Mushrooms

Hi All - hope the wind isn't doing everyone's crops too much damage, can't believe it's July!

I've been thinking about growing some mushrooms - probably button or portabella, something simple. Is it as easy as it appears?

We've got a load of shallow plastic fruit trays kicking around, about 15-20cm deep that I usually use for salad. Was thinking of growing them in these, perhaps with a large thick polythene bag round each one to keep the humidity up. (The type you get from art and craft stores without air-holes in).

Been reading up on the compost/substrate and getting some spores, seems simple enough. One thing I wasn't sure about was the safety side. I have mild asthma and get pretty bad hay fever too at times, are mushroom spores dangerous in themselves or likely to send me to allergy hell?! I wouldn't bring the trays indoors so it would always be well ventilated when around them.

Funny thing is I don't really like mushrooms that much. Just intrigued by them, and also think they will make for good trading with friends and family with bigger gardens that grow more crops than we can!

 

Not in my experience :( but Good Luck!

 

MrJ - for what it's worth, stick 'mushroom spores and asthma' into Google where there are 125,000 'results' for this type of question from UK pages alone!

I've had a go at growing mushrooms in the past and I'm much too lazy to bother with all that 'faffing' about keeping newspaper damp, making up a 'casing' (soil, peat and lime or peat-free compost with chalk or lime or chalk and peat, all in various ratios) and then keeping the humidity right. Fine if you've got plenty of space I guess, but if you're hoping to trade them with F & F, you are going to need a lot of boxes and IMHO it's just not worth the effort, especially since in my experience, you get 3 or 4 mushrooms a day, nothing for ages, then one 'glut' then .... they all go mouldy and that's the end of that!