A thing I've been wondering, I might be completely lost in thinking about this, but do you know: If you grow mushrooms at home is there a risk that it spreads as kind of fungi to the building, furniture etc.?

Mushrooms are everywhere. There used to be a subreddit of "weird mushrooms" like growing out of people's couches or in the bathroom, etc. In all cases, this is a sign of rot due to water intrusion.

You can grow mushrooms at home, it is fun. The only risk is that the mushrooms with high spore production are not great to have in a closed residence, especially oyster mushrooms which produce very high spore loads. There are vendors who produce cultures of sporeless oyster which can be used to grow oyster mushrooms indoors.

Outdoors, at least in most temperate areas, you are limited to things like shitake on logs or winecaps. The latter are incredibly easy to grow, and very good taste wise, but they are temperamental and basically grow on their own schedule, infrequently.

For the curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/mushroomID/

Nope. Edible mushrooms generally need similar conditions as mold/mildew/rot to grow, i.e. moisture, low light, and the right material -- though they tend to be pickier, and are less suited to human-adjacent conditions. So if you find mushrooms growing where they shouldn't, there's a much deeper moisture and mold issue.

Lots of houses have unresolved water damage issues.

Termites for instance mostly show up in wood that already has water damage.

50% or more, in the US: ChangeTheAirFoundation.org

Normally the risk of airborne spores taking over your growing material is much more likely than your (most of the time very selected and in no way adapted to the "normal" surroundings you try to grow them in) taking over your home. Keep in mind that almost all fungi like similar conditions and there are already loads of spores of fungi that are more adapted to your living conditions in the air.

I agree with the replies so far in that there isn't a major risk of the mushrooms spreading.

That said, it's not completely risk free and I think it's important for folks who decide to get into the hobby at least take a moment to think about it. If you have someone in the household that has respiratory issues, I think it would be worthwhile ensuring that you have good containment to prevent spores from circulating the home (or do it elsewhere). This is particularly true if you decide to scale up (which is natural once you have some success, it truly is fun).

Also the growing environment is subject to infection from whatever environmental molds/fungus/etc are around, so reasonable precautions should be taken when handling/disposing. Once you get your procedures down this is less of an issue but still something to keep in mind.

Personally I didn't do anything but very basic precautions and never had an issue.

Is there any risk of wild, potentially dangerous, mushrooms colonizing your garden?

There is always a risk of things like this. For example, to make my winecap bed, I had to get a bunch of woodchips. There is no way woodchips that one will buy in bulk are not contaminated with the spores of other wood-eating fungus.

What you learn is how to positively identify the mushrooms you intend to produce/eat. It doesn't take long. I've only had alien mushrooms show up once.

Do people ever try to irradiate or fumigate or however they’d treat the woodchips?

Maybe it would cost 10 times as much as the wood chips themselves… small batch spore bakeoffs…

Adding poisons (fumigation) is definitely not a good idea. In mushroom plants the compost/humus used to grow mushrooms is often steam boiled to sterilize it, to keep the yields high and the production safe from any dangerous contamination. It is seeded with the spores of the desired species afterwards.

you could probably autoclave it with a standard dental/tattooing autoclave (~500 USD and requires a gas stove)

Pressure cooking in small batches is the diy standard, I've had good results with a standard insta-pot

"I've only had alien mushrooms show up once" gonna be my reassuring quote of the day, thanks : )

On the other hand, the morels that seemed to come with a load of wood chips were great for the year or two we had them.

I tried growing a little wine cap bed once, and it hadn't gone well. Perhaps it was the chickens pecking at it, can't say. I do still get wine caps on occasion, but they have migrated to more far-flung parts of the yard.

> the morels that seemed to come with a load of wood chips were great for the year or two we had them.

You probably already know this, but for anyone reading, there’s a species of mushrooms that looks kind of like morels that is poisonous, potentially fatally so.

https://www.foraged.com/blog/morel-mushrooms-vs-false-morels

Yeah thanks, but it doesn't hurt to mention!

I imagine it would require the bad spores to be carried with the good ones. Typically you get a slurry solution that you carry in distilled water, injecting your substrates. That would need to have the bad stuff in it as well.

Don’t they float in the air?

Wild spores and such yeah. When you purchase spores for the intent of growing them, you generally get a kit to mix them into a syringe or they already arrive in the syringe ready to be used. I tried growing some culinary strains and they generally come in the mail like that.

only spores I think

So the thing about mushrooms is you pretty much have to stick them in your mouth and chew for them to hurt you.

There are plants that can screw up your life if you touch them, but people sort of have the two threat levels flipped in their heads. The scariest thing a fungus can do to your insides is horrible, but an insect or animal can do the same but also you die screaming. So... be careful out there kids. And don't go to Australia.

what do you use as a low-cost substrate? I think this would be something I'd be into, but the idea of buying 5lb bags to be delivered by UPS really kind of takes the magic out of it.

Coffee grounds

Coco coir is very cheap and is what I use. If you want more of a project, you can make the inoculation jars and sterilize the grain yourself. That way you’ll be taking a spore/liquid culture syringe from a tiny blob of mycelium to a whole network of fruiting bodies. Doing that will also be much cheaper in the long run if you stick with the hobby

Mycelium has been shown to colonize some of the most unexpected substrates - cigarette butts [1], sawdust, you name it.

https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/good-practices...

The thing with microbes is not if they can grow in a place it's whether they can get there first.

Beer is basically knocking out natural bacteria and trying to get yeast growing before the bacteria can turn it into cleaning supplies. The alcohol is kind a there because it kills bacteria.

So for instance I put winecaps (Stropharia rugosannulata) into wood chips that had already been exposed to the elements for six months, and ended up with more than I could possibly eat.

Meanwhile oyster or shiitake mushrooms want a fresh log, cut with a sterilized blade, and cross your fingers and hope. I haven't even tried because I've watched people who know way more than me about mushrooms, fail.

I think I have some logs that might have lions mane in them, but they're fighting the turkey tail that was already in my local environment and also on the property of the person who donated the logs.

Certain species do better in different substrates, but for the ones I've grown coco coir (also suggested by holly01) works great. There are some additional bits you can add to improve results but it starts there. You can hydrate it with hot water in a 5 gallon bucket. There's lots of tutorials on YouTube.

Depends on the species. For something easy to grow like oyster mushrooms, straw. Do decontaminate the straw. Cooking water or hydraulic lime water should work for that.

+1

I started a few months ago and it’s a great hobby. It’s like low maintenance gardening that you can do all indoors. It’s very satisfying to watch something grow. I think my only reoccurring cost is the coco coir I use as a substrate and the wheat berries, which are both very cheap.

Couple of pics of lions mane and pink oyster that I had sitting around - https://imgur.com/a/ubI3eWt

Winecap mushrooms are stupid simple to grow. I think it might have sailed into the sunset now but up until last year I had a colony over 20ft in diameter. They have a short fruiting life though. Works a bit better if you're a morning person.

How much trouble is it? I found with gardening that it was fun for a while, but not fun enough for me to sustain itself as a hobby for it's own sake. And the time investment was not worth the crop.

I'd love to grow mushrooms if, once you get past initial learning, it's very low-effort.

It's a bit of trouble but not onerous. I'm temporarily relocated for about a year and haven't restarted b/c I don't have all the equipment here with me, but will likely restart here before long.

There are some sterile procedures you need to follow, pretty easy.

You need sterilized/pasteurized grain spawn and substrate. You can just buy those from a vendor (eg North Spore) to start. (Once you DIY it though it's much cheaper) Biggest challenge is getting

You need spores. You can order those online (syringes are the way to go to start). Once you know how to culture them you can easily get them anywhere. Put a mushroom cap on a piece of aluminum foil and let it sit for a week. Pick it up and there are your spores.

Takes 2-3 months end to end for any particular batch.

they grow in my yard without any effort.