Grow Fresh Shiitake Mushrooms at Home with Ease

The shiitake mushroom is the second most widely cultivated mushroom in the world. Shittake mushroom was made popular by east Asian cuisine, but is now available all over the world.

The mushrooms were grown on hardwood logs. Later they were grown on sterilized sawdust, which enabled for faster production. Today, shiitake is grown all over the world, either on artificial substrate, sawdust, or on hardwood logs, often oak logs. Shiitake mushrooms make up about a quarter of all mushrooms in the world.

The shiitake mushroom is a gilled mushroom, and is made up of two parts; the mycelia and the fruiting body. The mycelia are a branching hair like structure that penetrates the substrate, in this case hardwood logs and trees, and provides essential nutrients to the organism. The fruiting body is the part that we harvest and eat as nutritious mushrooms.

The two different parts of the shiitake, the mycelium and the fruiting body, grow best at different temperatures. The mycelia grow at temperatures between 40 and 80 degrees fahrenheit, but the fruiting body grows best at temperatures between 55 and 70 degrees fahrenheit. The fruiting body also requires more light and humidity than the mycelia do. The fruiting bodies grow in the spring or fall, when temperatures are moderate, conditions are moist, and more light may penetrate the forest canopy as leaves are just budding or are falling.

The shiitake plays a significant role in its ecosystem. It acts as a decomposer, like most fungi, and it’s able to digest lignin, an organic polymer deposited in the cell walls of many plants that make them woody and rigid. This means that they decompose trees, clearing deadfall from the forest floor and returning essential nutrients to the soil.

Some petroleum products and pesticides are organic, they represent a potential carbon source for the shiitake mushroom, and mushrooms have the potential to remove these pollutants from their environment. The process of using living organisms to clean up pollution is known as bioremediation. This is also why it is important to grow organic mushrooms.

Nutritional Value

When it comes to nutritional value, one shiitake mushroom contains about 58 mg of potassium (a natural electrolyte!), and like most mushrooms, they are a rich source of polysaccharides (the complex carbohydrates that are good for human body). Shiitake mushrooms are also rich in Vitamin B, including thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, and folates.

Shiitake mushrooms contain all eight essential amino acids in a higher percentage than in dairy products like milk or eggs. Essential amino acids are amino acids that cannot be produced by the body and must come from food. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, an essential macronutrient in the human diet. The presence of all the essential amino acids makes the protein in shiitake mushrooms a huge source of protein. Grow mushrooms at home with superior Gourmet Mushroom Grow Kit and give your taste buds a kick with nutritious mushrooms.