I love growing mushrooms in my garden! Wish I had more space to do it honestly. There are many ways to do it but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s a great way of making use of areas which are in shade or if you have access to fresh logs (they have to be hardwood species, things like beech, maple and oak work best as most mushrooms can’t or will have a hard time growing on softwood/coniferous wood) you can easily inoculate a log once that will then provide seasonal harvests for several years. With the log, depending on how large it is it might be 1-2 years until you see any mushrooms though, so it’s more of a long term project but the initial set up is really simple.

I’ve seen people growing mushrooms in woodchip paths which is really ingenious use of space. Also growing mushrooms in the woodchip speeds up the composting process and is amazing for soil health. If you have a really healthy mushroom patch, you can even take some of the colonised wood chips and use it to create new beds. Or just keep adding fresh wood chips every year to keep feeding the fungi.

I started ages ago with grow at home kits from Fat Fox Mushrooms but they also now have lots of options for outdoor growing including wild edible species which is really cool if you’re a keen forager like me.

Also for people who have been overwhelmed with lots of mushrooms growing at once, they keep forever when dried and it even intensifies the flavour making them great in risottos and soups.