It is not without reason that king oyster mushrooms are also known as "king oyster mushrooms". The al dente, very spicy edible mushrooms are closely related to the oyster mushroom, but are more similar to the noble porcini mushrooms in terms of taste and appearance. King oyster mushrooms are not only delicious in taste, they are also very versatile in the kitchen. With a ready-made culture, you can even grow the tasty fruiting bodies at home.

King oyster mushrooms are easy to grow at home

With a ready-made mushroom culture, cultivation is very easy

From specialized dealers you can get ready-made mushroom cultures that grow on chipped wood and are tightly packed in plastic foil. Basically, all you have to do is open these bags and keep the substrate moist - given a suitable location and a correspondingly high level of humidity, it doesn't take long for the first heads to appear. After harvesting, the finished culture can be activated two to three times, so that you can harvest several kilograms of fresh mushrooms within a few weeks.

Activate and maintain mushroom culture

For successful mushroom cultivation, you first need a suitable location. You don't need a garden to grow king oyster mushrooms, because the ready culture can just as well be placed on the balcony, in the basement or in the bathroom - the main thing is that the temperature there is between 10 and 20 °C and the humidity is high. Oyster mushrooms like it moist, which is why the ideal humidity is around 90 percent. If you don't have space in which to achieve one, it doesn't matter either: Since the plastic hood remains closed during the cultivation phase anyway, a kind of greenhouse effect is created - there is sufficient moisture inside the plastic bag. Light, on the other hand, is only required to a small extent.

  • To start, only cut holes in the corners of the plastic bag.
  • Keep the substrate with the mycelium evenly moist.
  • However, avoid waterlogging - poke a few holes in the bottom of the sack.
  • Do not spray the substrate with a spray bottle - germs often collect here.
  • Instead, water from a clean watering can.
  • As soon as the first mushroom heads appear, cut open the top of the sack.
  • Remove the plastic as the mushrooms get larger.

When can you harvest the first king oyster mushrooms?

If you use a ready-made culture, you can harvest the first mushrooms after about two to three weeks. By the way, king oyster mushrooms can get very large, but don't wait too long before harvesting them - otherwise the taste will suffer.

Clean and process king oyster mushrooms

Immediately after harvesting, you can clean and process the king oyster mushrooms. The aromatic mushrooms taste best freshly fried in a pan with butter and just salt and pepper. For larger harvest quantities, you can also freeze, dry or pickle a part without any problems.

tips

When buying king oyster mushrooms, you can sometimes find a fluffy, cobweb-like, white structure. This is not mold, but the fungal mycelium. You can fry it and eat it, or you can simply cut it off and use it to grow your own mushrooms.

Category:

Vegetable garden