How Do You Prepare Growing Medium For Mushrooms?
If you are serious about cultivating mushrooms, you will want to prepare your own blocks of growing medium from scratch. Here’s how to get started. Find a source for clean wheat straw. It should be baled and have no seed heads. Livestock feed stores are a good source. Open the binding on the bale of straw and remove one flake at a time. Wheat straw is baled to separate into ‰??flakes’ for easy distribution. Chop or shred the wheat straw into 1 – 3 inch pieces. Sterilized garden shears can be used for this step, or a butcher’s cleaver. Make sure the surface you are working on has been sterilized with a 10% bleach solution. Place the prepared wheat straw into clean, cotton pillow cases. Soak the straw-filled pillow cases in hot water for 1 hour. Remove the straw-filled bags from the hot water bath and allow to drain in a clean sink for several hours. Remove the damp straw from the pillow cases and transfer to clean, clear plastic bags. Add soil amendments (optional). 1/4 c. rice bran and
