Champignons are quite common mushrooms. They are massively grown for use in the food industry, in particular in cooking. On their breeding, entrepreneurs build their own business, which brings good income. But experienced farmers prefer mushrooms grown at home. Read about it in the article.
What is included in the soil?
Can mushrooms be grown at home? Of course, this is possible for the farmer or the owner of a private farmstead without any experience. The main thing is that you need to stock up on knowledge in this matter and clearly follow the instructions. The most time-consuming process in mushroom cultivation is soil preparation. For an area of mycelium of three square meters, 100 kilograms of ingredients of plant origin will be required, which include the following:
- Straw.
- Grains of cereals, you can use rye or wheat.
- Fallen leaves of plants.
- Tops from tomatoes or potatoes.
In addition, the composition of the soil should include:
- Horse or cow manure in the amount of half a centner.
- Water - 300-400 liters.
- Urea and superphosphate in an amount of two kilograms each.
- Plaster - seven to eight, and chalk - five kilograms.
You can make another composition using bird droppings. Here other ingredients and their quantity are taken:
- Litter and straw - in the center.
- Water - 300 liters.
- Plaster, alabaster - as in the previous composition.
- Urea - two kilograms.
Composting process
First you need to make a collar with the same dimensions (one and a half meters) in width, length and height. It is with this ratio of parameters that combustion will occur properly. Compost will ripen within two to three weeks.
How to grow champignons at home? First you need to plant them in the soil, which is prepared as follows: all components of plant origin and straw must be soaked for a day. At the same time, they and manure should be laid in layers, and straw should be watered abundantly. The components contained in the collar must be thoroughly mixed and moistened once a week to ensure proper combustion. At the first kneading, chopped lime is added to the compost. The second time is superphosphate. Then mixing is carried out with the addition of crushed gypsum or alabaster. Each time after mixing, the resulting stack is covered with a film.
It should be borne in mind that during the preparation of the soil an unpleasant odor, similar to ammonia and carbon dioxide, will be released. Therefore, it is better to do cooking outdoors. But at the same time, protection from sunlight and precipitation is needed. If you organize the process indoors, it should be well ventilated.
How to grow champignon mushrooms at home? To do this, you need to take into account important points, without which this process is impossible. First of all, compost stock is made, as it is necessary for large quantities to grow mushrooms. During its preparation, the temperature can reach from 53 to 70 ° C. When the combustion process is completed, the thermometer drops to 21-25 ° C, and the unpleasant odor disappears. The finished soil has an elastic structure and brown color. It does not stick to hands; straw can be easily broken.
How to lay out compost?
When the preparation of the soil is finished, proceed to another procedure - its laying. First you need to choose the containers in which the mushrooms will be grown. They can be racks, wooden boxes, plastic containers, bags. Compost mass is laid out in prepared containers with a layer whose height should not exceed 22 cm.
Types of mycelium
The seed material of mushrooms is called mycelium. It is grown at home or in laboratories. Mycelium is of two types:
- Compost - this type of seed is stored for a long time at zero temperature, about a year. A one meter square plot will require 500 g of mycelium.
- Grain - this composition is more effective than the first. Sowing material of this species germinates better and gives large yields. Its consumption for the same area is less, only 330-350 g. But this mycelium has a significant drawback: a short shelf life. Only six months its properties are preserved. Keep seed in the refrigerator.
How to grow champignon mycelium at home?
If mushrooms are grown for commercial purposes, it is better to buy planting material. But some are embarrassed by the conditions in which it was grown, and therefore they do it on their own. To obtain material, you need to sow spores or isolate it from fruiting bodies, and then place it in a specially prepared medium: wort agar. Its preparation is carried out according to the following technology:
- First you need to mix beer wort (one liter) and agar-agar (20 g) with boiling water.
- After dissolving the ingredients, the composition is poured into test tubes in a third of them. Then the containers are closed with cotton swabs and for 30 minutes are placed in an autoclave with a temperature of 101 ° C and 1.5 atmospheres.
- The tubes are not placed directly, but obliquely, so that no more than 3.5 cm remains before the tubes. Now it remains to wait until the wort hardens.
- After that, spores or a piece of the fruiting body must be added to the tubes, while observing sterility.
- The containers should be kept in a thermostat or in a dark room at a temperature of 24 ° C until they overgrow. In a couple of weeks, the nutrient medium will be mastered by mycelium. This means that they are fully prepared for landing.
Usually this composition is used by mushroom pickers for growing mycelium at home, although there are substitutes for it: agar with oats, carrot agar.
Technology for the proper cultivation of mushrooms
Champignons at home can be grown using mycelium. To do this, you need to properly plant it, and in the room correctly select the temperature and humidity mode. Under these conditions, the first crop can be obtained in a year.
If the planting material is grain mycelium, grooves 30 cm deep and 50-60 cm wide must be made in the ground. The distance between the pits should be 20 cm. In order to normalize the temperature, you need to leave them for two or three days and only then lay the mycelium. To arrange the body of the mushroom, a checkerboard pattern is used.
If compost mycelium is used to plant champignons, the technology is different. The bottom of small pits is covered with drainage. Top compost is placed in which the mycelium is placed. After that, planting material is closed by him. Subject to all the rules, taking into account the quality mycelium, after seven days we can expect the appearance of new branch threads.
After 21 days, you need to lay out moist soil on top of the beds with a thickness of 25-30 cm. If the layer is larger, the bodies of the mushrooms are blocked, their germination will not happen soon.
In order to maintain the temperature regime in the room where mushrooms are grown, you need to temporarily install awnings or cover the ground with straw. If a white coating appears on the compost, then it needs to be moistened. After watering the soil, the canopy or straw is removed.
The first harvest will not have to wait long, only 45 days. You need to pick mushrooms as soon as they ripen, since the yield period is small, only three to four days. The next fruiting period should be expected in three to four months. Crops of the first waves are the richest.
Champignons in bags
How to grow champignon mushrooms at home? There are many possibilities for this. Each yard has outbuildings and cellars. They are adapted for growing mushrooms. However, you can grow champignons in bags made of polymer materials at home. This method has been used in many countries for a long time. It allows you to get large volumes of the mushroom crop.
Bags can be made independently from a transparent polymer film of various capacities. For growing a house, 25 kilograms are more suitable. But the main criterion for choosing bags is the convenience in carrying out work on growing champignons. And for it to be successful, you need to correctly place the bags in the room. This is done in many ways, but the most common are the following:
- By the principle of chess arrangement. With this method, the usable area is not used only by 10%.
- Parallel placement of bags. In this case, the area loss is even greater - 20%.
This can be compensated by deep bags, in which more substrate is laid. And the space between unusual beds is used for air circulation. There are various options for how to grow champignons at home. If you do everything in compliance with technology, you can achieve an excellent result.
Harvest in bags
Champignon picking time is the most pleasant time. Mushrooms ripen four months after planting the mycelium in the soil of the bag. When harvesting, you need to be very careful: cut the mushrooms with a sharp blade or other object, you can’t twist them. After this, the mycelium is sprinkled with a nutrient substrate and watered using a spray gun. She will bear fruit for two weeks. During this period, champignons are harvested in two to three days. It is advisable to use fresh rather than frozen champignons in food. Useful mushrooms with light plates inside the hat. If the mushrooms are old, then they will have a brown color, since toxic substances accumulate in such mushrooms, which can be poisoned.
Benefits of growing champignons in bags
These mushrooms are unpretentious, can grow on a bed in the open air or indoors. But mushroom pickers with experience prefer to grow them in bags, since this method has several advantages:
- Pests and various diseases do not apply to the entire site, because if necessary, you can always remove a specific bag from the premises.
- Thanks to the mobility of unusual beds in the form of bags, you can grow mushrooms seasonally and constantly.
- Bags can be placed in several tiers on special stands. This will save space. This is especially important when growing indoors.
- The cost of polyethylene bags is lower than plastic containers. This is important when growing champignons in large volumes.
The disadvantage of this technology is the use of manual labor. But if the scale of cultivation is small, it is not burdensome.
Champignons in the basement
It is convenient to grow mushrooms in such a place, since in the basement located underground the climate is stable. Here, labor costs for creating optimal conditions for breeding champignons are much less than, for example, in greenhouses. It is easy to grow champignons at home in the basement, the main thing is to monitor the temperature and humidity conditions. During the incubation period, air humidity should be 75%, not lower. If the basement is dry, use a humidifier. It is important to know that spores are activated at a higher temperature - from 24 to 28 ° C, and mushrooms germinate when it drops to 16 ° C. The basement must meet the following requirements:
- Have walls made of concrete.
- Wooden coating is strictly prohibited. The floor needs to be concreted, in extreme cases, cemented.
- There should be ventilation in the basement.
- To prevent mushrooms from damaging insects that can enter the basement, ventilation openings are covered with nets.
- Walls with a ceiling should be disinfected. You can use lime for this.
- If the basement is large, it must be divided into zones: for the incubation period and to obtain fruiting bodies.
How to grow champignons at home in the country?
To grow mushrooms in this way is much more difficult than, for example, in the basement. Here, the choice of the site for planting mycelium is of great importance. How to grow champignons at home? To do this, you need to find a place that is always in the shade, and the soil never dries up. A canopy is built over the site or a darkened greenhouse is placed at this place. How to grow champignons at home (photos are presented in the article)? Mycelium is planted using standard technology. For champignons, an important condition for growth is the correct temperature and humidity. These indicators should be maintained, especially since the mushrooms categorically do not tolerate heat. Equally important is the choice of substrate. The nutrients in it should be contained in large quantities, and carbon dioxide in small quantities. The best option is the land, which must be brought in advance from the forest.
Growing champignons in an apartment
This method is suitable for those who do not have a summer house or garden. The main task for such mushroom cultivation is to create optimal conditions under which they will grow and bear fruit normally. An example of how to grow champignons at home is presented step by step below:
- The first thing to do is to isolate any room in the apartment for growing mushrooms from those rooms in which people live.
- Measure humidity. It should be high, about 90%. If its readings below, you need to install a humidifier.
- To maintain the optimum temperature, the room is equipped with heaters and ventilation. With their help, the temperature regime will be maintained. It should be borne in mind that the mycelium sprouts at 20 ° C, and fruiting bodies - at 15 ° C.
- After preparing the premises, the selected containers are filled with the substrate.
- Mycelium is planted in them, covered with a film on top, which must be removed after the appearance of fungi.
- The soil is constantly moistened, it must not be allowed to dry out.
- When the time comes, champignons should be picked.