How to grow mushrooms, and how to turn it into a business | Mush Farming (2024)

Mushrooms were believed to have been found and first cultivated in Asia, around the early 600’s BC. There is some likelihood that during the hunting season, hunters (who would have to leave their habitats for long periods) would have mushrooms stored and gathered for consumption. Unlike plants, mushrooms weren’t easily cultivated. Ancient Egyptians had the belief that these living creatures, mushrooms, ought to be special and considered as food for Gods.

There are three key methods used today to grow mushrooms: using compost, using logs, or using straw/sawdust. These are the 5 major steps you will need to take to start your mushroom business:

1. Learn as much as you can about mushrooms;
2. Planning your business, including building an initial business plan and considering where and how to grow your business;
3. The production cycle – Where you start growing your mushrooms. This is where we consider and setup growing method, the mushroom farming laboratory, the preparation area, or the mushroom growing room;
4. Distribution of your mushrooms, meaning how to get the mushrooms from your farm into your customers;
5. Selling your mushrooms

We have come a long way from ancient history, and fortunately, the secrets of mushroom farming are today more easily deciphered. In this post, we will talk a bit about some of the main aspects related to mushrooms and mushroom farming.

What are mushrooms

The word ‘mushroom’, also known as a toadstool, is derived from the French word mousseron, which means fungi or moss. A Fungus (fungi) is a living organism that does not contain chlorophyll (a pigment that absorbs sunlight and produces it as food for plants, and also contributes to the green appearance of a plant), and mold is a type of fungus that grows from decaying matter. It has the appearance of an umbrella, and it consists of two parts, the underground part is called mycelium, and the upper part that we see like the body of an umbrella is called fruit or sporophore which means the structure of fungi.

There are over 50,000 species of mushrooms around the world including molds and yeasts, though we can categorize them roughly into three main groups, and these are edible mushrooms, poisonous/ toxic mushrooms, and unpalatable.

Edible mushrooms basically mean that they can be eaten or consumed by humans. They belong to the many types of macrofungi (a fungus that forms a large fruit) and are often cultivated though some can be harvested in the wild. It has a fleshy or soft-looking appearance and grows over 1 cm in diameter enough to be seen by the naked eye. Here are some of the most common types of edible mushrooms.

Poisonous/ Toxic mushrooms also known as toadstools are fatal if ingested. Some types of poisonous mushrooms can be identified by certain common characteristics, similar to the ones we find in one of the deadliest mushrooms known, Amanitas – they have white gills, red caps, and red stem, they also grow with a bulbous sack-like cap that is attached to the stem and sometimes can be seen underground (some mushrooms that contain scales on its cap are not safe to eat). However, this is not a general rule there, is no definite identification characteristics that enable saying if a mushroom is edible or poisonous. Just a reminder that if you are not 100% sure whether a mushroom is edible, then it’s better not to consume it.

Unpalatable mushrooms usually grow on dung or on soil containing manure. The flesh has no particular odor, and it tastes bitter or not appetizing, some are edible but there are scientists that claim some of the unpalatable mushroom species are also poisonous. Common characteristics that we can find in these type of mushrooms include an ovateorhalf-spherical shape cap, and the stem can have a volva or ring. Some of the unpalatable mushrooms more widely recognized are the Protostropharia semiglobata, commonly known as thedung roundhead, thehalf globe mushroom, or theemispheric stropharia, and Volvopluteus gloiocephalus,commonly known as thebig sheath mushroom,rose-gilled grisette, orstubble rosegill.

We will discuss further some of the most common types of mushrooms across these categories in a separate post – stay tuned and come back to visit this page for updates!

Mushroom Farming

Mushroom farming, also known as mushroom cultivation, is the term used to describe business crop growers and their activity of growing fungi and commercializing it, hopefully turning it into reasonable profits along the way. In the agri-business industry, mushroom farming is one of the most profitable businesses that you can start with a low initial investment.

There are successful small business crop growers who started mushroom farming at their backyards or even garages, only with a couple of hundred dollars as a starting investment. Besides a careful choice of what types of mushroom to grow, and what are the nice to have pieces of equipment for growing a huge number of harvests, you also have to know who your consumers are. Since there are different types of mushrooms, there are also different types or ways of farming a mushroom, and the abundance of varieties of mushrooms will appeal differently to different people.

But mushroom farming is not done only by small farmers. Indeed, the growth of the mushroom farming industry is truly incredible. According to Globe News Wire, the market value of mushroom cultivation is estimated to jump to USD 20.4 billion by 2025, from its current (as of 2020) value of USD 16.7 billion.

A specific type of mushroom, called button mushroom, amassed the largest portion of the market in 2019, with 40% of the market share. The leading countries that are producers of this type of mushroom are Japan, China, US, UK, Poland, and Germany. According to the China Research Institute “The Asia Pacific market is estimated to account for the world’s largest mushroom market, due to higher per capita mushroom consumption and adoption of modern mushroom cultivation techniques in the region”.

Five steps you need to consider for setting up a mushroom farming business

If you came to visit my website there is a good likelihood that you are interested in learning about how to make a business of mushroom farming. You may even be ready to start your mushroom farming agri-business already. Here I take you through five key areas that I think are important and may help you getting up and running. It is important that you keep in mind that there are key steps to follow to be a successful entrepreneur. Do not consider these five areas as an absolute checklist though, or an order in which you need to do things. They are more intended for your guidance on key elements you will need to consider and put in place for a well-structured business around mushroom farming.

Here are the 5 key steps to set up your own mushroom farm:

1. Learn the trade – Basically, you need to try to learn as much as you can about mushrooms and mushroom farming. I hope my site is a good source of information, but you should use other sources too, like books, checking whether there are local farming associations that provide training on mushroom farming, etc.

2. Planning – This is where you start putting together everything that you have read and learned about mushrooms and mushroom farming and start forming your ideas about what type of mushroom farming business you will set up. Two common areas to look at this stage include:
   • Creating a Business Plan– this includes how much is your capital and how large is your target market. In creating a business plan it is also essential to know how much profit you would like to have, it will help you to motivate yourself to be creative in marketing. Lastly, you will have to create your own business name that will be recognized by the consumer.
   • Decide where to grow your crops- deciding where you want to grow your crops will help you identify what is the cost for starting your mushroom farming business. It will help you estimate the number of equipment you will need and the ongoing cost for growing your mushrooms.

3. The production cycle – The production cycle is at the center of any mushroom farming, as without mushrooms there is no business. Here you will need to think about what method of mushroom farming you are going to use and implement. This is also essential before you hop on buying the equipment and tools you will need. Identifying which method of farming you will use to grow mushrooms will help you estimate the profit you will receive on starting your mushroom farming business. It will also help you decide on what type of mushroom species you will want to produce. There are methods of farming a mushroom that is also less expensive. Other areas that you need to consider in the production cycle are whether you will set up a mushroom farming laboratory, what to consider in setting up the preparation area for mushroom farming or setting up the mushroom growing room.

4. Distribution – depending on what is your objective with mushroom farming, the distribution may be a non-issue (for example, if you use the mushrooms only for self-consumption), or maybe a complex element that you will need to consider carefully. At this stage, you will need to think about to whom you would like to sell your mushrooms, and how to get your mushrooms into the selling point, whether you need to find partners to help in this part of the business or whether you will be responsible for it yourself. You will also need to sort out how to harvest and store your mushrooms.

5. Selling – This is the final stage but not less important by any measure. Who is your buyer, and what is he interested in, who can be retailers for your products, are all important questions that will have an impact on your business, your sales, and profits.

Three methods for farming mushrooms

We mentioned above the 5 key steps for farming mushrooms, and would not want to finish this post without giving you an idea about the three key methods used to grow mushrooms. We will write about this in more detail in a separate post, but for now, here are the three different types of growing mushrooms according to the method used to grow the crops:

1. Compost- is a nutrient provider and is also used as a fertilizer, it is a product of decayed animal manure that is mixed with vegetable crops or hay. This is essential for growing crops and mushrooms. Using compost is the most traditional way of cultivation or farming a mushroom. Wheat straw-bedded horse manure is the most inexpensive compost used for farming a mushroom. Synthetic compost, made from corncobs and hay, is also used for growing mushrooms.

2. Logs- mushrooms can also grow by using logs. The most commonly used type of log is from oak trees. Other logs to consider using for growing a mushroom are beech, liquidambar (Sweetgum trees), and sycamore. Small logs can help to hasten the growth of a mycelium. The logs should maintain the high content moisture in them to continue the growth of the mushroom. There are logs that are not suitable to be used when growing a mushroom and these are walnuts, eucalyptus, and cedar logs and conifers these trees contain oils and resins that repel the growth of a mycelium. Shiitake mushrooms are the most common product of a crop grower that uses logs as a medium.

3. Straw and Sawdust- aside from being inexpensive straw is also producing an extravagant number of mushrooms. Straw is very light and can be easily found in the market, straw is the stem portion of grains such as wheat, barley, and oats. Pleurotus mushrooms commonly known as oyster mushrooms are the most common variety of mushroom species that grows using straw as a medium, some of the examples are blue oyster, pink oysters, yellow oysters, and pearl oysters.

The newest method of growing mushrooms is by using sawdust, it is the powdery particles or small pieces of wood that are a by-product of sawing. Hardwood are best to use for producing a large number of mushroom fruits, although fine sawdust can also be use as a medium it has to be mixed with wood chips to allow the colonization of the mycelium. The suggested tree to produce a sawdust to grow mushrooms are oak tree, maple, beech and hickory and the sawdust from trees that are not suitable for mushroom cultivation are spruce, fir, and pine trees. Recently, some farmers also discovered that shiitake and Pleurotus mushrooms are also growing abundantly by the use of sawdust.

How to grow Mushrooms

Now that you know the three methods of farming mushrooms, the next thing you need to know is how to grow mushrooms. The standard process for farming mushrooms by using compost, straw, and sawdust – mushroom cultivation by logs has a different process – consists of two phases

• Phase I
  1. Making mushroom compost (composting) – where you will have to mix the raw materials, including animal manure, straw, and sawdust. At the end of the this phase, you should get a compost that has:
     • a brown color or darker than the original color of the compost;
     • soft, yielding straws;
     • a moisture content of from 68 to 74 percent; and
     • a strong smell of ammonia

• Phase II
  1. Finish Composting – using temperature to to remove excessive amount of ammonia and to remove any pests present in the compost.
  2. Spawning – spawn production can be quite expensive and not all mushroom growers decide to do it. You can choose to produce your own spawn, or buy it from specialized producers.

There is a lot that goes into farming mushroom, and I juts wanted to give you a feeling about what are the very basic ideas. I will discuss this topic in a lot more detail in future posts, and I’ll update this post with the links – so stay tuned and come back later to see the progress.

Wrapping up

And so, you are finally ready to register your business! After all the extensive research and all the critical decision making, you are now ready to run your business, all that is left to do is to register your business to ensure that you are doing a business with a proper and legal procedure.

Whether you start as a small scale part-time crop grower or larger business scale, you have to remember when there is hard work there is a harvest. Indeed, farming mushrooms is a great profession if taken seriously.

Mushrooms are truly incredibly useful in our life. How wonderful it is to think that from decomposed matter and animal manure we can create such a profitable business. As we have tackled the phases of mushroom cultivation, we have realized that the discovery of this living organism is indeed a miracle, there is money from dirt and no waste will be wasted if only we pay attention to the gift of nature.

In this post we I wanted to give you a rough initial guide about mushrooms and what is involved in mushroom farming. I hope this made you more curious about it, and that you will want to read more. There is a lot more into it and we will go into a lot more detail in some of the areas we covered above! I would love to hear your questions and comments, please feel free to reach out by posting your comment below. Stay tunned, and see you soon!