Straw or coffee
Oysters in a straw bucket
Pleurotus ostreatus
- Difficulty
- Straightforward
- First harvest
- 4 to 6 weeks
- Keeps producing
- Two or three flushes
- Substrate
- Wheat or barley straw, chopped short, pasteurised rather than sterilised
Conditions that actually matter
A shaded spot, 15 to 24C, and a bucket drilled with holes for air and fruiting.
The method
- 01Drill 12 mm holes over a plastic bucket, roughly every 10 cm in a staggered pattern.
- 02Chop the straw to 5 cm lengths and pasteurise it: steep in water held at 65 to 75C for an hour, then drain until it is damp rather than wet. Squeezed hard, it should release a few drops and no more.
- 03Layer straw and grain spawn into the bucket, roughly 10 parts straw to 1 part spawn by volume, pressing each layer down.
- 04Lid it, put it somewhere dark at room temperature, and wait two to three weeks while white mycelium runs through the straw.
- 05Move it somewhere with light and fresh air. Mushrooms come out of the drilled holes within a week or two.
What decides whether this works
Pasteurise, do not sterilise. Straw held at 65 to 75C keeps a population of harmless organisms that occupy the space competitors would take. Sterilised straw is a blank slate, and the first thing that lands on it wins.
What you need for this method
What this step needsPlug spawn and grain spawn$21.99
What this step needsProbe thermometer$12.31
What this step needsBuckets and liners$44.99Some links here are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one we earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what we recommend. Prices were read from Amazon when this page was built and will have moved since.
Pasteurised rather than sterilised, which is far more forgiving than it sounds. The classic bucket-of-straw oyster grow, and spent coffee grounds work for the same reason.
The species, in the wild
Choice
Oyster mushroom
White decurrent gills on a stemless or side-stemmed fan growing from wood.
Other methods