a pot filled with aspen shavings (available everywhere as small animal pet bedding

Oyster Mushrooms - Growing on Aspen Shavings. Growing oyster mushrooms on aspen shavings in a bucket is a great way to kickstart your mushroom growing hobby. Aspen shavings, or small pet bedding, is an easily accessible resource that can be found in most local pet or hardware stores.

populinus, which predominantly grow on the wood of quaking aspens. All of our oysters will be found growing in shelf-like clusters from dead or dying wood.

Oyster mushrooms can grow on a variety of things including wood logs, cottonseed hulls, corn cobs or office paper, but in North America, cereal straws are the substrate of choice (wheat and oat straw do particularly well). Equipment is fairly simple and outstanding results are obtained relatively quickly.

work fine. Softer hardwood wood chips, like Poplars and Aspens, are ideal but winecaps are pretty adaptable. Softwood wood chips, like Pine, are usually a big no for growing mushrooms, but Winecap can tolerate a little bit, but no more than 50% of the mix.

Simply add hot water to a pot filled with aspen shavings (available everywhere as small animal pet bedding), cool, pack into a bucket with spawn. Mushrooms will be ready to harvest in about 2 weeks, with another crop coming a week later.

Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus)

They do well on hardwoods, particularly beech. Because oyster mushrooms have a short incubation time, it is possible to harvest them from your logs in the autumn of the same year you inoculated them. The logs can produce mushrooms from spring to autumn once established.

Straw and Cardboard

Straw is the most commonly used substrate for oyster mushroom cultivation. It is usually cheap, contains essential nutrients and oyster mushrooms thrive on it. Pasteurize by soaking in hot water (65-80C / 149-176 F) for 1-2 hrs, or in a cold water high-pH lime bath for 12-18 hours.

However, this huge amount of waste coffee is still packed full of nutrients which Oyster mushrooms love to grow on. Oyster mushroom mycelium growing on coffee grounds.

You can use mushroom grain spawn in a similar way, and the fungi will facilitate the faster breakdown of the straw while growing mushrooms. TIP: Be sure to use straw, not hay because the seeds will sprout and become weeds.

How do you sterilize wood shavings for mushrooms? ›

Submerging the substrate in hot water for at least one or two hours is one approach to pasteurise it. Pasteurisation is sufficient for most enterprises to grow mushrooms with minimum risk of contamination. Pasteurization takes place at temperatures ranging from 70 to 80°C.

That being said, oyster mushrooms will be more successful on poplars and aspens than oaks or maples. The list below is our guideline based on North Spore's particular strains and we encourage you use whatever wood is most accessible to you.

Oyster mushrooms grow on and near trees in subtropical and temperate forests of the world. As wood decomposers, they often grow on logs and dead standing trees. They tend to prefer deciduous trees, especially oak and beech. Open, leafy forests make them happy and they tend to grow in the shade.

Among the saprobic and parasitic mushrooms that decompose aspen wood and litter are Crepidotus cinnabarinus, Flammulina populicola, Heliocybe sulcata, Mycena haematopus cuspidata, Paraxerula americana, Peniophora rufa, Phellinus tremulae, Pholiota squarrosa, and Pleurotus populinus.

There are many mushroom varieties that grow on logs - Shiitake, Oyster, Lion's Mane, Comb Tooth, Reishi, Olive Oysterling, Nameko, Chestnut, and Turkey Tail. Cultivating mushrooms on natural logs is a wonderful long-term method for mushroom production. A prime Shiitake log can fruit for 8 years or longer!

Fomitopsis betulina (previously Piptoporus betulinus), commonly known as the birch polypore, birch bracket, or razor strop, is a common bracket fungus and, as the name suggests, grows almost exclusively on birch trees.

Age: Ideally, your logs will be recently cut from healthy trees, with all of their bark intact. Freshly cut or fallen logs should be allowed to “rest” for 2–3 weeks before inoculation. As a rule, logs that are over 6 months old should be avoided, as they likely have other fungi living in them.