How long does it take to grow mushrooms?
[Back to Mushroom FAQs menu] The answer to this question depends on several things, including the stage of mushroom growing you want to start with, the method of inoculation, the temperature, the kind of substrate you are using, the mushroom species, and the specific mushroom strain. Starting at the very beginning, mushroom spores can take from a few hours to several days to germinate. A culture of mushroom mycelium growing on a petri dish of nutrient agar can take 24 hours (for morels) to upwards of a month (for Agaricus species and Stropharia Rugosa-annulata, for example) to spread across the better part of the plate. Using a chunk of agar culture to inoculate small jar of spawn, it can take 2-4 weeks for the spawn to reach maturity (1-2 weeks if you inoculate the spawn with other spawn). If you start with a quantity of spawn and fresh bulk substrate, it takes about two to three weeks for standard oyster mushrooms to reach fruiting stage, and a similar length of time for Lions Mane (
