Indoors, you can grow mushrooms on your countertop (with a kit), in jars, in bags, in a monotub, or in a martha tent. Outdoors, you can grow mushrooms in containers, garden beds, and on logs, stumps, and totems. Check out our mushroom growing guides to learn more.
Yes. Mushrooms don't do well in direct sunlight. However, they do need ambient light to grow. So, if you plan to grow indoors in a basement, closet, or other dark space that sunlight can't reach, you will need to supplement with an artifical grow light.
Mushrooms eat the substrate they grow on, so additional feeding and fertilizing are not necessary.
If you're not using a humidity-controlled environment (like a humidity tent or martha tent), you will want to generously water your mushrooms 2-3 times a day. That said, you don't want to soak them either. Spray with a fine mist until water droplets appear, then keep an eye on them for signs of moisture loss. Dry mushrooms will wilt and the edges will curl, which means they might need to be moved to a different space or be watered more frequently.
Yes. If you’re going to consume home-grown mushrooms, make sure to cook them thoroughly with heat. If it is your first time eating a particular species, it is best to start with a small amount to check for allergies, even if cooked.
The word "fruit" can be very specific, referring to foods like berries and apples, or a bit more general to refer to how an organism reproduces. So tomatoes and rosehips are the fruits of those plants; they contain the seeds. Likewise, mushrooms are the fruits of a fungus; they contain spores. So when a fungus starts to produce mushrooms, we call that fruiting. A "flush" refers to the production of multiple mushroom fruit bodies at one time. Many of the fungi we cultivate tend to produce many mushrooms simultaneously - this is known as a 'flush' of mushrooms.
Interested in learning more? Check out our mushroom growing terminology guide.