If you are feeling confused about how long it takes to grow mushrooms you have come to the right place for your clarification.
There isn’t any exact or fixed answer for this question. Actually, mushroom grow-time varies from species to species and depends on some factors. Some species take about 3 weeks to grow, some of them take 15 weeks to grow. In other ways, you can say that it varies between 3-15 weeks. I know it’s a tiny bit confusing for this wide range of variations. So, please give me some time to explain it to you.
How long does it take to grow mushrooms?
Portobello Mushroom: Large-sized, meaty flavored. Cultivated in more than seven countries. It has two different colors white and brown.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 2 – 3 weeks
- Fruiting: 2 – 4 weeks
- Harvesting: 4 – 6 weeks to harvest 3 additional flushes
Enoki mushroom: One of the popular Japanese mushrooms. Small caps with long stems.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization 2 – 3 weeks
- Fruiting: 2 weeks
- Harvesting: 3 – 4 weeks to harvest 2 or 3 additional flushes
Lion’s Mane Mushroom: One of the few flavors imparting the flavor of lobster when cooked. Native to North America, Europe, and Asia. It can be identified by its small spines.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 1 – 2 weeks
- Fruiting: 2 weeks
- Harvesting: 2 – 4 weeks to harvest 1 or 2 additional flushes
Reishi Mushroom: Renowned for its health stimulating properties. This mushroom can be seen in traditional Chinese Medicine.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 2 – 3 weeks
- Fruiting: 11 – 13 weeks
- Harvesting: 12 – 13 weeks to harvest 1 or 2 additional flushes
Shiitake Mushroom: Native to East Asia. It’s mainly a medicinal mushroom. Scientific name Lentinula edodes. Grows in groups on the decaying woods. Research shows that regular consumption of shiitake can improve immunity.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 5 – 10 weeks
- Fruiting: 2 weeks
- Harvesting: 8 – 12 weeks to harvest about 4 additional flushes
Oyster Mushroom: Scientific name Pleurotus ostreatus. Often used in vegetarian cuisine. It’s specially cooked by torting it instead of slicing.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 2 – 3 weeks
- Fruiting: 1 – 2 weeks
- Harvesting: 6 – 7 weeks to harvest 3 or 4 additional flushes
Pink Oyster Mushroom : Scientific name Pleurotus djamor. Has a meaty and fishy texture. It’s only harvested from spring to fall. So you can’t find it in the supermarket the whole year.
- Inoculation: 1 day
- Colonization: 1 – 2 weeks
- Fruiting: 1 – 2 weeks
- Harvesting: 1 – 2 weeks to harvest 1 additional flush
How long does it take for a tree to grow fruit?
Mushroom cultivation
Mushroom grow-time depends on some growing conditions and growth methods. So we need to go through a quick recheck of this process.
Step-1, Inoculation (1-2 days):
The first step is inoculation. In this step, our mushroom spores, agar, liquid culture gets inoculated by our prepared spawn. Normally it takes a day to prepare spawn containers and to sterilize our spawn. Most of the time inoculation depends on this process. It takes a couple of hours to inoculate it after preparing spawn.
Step-2, Colonization:
In this step, our substrate gets colonized by our mycelium spawn. You can say in a way that it’s the most difficult part of our cultivation process. The effective factors of this process:
- It takes some time to colonize your substrate. The more substrate you use the more time it will take to colonize. To speed up this process, you can use more spawn or less substrate.
- There are some specific growth parameters for each mushroom. Such as temperature, humidity, light, gas exchange. To minimize the grow time of your mushrooms you have to ensure the exact parameters.
- To give your mycelium the most minimum growth-time you have to eliminate the sources of contamination. So keep your working condition sterilized as possible as you can. Because mycelium has to fight off contaminants until it destroys them. So it may slow down your process.
Step-3, Fruiting (Primordia formation) :
This step depends on our previous process. If we don’t see any contamination we are in the right way. It should not take much longer than 2 weeks to see the fruitings. Typically the time is one week. Like I said before, fruiting duration depends on many factors in species, temperature when they were birthed, and so on.
Step-4, Harvesting:
The final step. This step varies on cultivation practices (temperature, relative humidity) and cultivar of mushroom used. Also how many harvests do you aim to take?
How Long Does It Take An Avocado Tree To Bear Fruits?
Why should you grow mushrooms?
- Mushrooms are easy to grow.
- Requires very little space.
- They are profitable.
- They are nutritious.
- Growing mushrooms is fun.
Mushrooms nutrition values
Mushrooms are the best crop in terms of nutrition. This is because mushrooms contain high levels of essential nutrients, such as protein, vitamins, and minerals.
Every 100 grams of dried mushrooms contains 25-35 grams of protein, 10-15 grams of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, 40-50 grams of sugar and fiber, and 4-6 grams of fat.
Mushroom protein is of very high quality. This protein contains 9 essential amino acids for the human body. There is no risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity by consuming this protein. Because this protein does not contain harmful fats.
Mushroom fats, on the other hand, help build bones and teeth and increase the effectiveness of calcium and phosphorus. Mushroom sugars contain a variety of chemicals that work to cure many complex diseases.
Vitamins and minerals build up the body’s immune system. Our body needs a certain amount of vitamins and minerals daily. We can meet the needs of essential vitamins and minerals by eating mushrooms every day.
Mushrooms are rich in vitamins like Thiamine (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Niacin, etc., and minerals like Phosphorus, Iron, Calcium, Copper, etc. Due to their nutritional value, mushrooms act as a preventative and cure for many diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, anemia, dysentery, hair loss, cancer, tumors, etc.
Other uses of mushroom
Fomes fomentarius can be used for dyeing wool and other natural fiber. For centuries some mushrooms have been used as traditional and folk medicine. Some mushrooms are effective in treating addiction like Alcohol and cigarettes.
Conclusion
“So how long does it take to grow mushrooms?” This question can be asked as, “What time does it take to produce a specific species of mushroom?”
From our discussion, we can see that each species needs different times to grow. Your mushroom growth time highly depends on how much you take care of them, fulfilling their conditions, and growth factors. But in a way, we can say that growing mushrooms takes approximately 3-15 weeks varying over species.
Hi, I am Rahat Rubayet. I am an entrepreneur and A gardener by Hobby. I created This website to help people like you, who want to make the world greener and want to leave it as a better place for our next generation.