Did you know you can make good money growing oyster mushroooms for profit? Oyster mushrooms, a type of exotic mushroom, are enjoying a high level of demand. Last year in the United States, almost two million pounds of exotic mushrooms were grown. In addition to the high demand, oyster mushrooms are fairly easy to grow. An oyster mushroom takes about six weeks from start to harvest. You can work a full-time job or have other commitments. If you can spare a growin hours a week, then you have enough time to be a successful mushroom grower. So what kind of money can you make as a mushroom grower? Restaurants love using fresh mushrooms. Visit some local restaurants and hand out free samples to their chefs. If they like what you have, you might see a lot of business come your way. Set up a stand or booth and get ready to sell a lot of mushrooms. Spots muushrooms fill up fast, so if that happens, consider asking another grower if you can share a growkng or booth with. Grocery stores frequently stock exotic mushrooms. Many get their mushrooms from out-of-state distributors.
Why Grow Oyster Mushrooms?
Please let us know a convenient time to call you on. Thank you for choosing this service. Our experts will call you on your preferred time. There is error while submitting your request. Please try again. Think of oyster mushrooms as the first step for farmers who want to cultivate fungi for fun and profit. In nature, oyster mushrooms grow on dead and dying trees in the woods, so you could spend a lot of time searching to find enough to sell. Oysters are easy to grow on almost any cheap, available plant waste: peanut hulls, cottonseed hulls, sawdust and wheat straw. Mycologist Tradd Cotter, author of Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation , even grows them on spent coffee grounds, cardboard and tattered cotton blue jeans, on his Mushroom Mountain farm in Easley, South Carolina. Get Growing I learned the ease of growing oysters by filling a 5-gallon bucket with spent coffee grounds in our kitchen. By sprinkling a bit of mushroom spawn—you can start your own or buy the spawn online—as I added coffee grounds, I created a miniature garden of growing mushrooms. I merely left the bucket lid ajar for ventilation and let a little light in. It took less than a month to harvest a couple of pounds of mushrooms without leaving the house or doing anything that resembled work. Making coffee essentially pasteurizes the grounds with wet heat—an important first step in mushroom cultivation. When organic matter is wet, it becomes an attractive food source for any fungi spores floating in the air. To grow a marketable quantity of oyster mushrooms, you can use more readily available materials either from your own farm or from local agricultural processors. A commonly used substrate is wheat straw, and you might want to begin your education with that. Be sure to shred the straw into shorter bits. A string trimmer can do the job if you drop some straw into a big garbage can and insert the trimmer like a kitchen mixer whipping up some batter. Tradd shares additional techniques for growing various mushrooms on wood chips, logs, stumps, sawdust and, yes, even fresh coffee grounds and old blue jeans. One chapter covers suitable fast-acting classroom projects for school children. Inoculate the substrate with good, fresh mushroom spawn immediately after the substrate has cooled to keep out weed fungi. Maintain a growing environment of fresh air, appropriate humidity, optimal temperature and indirect light as found in the woods. Use an opaque container. Oyster mushrooms will start to fruit wherever they are exposed to light. In a transparent container, such as a clear plastic bag, tiny mushrooms will start to fruit over every square inch of the bag. They will be too diffuse and too tiny to be worth harvesting. In an opaque container, mushrooms will fruit only through openings that allow light to enter.
5 Useful Lessons
Growing mushrooms for a profit is becoming a popular way to make some nice money. Best of all, no full-time commitment is required. You can have a full-time job or other commitments and still be a successful grower. Can you spare 12 hours a week? Oyster mushrooms are a type of exotic mushroom. The popularity of exotic mushrooms is continuing to climb. Over one and a half million pounds of exotic mushrooms were consumed just last year in the U. So why oyster mushrooms? Simply put, they are one of the easiest exotic mushrooms to grow. They can be fully grown in about six weeks. Growing mushrooms for profit can be a new career or a way to make some extra cash. You decide. If you have 12 hours a week, you have enough time to run and maintain a successful mushroom-growing business. Growing oyster mushrooms for profit is certainly not a get-rich-quick scheme, but it can lead to a nice income. How much room will you need? Once your mushrooms are ready to be sold, you have several options. These usually draw big crowds that are eager to spend money on the top locally-grown produce. Reserve a stand or booth and get selling. Spots fill up fast, so if this happens, consider asking another grower if you can share their stand with them. Restaurants are big buyers of mushrooms. Talk to some local restaurants, and see if they might be interested in your exotic mushrooms. Hand out free samples to chefs. Grocery stores are another market for oyster mushrooms. In particular, upscale grocery stores are the ones most likely to carry exotic mushrooms, such as your oyster mushrooms. Chances are good that you can beat out an out-of-state distributor for business if you can offer your mushrooms at a better price than what the grocery store has been paying before. Plus, the grocery store might even allow you to put on demonstrations.
Quick & Easy To Grow…
The popularity of gourmet mushrooms is growing fast, as more and more folks discover the great taste and health benefits. In fact, almost ten million pounds of oyster and shiitake makw were sold in the U. In Europe growwing Asia, mushrooms are much more widely grown and eaten, but Americans are catching up. In addition to the high demand, both oyster and shiitake mushrooms are among the easiest gourmet mushrooms to grow, and can be produced on a variety of waste products, such as straw and sawdust, even coffee grounds. New growing techniques allow growers to grow both varieties indoors in plastic bags. You can still have a full-time job. If you just have a few hours every week, even as little as ten hours, then you have enough time to be a successful mushroom grower. Growing oyster and shiitake mushrooms indoors for profit is a great way to make a solid extra income. So how much can you make growing gourmet mushrooms? In a square foot growing area, growers are averaging around harvested pounds per year, with six growing cycles, or about one harvest every eight weeks. You can count on people looking for tasty gourmet mushrooms. So set up a booth or pitch your tent and start selling. If spots are all full, ask another grower, such as a vegetable grower, if you can share a stand oyzter. How about selling direct to local grocery stores? Due to the increased popularity of oyster and shiitake mushrooms, more and more stores are now selling. A proven way to improve your gourmet mushroom sales at both the Saturday market and at grocery stores is to offer free samples. Set up a simple stand with a one-burner butane or electric stove, and saute your oyster mushrooms in butter, then pass them out to customers. Demos have been known to double sales, so start cann Quite a few gourmet mushroom growers sell their freshly harvested mushrooms only to restaurant chefs in their area. There are two advantages in selling directly to chefs. First, they buy large quantities of mushrooms regularly, so it takes much less time to sell your entire harvest. Second, chefs are willing to pay retail prices for high-quality, fresh-picked oyster and shiitake mushrooms.
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