How to Grow Mushrooms in a Buckets At Home (Day 1 to Harvest!)

Yes, now we're cooking. Look at that beautiful amber golden colour. Unreal. Guys, this is a crazy day. My mushroom farm has been pumping out mushrooms for the last few weeks but today is a special day because the biggest oyster mushroom cluster is here and it's ready to harvest. Look at this. Oh my word, that is enough to feed about four people there I think. Unbelievable. We're going to harvest this today and cook something delicious then I'll show you how you can grow mushrooms like this in your home too. This is a mighty specimen and since starting my mushroom factory down there in the back I've harvested some incredible oyster mushrooms weekly. Everything from pink to yellow and of course these blue-grey oysters. I think it's time to harvest this one. That is so big. Wow, I'm amazed. I think they're so beautiful. It's literally like a work of art. I'm in awe. I think I'm going to weigh this one before I get into this cooking of this beast. Over 500 grams, half a kilogram of mushrooms in one harvest. That is unbelievable. Before I show you guys how you can grow a mushroom farm like this at home yourself, I think I'm going to show you how I like to cook them. I'm going to take inspiration from my travels to Jamaica where we made a whole documentary there a year or two ago and we made beautiful jerk oyster mushrooms up in the hills. My friend Chef Vita and I, it was a magical day. So I'm going to take some inspiration from that using some strawberries from my garden as well. To make the strawberry jerk sauce, I add my homegrown strawberries to my blender as well as the usual suspects in a jerk marinade. Things like spring onion or scallion, garlic, scotch bonnet. I haven't got scotch bonnets because they're not quite ready in my greenhouse yet so I'll add some hot sauce that I made last year, some soy sauce, some thyme, some lovely ground pimento or allspice, some ginger, coconut sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and tomato paste. Oh yes. Oh look at the colour on that. Oh that smells absolutely beautiful. This is the perfect marinade for my incredible harvest of mushrooms. I'm going to light the fire and cook these outside. It's a celebration. Oh I'm so excited. I'm just taking out the root, almost the tough bit that's that's in the middle of this mushroom but I'm going to cook it whole just like this. It's going to turn this into meat almost and that's inspired by my friend Derek Sarno who came onto the channel a few years ago and showed us this pressing technique. First things first, I'll get my cast iron pan super super hot. When the oil is almost at smoking point, that's when the mushroom goes in and I'll use my heavy cast iron press to push and squeeze all of the juices out of this mushroom. When that liquid starts to evaporate, sprinkle over some salt and pepper and flip it over. Oh yes. Now we're cooking. Look at that beautiful amber golden colour. Now that it's golden like this and it's starting to get meaty, we've got to brush some of that marinade on so it has time to caramelise and get into all the nooks and crannies of the mushrooms. Yes. Get more of this marinade on. This is looking absolutely magnificent. To be fair, I should have probably cut that big oyster mushroom cluster in half. So if you're doing this at home, do that but it was too tempting not to cook it whole. I'm going to get this onto the board and chop it up and eat it. Yes. So that's how I cook it. Now let's show you how to grow it. But first, taste test. Here goes. Wow. You know they say mushrooms can be meaty. This is on a whole nother level. Wow, maybe it's because they're so fresh. I just picked it. You have this, you have the opportunity to do this too. Come on, let's show you how to grow them. Wow. So I dropped out of school at age just 16 to become a chef. I had no plan B whatsoever, just this desire to work with food, work in the kitchens because that's where I felt I belonged. And here I am years later holding something that was just a thought that has become reality now. This is my new book, Plant to Plate. This book is a way of seeing food differently, a way of working with nature and not against it. Inside you'll learn not only how to cook but my growing tips, fermentation, foraging, herbalism, preservations, stories from my homestead and how to truly understand ingredients. So it will mean the absolute world to me if you can support me on this journey by ordering the book. Please grab a copy. Hopefully it will transform your cooking and your connection to food. Thank you. So first up, pick a cool, dark, quite humid space like a basement or a closet or even your bathroom or a shaded corner of a room. Next you're going to want a shelving unit for your buckets or mushroom growing containers. Now I just got a cheap and cheerful mini greenhouse to grow my mushrooms in. Now it's time to decide what you want to grow your mushrooms in. I've opted for plastic buckets that I can use over and over again which is opposed to the traditional way which is mushroom grow bags which you can only use once. If you're using buckets like me you're going to need to drill some holes in the side where the mushroom fruiting body will come out from. Use a drill bit around eight to ten mil and just drill evenly spaced holes around the sides of the bucket. These holes are of course where the mushrooms will grow from but will also help with air exchange during the inoculation period. I then use some sandpaper to smooth out any rough edges and then clean out the buckets thoroughly. You can use alcohol or disinfectant but I found with a good old scrub with some plant-based soap they come out just fine. So the next step is to prepare your substrate. This is what the mushrooms will use as energy to grow. Oyster mushrooms aren't fussy and they can grow in anything from hardwood shavings, sawdust, straw or used coffee grounds. Lions may like hardwood sawdust or shavings with a brand supplementation for extra energy. For my substrate I'm going to be just using some hardwood shavings that I picked up from my local pet store but to add extra energy and so that the mushrooms hopefully fruit many times I'm going to be mixing in some extra oomph from some hulled soybeans which I picked up from my mushroom spawn supplier. More on that later. You'll need to pasteurize your substrate and to simply do this I just fill up a big container with my hardwood shavings and pour over some boiling water. Let it sit there for about one to two hours and that will kill off any other bacteria or fungus that might compete with our spawn. I'll do the exact same with my hulled soybeans and you'd do the same if you're using sawdust, coffee grounds or straw. After one to two hours of pasteurizing the sawdust or the shavings would have absorbed a lot of the water but just drain off any excess water and let it cool to room temperature. Oh guys this is the exciting part. This is my mushroom spawn that I've just got online. There's mushroom growers all around the world and they sell their spawn so that you can grow at home but I'll pop a link to where I got mine from in the UK beneath this video. I've got some exciting mushrooms to grow as you've seen at the start of the video. I've got three different types of oyster mushrooms from pink to yellow and grey oyster mushrooms and this it's actually a really simple process. It just requires a little bit of work. All of these mushrooms are going to grow on the hardwood shavings that I pasteurized but I will mix in some of that hulled soya bean that I've also pasteurized because that hopefully is going to give the mushrooms more energy to fruit more. So that's why I'm adding that but if you don't have that just add, just use shavings it's absolutely fine. But essentially what's going to is the mushroom spawn is going to inoculate the pasteurized shavings and the soya bean and then use that as food and as energy to produce the mushrooms. So let's get into it. I'm going to mix together the two substrates and get them into my bucket. I'm looking for about 20% soya bean to the wood shavings. We'll mix it all up together and then we'll add it to my bucket in layers with the spawn. So this looks like a real good mix. It's a nice amount of that soy running through here. There's other substrates available, different types of brands that you can add if you didn't want to add soy but from my research it does really boost the mushrooms in terms of the amount you can harvest and the amount of times they fruit. So really important as well guys, wash your hands really well, wash all the utensils before doing this because we don't want anything to compete with our glorious mushrooms. Now that this is ready I'm going to start getting this into my buckets. I'm going to do a nice big thick layer on the bottom of my bucket followed by the mushroom spawn. The first one I'm going to do is the pink oyster mushrooms. So we've nearly filled this one and that will be my first bucket. This is really fun actually, I haven't done it for a few years and it's been it's silly really because as you know I'm all about trying to be self-sufficient and grow as much of my own food as possible and with it being winter right now and not much growing in the garden and not much I'm really able to grow here in Wales I should have done my mushroom growing way sooner but this is a great day, it's an investment for the future and just know that you don't need a big space to grow mushrooms like this and you don't need to do loads of buckets you could just do that and that will provide your family with lovely mushrooms every few weeks. That is great, I'm just packing this down I'm going to get my lid on and it goes straight into my tent there ready to grow. Don't forget to label up your buckets with the name of the mushroom and of course the date. If you're wondering what this spawn actually is, it's just simply grains so it could be wheat, it could be rye berries, it could be millet or rice, this one I believe is a rye and basically the mushroom supplier has inoculated this grain with the mycelium. It's just a convenient substrate I guess for the mushroom suppliers to inoculate before they use things like sawdust, shavings or hulled soybeans or coffee grounds or straw things like that so that's why they use the grain and it really does make it easier just to sprinkle this stuff in layers with the sawdust. I've made a bit of a mess but my mushroom factory is now up and running that was the last one this is my blue oyster mushrooms they're going to go into the tent now I'm going to shut it and I'm going to let that spawn work its magic it's going to slowly colonize and take over that substrate that delicious substrate that I prepared for them and eventually they'll be ready to launch their fruiting bodies through the holes that I prepared then soon after they'll be ready to harvest. It's not the most state-of-the-art piece of furniture amongst my beautiful artifacts that I've collected over the years but it's going to be productive and it's going to feed us. During the next two to four weeks the mycelium will spread through the substrate and should turn white as the mycelium colonizes. If you see any green or black spots that means there's been a contamination and you will need to remove the affected areas. Once the substrate is fully colonized it's time for fruiting and this is where humidity is really important. You also want to keep them out of direct sunlight around two to three times a day. I'll spray them with some water just misted from my bottle and I'll provide fresh air by opening the humidity tent for a few minutes daily. All this extra humidity from the misting and the fresh air provided by opening the tent will make your mushrooms pin and that means when they start to fruit through the holes within only a few days the mushrooms will grow and grow and they'll be soon ready to harvest. It's amazing watching these beautiful mushrooms grow they're like another world almost alien-esque. When the mushrooms have grown to full size you can gently twist and pull them from the substrate or just cut them with a knife. You're going to get multiple harvests from your buckets which is great and you'll see a huge cost saving in comparison to buying that amount of mushrooms from the store. Once they've stopped fruiting you can use that same colonized substrate from that bucket to repeat the process. You would just sprinkle this mix into your pasteurized shavings in new buckets and keep the process going. It's a full-on circular moment. So that is how you start a mushroom farm at home. I think this is a great way of being able to grow at least something especially if you don't have a garden to grow veg. Grow indoors. Start your own silent revolution by growing food and do it indoors in any little quiet corner in buckets. These mushrooms were absolutely delicious and I've been trying to find little specks of leftovers on this board since it was gone and I'm sad there's no more because it was unreal but I'm so happy that I know that there's going to be another flush of mushrooms very soon. There's going to be more fruiting and when they've done all their fruiting I just start the process again and inoculate more substrate. It's that simple. Once it's up and running it's good to go. I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope it helps you. I'm still learning on my mushroom journey so if you have any comments or any thoughts or any bits of expert advice just leave them in the comments below and if you want that recipe it's in my new cookbook Plant to Plate so please order it now. It supports us making these videos. I'll see you soon guys. Bye.