Fungi - STEM Challenge

Grow Your Own Fungi

Do you like mushrooms? What about Fungi?  Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to grow your own?  Growing mushrooms at home can be both fun and exciting.  Let’s learn together the different growing methods that we can take advantage of right in our own homes or in the classroom.

Phase 1: Stem butt spawn aka cardboard burrito challenge

In this challenge, we will use the butts from harvested mushrooms to grow spawn.

Using mature mushrooms cut the stem where it begins to narrow above the butt and discard the top. Sprinkle the mushroom butts into some pre-soaked cardboard, cover them with more damp cardboard, and then wait a few weeks to see what happens.

Materials

• Mushrooms (oyster, enoki, king oyster, maitake)

• Stem Butts (lower portion of the mushroom)

• Cardboard or newspaper

• Hot water

• Container that can have holes punched into it

• Hole punch (or a grownup with hammer and nail)

• Disinfected scissors

Cardboard is a great material to use for your mushroom spawn. Spawn is any material that has been inoculated with mycelium. It is the mycelium that will eventually produce and grow the mushrooms under the right conditions.

1. Estimate or measure and record the volume or mass of your stem butts.

2. Begin with your cardboard by tearing it into small pieces.  

3. Next you want to punch a few breathing holes in your container. (not too many, just a few)

4. Line the bottom of your container with a healthy amount of shredded cardboard.

5. Have an adult pour boiling  water over the cardboard and mix it up. You don’t want to make a soup, just a damp cardboard mixture. 

6. Chop your mushrooms into chunks focusing on the ‘butts’, the bottom of the stem and mix into the substrate (cardboard).

7. Cover the Stem Butts with another layer of cardboard.

8. Wait approximately 10-14 days for the mushroom Spawn to grow. 

Definitions

• Inoculated - injected

• Mycelium - fungi roots

• Substrate - the material that an organism lives in, grows in, or obtains its nourishment from.

Phase 2: Cultivate mushrooms

Now that you have a healthy mushroom base, within 2 weeks you should be able to transfer the spawn to a bigger container to let it start its pinning process. A Pin is the next stage in the mushroom cycle. Pins will continue to grow larger and larger into the button stage, and eventually, a button grows into a mushroom.

1. Line the base of a larger container first with a mix of more soaked cardboard and some coffee grounds.

2. Gently transfer your spawn from it’s original container now into the larger one on top of the cardboard/coffee ground mixture.

3. Add another layer of the cardboard mixture on top of the spawn and mist with water.

4. Then, leave the container inside your refrigerator overnight with its lid open.

5. Pull the mushroom spawn back out of the refrigerator and keep at room temperature. 

6. Sprinkle with water every few hours to keep it moist until new mushrooms have sprouted.

7. Wait patiently and see if you can grow your mushrooms to yield more mass than you started with. 

Option B

Source out a grow-at-home kit with provided instructions.  Follow those instructions and enjoy growing a colony of fruitful mushrooms.

Bonus Challenge - Log mushroom garden 

Purchase an online bag of dowel spawn. 

And check out Mr. Mercy’s website for more information here.

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