Making mushroom compost
When you start looking into the process of growing your own gourmet mushrooms at home, and buying in all of the equipment, it doesn’t really become apparent until after you’ve harvested a flush or two of mushrooms from your bags/ buckets that you start to think to yourself “what do I do now?”
You’re basically left with a lot of straw/ mycelium mix that you can’t use for another possible flush of mushrooms as the rates of contamination and little insects calling the whole place home have significantly increased.
So instead of throwing the whole lot into the bin, make your own mushroom compost! All of the hard work has already happened, you’ve put the time and effort into creating the perfect mix for your mushrooms to grow, and so this next step is relatively easy. In fact, I’d say it is virtually impossible to get wrong!
Old straw/ mycelium mixture in a bucket after the last clutch of mushrooms has been harvested.
Old straw/ mycelium mixture in a bag ready to be composted!
If you’ve been using buckets to grow your mushrooms in, all you need is a blunt knife to wedge between the inside of the bucket and spent mixture, and move it all around the circumference until you feel the used substrate coming away from the bucket. You may have to do this in stages depending on how packed the bucket is; what I mean is how much straw you pushed into the bucket as you made your ‘mushroom lasagne’ before putting the lid on.
If you used a bag, cut it open and dispose of the bag as this is no longer required.
In both cases, whether you’ve got an open compost heap/ area or bin, throw the used substrate into it and break it up with a spade or shovel.
And voila! That’s it, you’ve made your own mushroom compost.
You may find, depending on the weather conditions, humidity, fresh air etc, that a few odd mushrooms may start to grow as the mycelium has been refuelled by the new conditions. What I would say is be mindful of all the insects etc that also call the compost heap a home, as well as their potential eggs that may have been lovingly deposited inbetween the emerging mushrooms gills and stems. In my mind, once the mixture has been added to the compost heap, it is there to break down and disperse its beneficial microbes and qualities into the compost that will ultimately be used in and around my garden at a later date, so I’ll still be getting the long term benefits of the mycelium anyway.
And this also means you can move onto making up some more bags and buckets for new, fresh gourmet mushrooms!
Adding it all together in the compost to make mushroom compost, before being broken down by a spade to spread it all out.
And that’s it, easy as pie.
Is this something you have done too? I’m always intrigued to hear how people have used their spent substrate mix after they’ve harvested their last flush of mushrooms.
Happy mushrooming!
To read more blogs on this fascinating area of gourmet mushroom growing, click here
