I think Nick might have hit apon a great way to grow oyster mushrooms at Milkwood Farm – it’s a bucket full of mushrooms!

We’ve been experimenting with various techniques for growing mushrooms (mushroom bags, mushroom beds, mushroom logs) but what we’re searching for is a technique which utilizes re-usable components, is climate appropriate for our site, and yields lots of mushrooms.

Fruiting bucket’o'mushrooms in their growing location, under the loquat tree in heavy shade

On their way to the kitchen…

Nick recently hit apon the idea of using a bucket-in-a-bucket for mushroom cultivation, because we want to develop a sturdy outdoor system, with re-usable and easily accessible components, which can translate to a range of environments.

Basically, this system consists of two food-grade, identical buckets, with one lid. The inside bucket contains the substrate and mycelium, and has multiple fruiting holes drilled in it.

The outside bucket fits snugly around the inner one – providing insulation and preventing too much air (but a little) getting into the substrate while the mycelium are colonizing it.

When the substrate is fully colonised, you take the inner bucket out, stand it on the upturned outer bucket, and await the fruit (ie the mushrooms) to sprout out the holes.

Good aspects of this system:

- pre-drilled holes means you don’t have to destroy the inner bucket in order to get a flush of mushrooms.

- all the components are re-usable for many rounds of mushroom cultivation.

- the whole caboodle is robust, transportable, and slightly (every little bit counts) better insulated than thin-wall plastic mushroom bags.

- The size of the bucket means you can have lots of fruiting holes, which in turn means lots of mushrooms!

Of course, to use these, you have to already have made your grain or sawdust spawn, for which there is a how-to here. And you need your mycelium, of course.

Inside the lid of the bucket!

Oxygen-starved oyster mushrooms growing inside the lid (they have no access to fresh air in this space)…

Proud Nick with his newly devised mushroom-growing system…

Into the kitchen and ready to harvest a couple of clusters for breakfast…

The small circle is the circumference of the fruiting hole

Let’s cook it up!

Lightly sauteéd with a bit of our own olive oil, rosemary and garlic, and served with our own fresh eggs… om nom nom…

If any home-scale mushrooms growers have any thoughts on this system, we’d love to hear them!

Thanks to Will Borowski for his knowledge, his guidance and his mycelium!

If you’d like to  learn comprehensive mushroom cultivation, our next course with Will is in Sydney in September, or at Milkwood Farm in October.

>> More mushroom cultivation resources at Milkwood.net