Wine Cap Mushroom can be grown on planer shavings/chips of hardwood, straw or a mixture of straw and wood chips. It is not necessary to pasteurize the material when growing outdoors, but it is of great importance that all material is of the highest quality! Do not use old moisture-damaged material.
Memorize the "lasagna method". It is almost always used for outdoor mushroom cultivation. Briefly it means layer upon layer of different substrates. First you lay out a layer of Substrate, then a layer of Mycelium and on top of that a layer of substrate, etc. A mycelium-substrate-lasagna!
1. Dig a 20-30 cm deep drop of 1-1.5 square meters. Make sure the soil is well drained otherwise the growing bed may run the risk of becoming too wet if water collects at the bottom. In general, this is not usually a problem for most people if you have a relatively normal soil.
2. Feel free to cover the bottom of the bed with a couple of cm thick layer of newspaper and/or cardboard to protect against weeds.
3. Fill the bed with a 2 cm deep layer of your chosen substrate, i.e. wood chips or straw pellets.
4. Water well so the material feels thoroughly moistened
5. Spread an approx. 0.5-1cm layer of mycelium evenly distributed over the entire surface.
6. Cover with another 2 cm of substrate and water.
7. Continue in the same way as above until all the mycelium is used up. Be sure to finish with substrate to protect the mycelium from drying out.
8. Water abundantly with sprinklers during the first four days if it does not rain. The sprinkler is then turned on for half an hour in the morning and evening during drought.
9. From spring to autumn, you can continuously throw grass clippings from the lawn onto the bed. Feel free to add more substrate in early spring and late fall to add more nutrition, giving the mycelium the opportunity to continue expanding and producing fruiting bodies that you can harvest. You add substrate by simply placing it on top of the growing bed and then watering abundantly. You can have a growing bed for many years, as long as you add healthy substrate at least once a year.
A little pro tip: You can advantageously place logs around the edges of the cultivation bed to keep more moisture around the cultivation but also to create your own mushroom garden! You inoculate the logs with other mushrooms, for example a spring mushroom, summer mushroom and autumn mushroom, so you have fresh wonderful edible mushrooms almost all year round. If you want to give it a try you will need mycelium dowels or rapid mycelium, drills, beezwax and a wax applicator. You can find all this in the shop under their respective categories.
