Can growing your own blue oyster straw bed be easy? Do you want to start a blue oyster straw bed outside, but you’re afraid it won’t fruit for you? Honestly, I messed up for you, so you wouldn’t have to! Yes, this is a humbling how-to article for a simple blue oyster mushroom growing kit.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk about how easy blue oyster mushrooms are to grow in straw substrate using a grow kit from North Spore. And I’ll also mention what not to do, so you can have amazing, beautiful yields to enjoy in your home cooking!
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Growing Conditions for Blue Oyster Mushroom
North Spore gives a detailed yet simple run down on their website under ‘How to Grow.’ But I’ll give you a quick run down and my experience trying this product. (Use the code SPORULOVE10 at checkout to get 10% off your purchase!)
Before you get started with growing pink oyster mushrooms, know that you’ll want to grow them outside in late summer or fall. Their ideal growing temperature range is 55-75°F (13-24°C), according to North Spore.
What’s awesome about this kit is it comes with it’s own ready-to-go, thoroughly cleaned and tested wheat straw. You don’t have to go and buy some separately!
What You’ll Need for Your Grow Kit
- A cleaned milk crate or laundry hamper if you want to grow it in a container (optional; I only needed one.)
- Your Myco Straw (included with kit)
- Blue oyster spawn (included with kit)
- A hammer or mallet to gently mush up the spawn
- Water for your straw bed
Steps to Set Up Your Mushroom Straw Bed
Step 1. Gently mash your spawn flat, while the bag is fully sealed, with a clean mallet or hammer. If you get too intense about it, the bag will tear open a bit. Don’t worry about it. It happened to me. You can see in the photo below how it’s all flat, but the packaging has a hole in it.
Step 2. Start putting in that first layer of wheat straw, roughly 1″ deep, in your milk crate, laundry hamper, or on the forest floor (just clear out any leaves on the forest floor if you’re going this route).
Here’s some footage of me putting a layer of wheat straw in my milk crate.
Step 3. Open your spawn bag and start evenly sprinkling your spawn over your straw layer. There’s no exact thickness required for this layer. Just keep in mind that you’ll want to save enough spawn to keep alternating with 1-3″ of wheat straw.
Here’s a clip of me adding a spawn layer to my straw bed. Note: I’m wearing gloves. You don’t have to wear gloves, but I’d make sure you have clean hands when handling the spawn to avoid contamination.
And here’s what a spawn layer looks like if you don’t want to check out the clip:
Step 3. Water your straw bed thoroughly. Make sure your bed stays damp, especially for the first few weeks as the mycelia colonize the straw substrate. Wheat straw is excellent at retaining moisture, but I’d check the bed every day the first week or so, or during dry weather.
But What if an Animal Decides Your Blue Oyster Mushroom Bed is a Tasty Snack?
So disaster struck the day after I setup my blue oyster straw bed, and an animal dug a big hole in it overnight.
I panicked, and I gave my stepmom permission to dump hot sauce over the top (huuuge mistake!). She said she put a lot in the straw bed. Then I found out hot sauce is acidic, and blue oyster mushrooms, and a lot of mushrooms, hate that.
If this story sounds similar, I grew this kit in tandem with a pink oyster growing kit, and in both instances, an animal decided to dig up my beds. Yep! You can see the over-abundance of hot sauce in the straw bed. Not a good look!
Then I dumped baking soda in, also a mistake, to counteract the acid. But baking soda has salt in it, and mushrooms don’t like that either. So now you don’t have to make the same, panicked mistakes I did!
The ideal solution? Put the hot sauce or cayenne pepper on the outside of your bed, serving as a border to ward off critters. You may need to add it fresh after it rains.
How Does a Blue Oyster Mushroom Growing Kit fare in Warmer Temperatures?
So I also grew this in unideal conditions for blue oyster mushrooms in the summer, outside of that 55-75°F window. I was graciously gifted this kit by North Spore in the summer. And so I figured I’d try growing it while it was freshly delivered.
But in the future, I’ll only grow blue oyster mushrooms in spring or fall.
I could see signs of life with healthy, white mycelium, 10 days after inoculating the bed. So not all hope was lost.
But I could start to see mold growing in the bed, so I was starting to think I ruined it. But signs of blue oyster mushroom life held on.
Finally, 26 days after setting up the blue oyster mushroom straw bed, I got a small flush of blue oyster. Just enough to harvest!
I harvested another beautiful flush of blue oyster one month after the first flush.
Ten days later, I found another flush to harvest.
Then three weeks later, I harvested another small flush (which was two weeks ago from the day I’m typing this).
So the good news was, I didn’t ruin it. And the blue oyster mycelia happily fruited as the summer weather cooled down!
So That’s Both How to and How Not to Use Your Blue Oyster Mushroom Growing Kit
Now that you know you can’t really mess this up, well, unless you forget to water, you can rest easy trying one of these kits out!
This blue oyster mushroom garden kit from North Spore is specifically for spring or fall weather temperatures. But as long as it isn’t winter where you live, they have other easy, beginner’s level garden kits available for every other season. Use the code SPORULOVE10 at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase!
If you want to read about another way I grew oyster mushrooms in a straw bed, that was a bit more involved, but worked great, check out this article. Happy mushroom growing! 🙂