Delicious home-grown mushrooms

What are brown caps?

Porcini mushrooms, chanterelles and morels cannot be grown artificially because they depend on a certain living environment. So-called saprophage species, however, can be cultivated on straw or freshly felled wood without any problems. They get their nutrients from dead organic material. These mushrooms also include the popular “brown caps”, although, strictly speaking, there are no mushrooms with this species name. Ready-to-use crops and brood of the reddish-brown giant dumplings (Stropharia rugosoannulata) are offered under this name. The chestnut boletus, which is quite similar in taste and appearance, should not be confused with this: This forest mushroom is a common mycorrhizal fungus of the spruce, i.e. H. it lives in close symbiosis with the conifer and is therefore not suitable for a mushroom culture in the garden.

Growing brown caps - that's how it works

The breeding of brown caps or the red-brown giant trickster succeeds all the easier. All you need is fresh straw. a bale of straw as well as grain spawn or substrate mushroom spawn, which you can purchase in stores. Good mushroom spawn smells fresh and pleasantly of mushrooms, is strongly pervaded by a white mushroom mycelium and should be brought into culture immediately - it does not have a long shelf life and tends to be colonized by mold will.

material

For the successful brown cap culture you need fresh straw, which you can best get from an ecologically working farmer. Conventional straw is often filled with fungicides - i. H. with antifungal chemicals - treated so that it does not go moldy so quickly. Of course, a brown-cap mushroom culture will also find it difficult to thrive on this. So-called small balls are best, but these days they are difficult to find.

Creation of a brown cap mushroom culture

You create your brown cap mushroom culture as follows:

• Moisten the bale of straw well.
• It is best to immerse it in tap water for 24 hours.
• So the straw can soak itself up with water.
• Now pierce several holes at least 10 centimeters deep in the ball of the foot.
• Use a plant wood or a Broomstick.
• Fill one to two tablespoons of the fresh mushroom spawn into each hole.
• Stuff the holes with straw again.

Place the inoculated bale in a warm and partially shaded spot in the garden. As soon as it is completely permeated with the white mycelium, cover it about two inches thick with fresh, not yet ripe compost.