Top 10 Steps to Start a Successful Small Oyster Mushroom Farm in 2019


Oyster mushrooms belong to the Agaricaceae family and class Basidiomycetes, and they grow in tropical as well as temperate forests. However, you need to grow them on decaying or dead and sometimes even drying trunks of coniferous and deciduous woods. So, do you want to have your mushroom farm? Learning to grow mushrooms for any specific reason can be engaging and regarding. The journey can be a long one because there is a tremendous variety of experiments and new techniques, but you must along. Here is how you can have your fully operational mushroom farm.

Oyster Mushroom Log

A business plan for the farm

A business plan for the edible fungi farm needs detailed planning and considerable attention. Keeping aside strategies of farming, on the one hand, you need to understand how you can build a growing house for mushrooms. Specific requirements for an Oyster mushroom Log for sale involve the presence of proper shelves in the house, cultivation place, and the shelves. Make cost estimates to begin farming.

Gathering suitable logs 

As you may have seen Oyster mushrooms come in a variety of tastes and colors. They can commercially grow on substrates like coffee grounds, straw, but naturally, they thrive on trees. Hence, you most definitely require an Oyster mushroom Log. These logs can be hardwood logs, especially something like beech. This kind of edible fungi has a shorter period of incubation.

 A growing shed 

Small-scale farming requires constructing fungi shed. This shed must have a greenhouse design comprising of a heater, dehumidifier, and humidifier. These help to regulate the temperature because farming requires humidity but a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius to 15 degrees Celsius.

Oyster Mushroom Log

Spawn to farm 

You cannot begin without spawn. Therefore, get hold of the nearest suppliers in your locality so that you can get uninterrupted supplies. While there is readymade inoculate spawn available, you can make your own at your farm. 

Raw materials 

Among raw materials, you need cellulose and a mycelium bag that a few companies provide with. Spawn of the mushrooms is mixed with substrate material that involves wood chips of maple, oak, cottonwood or alder. Companies provide you with this bag that has a growing medium. 

Process of cultivation 

The cultivation process is a combination of incubation and fruiting. You need to place the mycelium bags comprising of the growing medium in a dark room within the warm temperature. But, because you are growing on logs, you need to inoculate it. Drill holes of four inches throughout the log’s surface in the pattern of a diamond. Later, take the mycelium dowels or plug spawn and hammer them within the holes. You need to plug the holes, exposed end of the wood with beeswax. Later, stack the logs inside the shed you made. Within a year or six months, post-injection, logs will begin fruiting mushrooms. Make sure the woods are cold and moist at all times. 

Harvesting 

Harvesting mushrooms is an essential step because the correct time to harvest is when the fungi have uncurled completely. Such a characteristic marks their maturity and makes them ready for packing, harvesting, and selling them in markets. You must harvest before they start dropping spores. 

Oyster Mushroom Log

Packaging 

An essential aspect of cultivating this edible fungus is packaging. Packaging prepares mushrooms for various other procedures. 

Price the mushrooms

You must price the edible fungi in a manner that helps you gain the profit you deserve. After all, they are your fruits of labor, thus decide on having contracts with grocery markets, hotels, supermarkets, and local shopkeepers. 

Sell your mushrooms fast

As and when you harvest your mushrooms, try selling them off quickly. That is because the earlier you sell them, people will buy the fresher stuff. During this time, nutritive content shall be high as well. 

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