In this blogpost we will share with you how to make a mushroom bed, an easy way to grow oyster mushrooms in your garden.

Step 1 – Get spent substrate

There are two ways to get spent substrate:

1) from your Helsieni Growkit after it has given 3 flushes of mushrooms. Be sure to save some of it to restart your kit.

2) You can come to our farm and pick up as much spent substrate as you want. This is an output of our mushroom growing operation, and usually the boxes are dry or have a some contamination (green mold). The green mold is not a problem if you are cultivating outdoors. Best is if you take a big trash bag and empty the white buckets in that, as we wash and reuse the buckets.

Step 2 – Find a well shaded spot for your mushroom bed

Mushroom like shade and humidity, so find a spot in the garden that gets plenty of rain & moisture but not that much sunlight. If you have a garden box or a crate to put the spent substrate into that helps keep it together. The box can be as deep as you want it to be, the more substrate the more mushrooms you can expect.

Step 3 – Spread out the substrate and water it.

Put the spent substrate into the box and optionally mix in some straw or sawdust. Give it plenty of water. Rainfall will increase the humidity even more.

Step 4 – Cover and wait

Mushrooms like shade and humidity, so cover the bed with a piece of cardboard or tarp that lets through water. After week or so you should see healthy white mycelium spreading through the substrate and binding it together again. Check after a few rainy days if there are mushrooms! Note: These mushrooms are so delicious that other species like snails and flies also love eating them, so be quick to harvest them before something else gets to them.Good luck!