Outdoor bed
Wine caps in a wood chip bed
Stropharia rugosoannulata
- Difficulty
- Anyone
- First harvest
- 3 to 12 months, usually the second season
- Keeps producing
- Several years, if topped up with fresh chips
- Substrate
- Fresh hardwood chips, straw, or a mix of both. Arborist chips are ideal and usually free.
Conditions that actually matter
Shade or dappled light, on soil rather than on a hard surface, kept damp.
The method
- 01Choose a shaded spot on bare soil. Under a hedge, beside a shed, along the north side of a fence.
- 02Lay 10 cm of damp wood chips, scatter a layer of sawdust spawn, add another 10 cm of chips, and scatter again.
- 03Water it in thoroughly and cover with cardboard for the first few weeks if the weather is dry.
- 04Leave it. The mycelium runs through the bed over a season, and a bed laid in spring often fruits the following spring.
- 05Top the bed up with fresh chips each year and it keeps producing.
What decides whether this works
Nothing to sterilise, nothing to sanitise, and no way to contaminate it, because the bed is supposed to be full of other organisms. Wine cap simply outgrows them in fresh chips. This is the lowest-effort cultivation there is.
What you need for this method
What this step needsPlug spawn and grain spawn$21.99
What this step needsHardwood chips and sawdust$34.99Some 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.
Spawn spread through wood chips or straw in a shaded corner of a garden. Fruits for years, needs nothing, and produces more than a household can eat.
The species, in the wild
Edible
Wine cap, king stropharia
The thick cogwheel ring on a wine-coloured cap in wood chips.
Other methods