Advice on Producing Great Mushroom Compost

Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 8:26 am

: Image by John E Kaminski via Flickr

The popular product mushroom compost is actually the compost that mushroom growers make in which to grow mushrooms. This article provides you the information to be able to make your own mushroom compost and save some time and money.

The ingredients you need to start to make mushroom compost is manure, hay, poultry manure, gypsum and mushroom spawn as well as a large compost bin and steam machine. Once you have all these you are ready to make mushroom compost.

1. To star mix gypsum and manure.

2. You then need to put this base to the bottom of your compost bin and leave it in sunlight for 2 or 3 weeks to get decomposed completely. Once it has decomposed the bin then needs to be covered to allow all of organic materials to also decompose.

3. The steam machine needs to be used indoors this allows the compost to pasteurize. Make sure the room has ventilation to allow the steam to blow inside the room till it reaches an approximate of 1600.

4. Once complete the compost should be placed on trays and mushroom spawn introduced.

5. Add peat and moss and make sure the humidity and room temperature is controlled. The full growth of mushrooms should be expected within 30 days.

A quality mushroom can be grown with the help of horse manure. The same can be purchased from the shops or in the case of the fresh manure 20% of wet straw has to be added and to be left outside in the heap. After a few hours the heaps will become hot in the centre. This process needs to be repeated and also kept moist. Once it has finally become rotten the centre will no longer be hot.