I’ve shared a lot about what we grew in the garden this year, and there’s more goodness from the garden to share with you yet!

You want to know one of my very favorite things that we grew this year? Mushrooms!

Yes, mushrooms! You can grow them in your garden! How amazing is that?

We have grown different kinds of mushrooms in our garden for years, but this year was the first time we grew oyster mushrooms in a laundry basket. And I gotta say, we love it!

Today I will share our process with you- to show you how simple it is to grow oyster mushrooms in your own backyard! While some types of mushrooms can be trickier to grow, oyster mushrooms are great for beginners.

Not only is this project simple, it doesn’t require much space! So if you are wanting to grow food in less space, and you love mushrooms, this could be a great project for you.

You can also utilize areas of your yard or garden that have more shade, where you might not otherwise be growing much food.

Here’s what you’ll need to do this project:

-Oyster Mushroom Spawn

-A Plastic Laundry Basket

-Straw*

-Water

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*Finding straw that is not sprayed can be a bit challenging sometimes. There can be a lot of glyphosate/Roundup sprayed on straw. It’s worth it to do some searching to find a good source of straw!

It took years before we found a regular source, and we are so grateful to now have a local feed store, Eugene Backyard Farmer, that sells organic straw from Blue Mountain Hay. Many thanks to Blue Mountain Hay for growing organic straw, and to Eugene Backyard Farmer for selling it locally!

To find straw that is not sprayed- you can check out your nearby feed stores, chat with local farmers and ask around at the farmer’s market, search online, or seek out mushroom growers in your area who might be searching for the same thing.

If a store doesn’t carry it, put in a request. The more demand there is for straw that is not sprayed, the more people will be inspired to provide it for their local communities, knowing how much it will be appreciated.

Now to the laundry basket.

I bought this plastic laundry basket when it was on super sale at a nearby grocery store. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for growing mushrooms, and I was stoked!

After growing mushrooms in it, I can now say it was fantastic for that purpose!

Laundry baskets are great for growing oyster mushrooms outdoors.

If you are able to find a vertical style laundry hamper, like this one, with lots of holes in it, you can grow a lot of mushrooms in a small amount of space.

The holes in the laundry basket provide places for the oyster mushrooms to fruit.

No laundry basket? What about plastic crates? Get creative! Do you have any containers to repurpose that could be used for growing mushrooms? If you don’t have something already on hand, I’ve seen lots of plastic laundry baskets at nearby thrift stores that could be given new life.

Oyster mushrooms can also be grown in straw covering raised beds in the garden. We also did that in this year’s garden, but growing oyster mushrooms in the laundry basket is where we had the most success by far!

Once you find something that works for you to grow mushrooms in, it can be used again and again.

Okay, let’s talk mushroom spawn.

This year we wanted to grow oyster mushrooms outside in the garden, and we wanted to grow them in straw.

We decided on Italian Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus pulmonarius.) They love straw, and the fruiting temps said 65 – 75 degrees F, which sounded good.

The Italian Oyster Mushrooms were described as a thicker and meatier oyster mushroom, with a mild flavor. That sounded good too.

We ordered Italian Oyster Mushroom Sawdust Spawn from North Spore.

We had ordered other mushroom spawn from North Spore in the past and had been very pleased with everything we had gotten from them. (This is not an affiliate post, I simply love sharing products and companies we love supporting!)

*Side note: oyster mushrooms can be great for growing outdoors, and there are many varieties of oyster mushrooms to choose from. I’m sharing about Italian Oyster Mushrooms in this post because that’s the variety we chose for this project.

Choose your location. Ideally, you want a spot that is not in full sun, is convenient for watering, and where you will see it every day.

I wanted the laundry basket to be in a spot where I would walk past it every single day, making it easier to remember to keep it watered. I chose a spot near the goat yard, so I could check it multiple times a day when I walked past to care for the goats.

We also chose that particular location for the laundry basket because it was near the garden hose, and it was in a more shady part of the garden where it wasn’t in full sun, so it wouldn’t dry out as quickly and would stay cooler during the heat of summer.

Okay, let’s recap…

Location with water source. Check. Laundry basket. Check. Straw. Check. Mushroom Spawn. Check.

Once we had everything on hand, and our location chosen, our next step was to sprinkle a layer of straw on the bottom of the laundry basket, followed by a layer of mushroom spawn.

We then watered each layer as we went. We put the hose sprayer on the shower setting, to give it a good soaking.

We continued that way- straw, mushroom spawn, watering, straw, mushroom spawn, watering- until with all our many layers, we were to the top of the laundry basket with straw. If you have multiple people helping, you can work together and each do one of those parts.

We lightly spread each layer of straw, not packing it down tightly. Watering it did the packing down.

Notes: Some people sterilize their straw beforehand, but since the oyster spawn takes over so quickly, we didn’t worry about doing that.

It’s important to get your straw very wet from the start to make it easier for the mycelium to colonize it. The straw can be soaked in a tub of water before doing the project, to fully saturate the straw, before doing the layers in the laundry basket. We decided to water each layer as we went instead.

The spawn we ordered from North Spore was 5.5 lbs. and we had enough leftover for one more laundry basket of the same size. We would recommend planting two laundry baskets, and breaking the 5.5 lbs. of spawn in half, and spreading half throughout each laundry basket. This is what we plan to do next time.

I wrote down that we “planted” our oyster mushrooms in the laundry basket in the garden, on July 24th.

For daily watering, we changed the hose sprayer setting to mist.

We watered it daily, and sometimes twice daily on especially hot days. (In hindsight, in my zest to make sure it never dried out, I believe I overwatered it at times. You will get a feel for it.)

Even though the laundry basket was in a location with some shade, Jeff also wanted to wrap it in plastic initially to retain moisture in the beginning due to the summer heat we were experiencing. If planted earlier in the season, that step might not be necessary.

On August 7th we removed the plastic.

We watered it and checked on it daily. At first, all we were growing was grass.

But then… we spotted our first mushrooms!

I wrote that on August 11th we saw our first three mushrooms. Three!

You should have heard the ruckus our family made over those wee mushrooms, exclaiming over each one in our excitement.

We had “planted” our Italian Oyster Mushrooms on July 24th and already on August 11th we were seeing our first mushrooms! That’s mushrooms in less than three weeks! Awesome!

On August 14th, we harvested our first oyster mushrooms from the laundry hamper.

Homegrown mushrooms! Hooray!

On August 15th, we harvested more.

On August 16th, we harvested a whole colander of oyster mushrooms!

And the mushrooms kept coming!

On August 17th we harvested another colander full of mushrooms.

On August 26th, a second flush of mushrooms came on, and we harvested more mushrooms. And then we harvested more on the 27th.

Then there was a gap, and on September 20th we were surprised with a third flush of oyster mushrooms! We harvested more on September 24th.

These last two pictures were a bit blurry, but I wanted to share them to show some of our final harvests.

(None of the pictures in this post show the back side of the laundry hamper, which was also covered in mushrooms! I wasn’t able to take good pictures from the other side because there was a fence there with beans growing on it.)

On October 14th, the fourth flush of oyster mushrooms started! On the 16th we harvested oyster mushrooms. Wow!

In all, we had four flushes with the oyster mushrooms fruiting, beginning in August and going through September and October. Some flushes gave us days and days of harvests, which were sometimes quite abundant.

When we ordered the Italian Oyster Mushroom spawn, the fruiting temps said 65 – 75 degrees F, so we were amazed that we got so many mushrooms during the heat of summer.

We’re sure the shady location helped with that, as well as keeping it misted every day. Perhaps the cooler nights here in the coastal range of Oregon made a difference too.

I read that Italian Oyster Mushrooms can fruit in early spring and late fall, so I would like to start ours earlier than summer next time around.

What did we do with all our homegrown mushrooms you might ask?

We sauteed the Italian Oyster Mushrooms with butter. Yum! We were very fond of the taste, and definitely want to grow the same kind again!

We also had enough mushrooms to dry some for the winter, which we plan to use in soups.

Jeff has grown many different kinds of oyster mushrooms over the years, in all different colors, but didn’t love the flavor. The Italian Oyster Mushrooms have been his favorite oyster mushrooms yet, and also the easiest to grow.

For the cost of a laundry basket (which can be re-used each year), some oyster mushroom spawn, and some straw, you can grow an abundance of delicious and healthy mushrooms right outside your door!

(We are going to experiment to see if we can use our same spawn again with fresh straw.)

The initial set up doesn’t take very long, and watering takes only a few minutes a day. Totally worth it for delicious, homegrown mushrooms!

We can’t wait for next year’s garden season to come around again to grow more oyster mushrooms out there!

So, what are you waiting for? Are you ready to start growing some mushrooms?

Is your family wondering why you are dumping all the laundry on the floor and heading out to the garden with the laundry basket? Yep, that’s called mushroom fever my friends. It’s a real thing!

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*As always, make sure you confidently identify any mushrooms you harvest before eating them! Also, it’s always a good idea, when eating a mushroom for the first time, to start with a small amount to see how your body responds to it.