- Climatic conditions as a basic requirement for cultivation
- Prepare the substrate
- The mycelium as an energy supplier for the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms
- Cultivation without a seed culture
- tips and tricks
If you would like to grow mushrooms yourself with instructions, white and brown mushrooms are a good choice, especially for beginners in mushroom cultivation. Since these types of mushrooms can be cultivated relatively easily in dark cellar rooms, their targeted cultivation was already practiced at the court of the French King Louis XIV.

Climatic conditions as a basic requirement for cultivation
Mushrooms are ideally grown in steady climatic conditions to achieve a high yield. Therefore, the following cultivation areas are particularly suitable for cultivating mushrooms:
- basement rooms
- bunkering
- storage cellar
- wine cellar
Since regular watering will result in a certain level of humidity with a larger cultivation dimension, the chosen room should not be structurally sensitive to moisture. Temperatures of around 15 to 20 degrees Celsius are ideal for white and brown mushrooms to thrive. While mushrooms will grow in the light, they will also thrive in total darkness, allowing them to grow free of any weeds.
Prepare the substrate
Usually, already prepared boxes made of Styrofoam or cardboard with instructions are offered in the trade, the substrate of which has already been inoculated with a mushroom mycelium. Some of these can also be set up directly in the apartment, as they usually have a lid to regulate the humidity. If you want to multiply mushrooms on a larger scale, boxes with spore-free coconut substrate or straw bales are ideal as a substrate for mushroom cultivation.
The mycelium as an energy supplier for the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms
Break up the straw bales to a minimum height of about 15 to 20 centimeters and dampen them with water before placing them on shelves or racks in the planned grow space. Then inoculate the clods with the mushroom spores to start the growth of the mycelium. This grows through a straw bale in mushrooms within about two to three weeks. Depending on the conditions, the fruiting bodies can then emerge from the bale for harvest, sometimes within a few days.
Cultivation without a seed culture
If you would like to experiment with edible mushroom culture on a smaller scale, you can also try it out without a commercial starter set. Since spores also sometimes stick to commercially available mushrooms, you can place the leftovers of purchased mushrooms on a bale of straw or another moist substrate. Even with this technique, the desired success of growing mushrooms sometimes occurs.
tips and tricks
The beginnings of mushroom cultivation go back to the court of the French Sun King Louis XIV. He valued the edible mushroom so much that his court gardeners made the first attempts to cultivate forest and meadow mushrooms in cellars. Later, some of the branched catacombs under the metropolis of Paris were also used for the commercial cultivation of mushrooms, since the conditions here in terms of temperature and humidity were ideal for cultivation.