Mushroom Cultivation: An Illustrated Guide to Growing Your Own Mushrooms at Home

by Tavis Lynch

Learn how to grow wild and exotic, medicinally important, sustainable, and deeply delicious mushrooms right at your own home, just as people throughout the world have been doing for centuries.

Mushrooms are healthy, packed with vitamins and antioxidants; rich with flavor, an excellent source of the fifth flavor know as umami; and can be used medicinally in teas and tinctures. By growing your own, you can enjoy these benefits while also enriching your soil, speeding up your composting, and even suppressing weeds-though the biggest draw may be the magic of watching this unique form of life grow.

Understanding how mushrooms grow is crucial to successfully cultivating them, and Mushroom Cultivation offers photo-illustrated instruction both on how mushrooms grow and how you can cultivate them yourself, with a focus on six types of mushroom-shiitake, oyster, wine cap, hericium, blewit, and agaricus. You'll learn how to:

• Grow mushrooms, step by step, in a variety of different mediums: logs, straw, wood chips and sawdust, and compost
• Troubleshoot problems, including identification, underwatering, overwatering, and insects
• Store, dry, and freeze your mushroom harvest
• Cook with mushrooms, including variety-specific cooking tips and 8 tasty recipes
• Find supplies and more information with the resources listed at the back of the book

After reading Mushroom Cultivation, you'll discover that growing a mushroom is really no more difficult than growing a tomato. You just need a slightly different set of skills.

Picking your own fresh mushrooms at the peak of their flavor and nutrition is within your reach with this comprehensive, step-by-step guide.

• ISBN13: 9781631594045
• Publish Date: 10 May 2018 (first published 8 May 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Quarry Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

There has been a renaissance the last few year in niche/specialty gardening books. Mushroom Cultivation: An Illustrated Guide to Growing Your Own Mushrooms at Home is a very well written, scientifically sound, lavishly illustrated specialty guide to growing/processing/cooking many types of mushrooms aimed at the home gardener.

Released 8th May, 2018 from Quarto Publishing group's Quarry imprint, it's 144 pages and available in ebook and softbound formats.

Author Tavis Lynch has arranged the book logically and writes in a clear, easy to follow manner. After a short forward (by the editor in chief of FUNGI magazine) and introduction, the book defines and describes what fungi are (and aren't), illustrates the typical life cycle of a fungus, and gives a short intro on the tools and materials necessary for successful mushroom culture.

There are four main culture methods introduced in the first chapter (growing on logs, straw, sawdust/wood chips, and compost). Each of the four is expanded thoroughly in its own chapter following the introduction. There are specific recommendations for every culture method including which type of mushrooms suit each method, which woods and which climates are appropriate for each type of mushroom as well as tips and tricks and suggestions garnered over 30 years of foraging and growing experience.

The culture chapters are followed by a solid troubleshooting guide, processing guide and really useful recipes. I haven't tested out the culture info one-on-one on my own property yet (my logs are resting and I am sourcing spawn at the moment), but the recipes have been tried here in my kitchen and pronounced a roaring success (from purchased 'shrooms) by my fungus eating family. The pickled winecap recipe (p. 126) is simple and yields a sublime product. Who knew mushrooms could be pickled?!

The book also includes a decent suppliers list (mostly but not totally) slanted toward North American growers, along with a good cross referenced index.

The full color photography is clear and supports and illustrates the text very well. Every single page of the entire book contains photographs. Definitely a useful book for the would-be mushroom farmer or keen gardener looking to expand their horizons.

Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.