Mushy Deli
Tagalog
The course › Part One — The Foundation
Module 01

What a mushroom actually is

Before any step, this first: a mushroom is not a plant. Once you understand what it really is, every step in this book stops being a rule to memorise and starts making sense.

Lessons in this module

4 lessons · 40 min

0 of 4 lessons done
00-4  Intro to Oyster Mushroom Cultivation TrainingFree2:0600-1  How do you start a mushroom business?Free13:0600-3  How to grow mushrooms, and other questionsFree9:5400-2  Further background for your mushroom business15:07
Start this module

The explanation

Not a plant, not an animal

A mushroom is a fungus — a separate kingdom of life that is neither plant nor animal. A mushroom has no chlorophyll, so it does not feed on sunlight the way rice or vegetables do. Nor does it hunt for food the way an animal does. Instead it digests its food outside its own body and absorbs what it has dissolved.

This is the first reason growing mushrooms is unlike everything else you have learned about farming. You do not plant it in soil and water it in the sun. You give it wood that has already been broken down — the sawdust — inside somewhere dark and clean.

The mycelium is the real plant

The white, cotton-like growth spreading through a fruiting bag is called mycelium. This is the true body of the mushroom. It is made of extremely fine threads called hyphae, and it does all the work: dissolving the sawdust, absorbing the nutrients, and storing up energy.

The mushroom you harvest is not the plant — it is only the fruit. Like a mango on a mango tree. When the mycelium runs out of stored energy it stops fruiting, even if the bag still looks intact. That is why there is a limit to how many flushes you get.

Sporethe mushroom's seedMyceliumthe real bodyPinheadfirst growthMushroomwhat you harvestYour way inSpawn is mycelium ridingon grain. This is whereyou enter the cycle.We do not wait for spores. We go straight to mycelium.
The life cycle of the oyster mushroom. In cultivation we cut into the cycle at the spawn stage — we do not wait for spores.
The most important idea in this book

Your entire job is one thing: give the mushroom's mycelium safe food, and keep every other living thing away from it. Every step — the cooking, the lime, the alcohol, the sealing of the bag — serves that single purpose.

Saprophyte: an eater of the dead

The oyster mushroom is a saprophyte — it eats dead plant matter, not living. It is not a pest. In the forest it is what cleans up rotting trees and returns their nutrients to the soil.

This is why wood sawdust is its perfect food. Wood is made of cellulose and lignin — tough material that very few organisms can eat. The oyster mushroom is one of the best at it, and that is why it is the easiest mushroom to start with.