PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU PLACE THIS ORDER
SPECIALTY SPAWN: Aspen Oyster, Brown Oyster, POHU, Grey Dove, Elf Oyster, Tarragon Oyster, Flamingo Oyster, King Black Pearl, Sporeless Oyster
Most of our spawn is shipped 1-2 days after you have placed your order, excluding weekends. If you include this specialty spawn in your order, it can take up to 4-6 weeks for shipment. For quick delivery of the remainder of your spawn, please place a separate order.
For a full tutorial on how to grow oyster mushrooms on a variety of substrates, please check out our blog entry here.
The Warm Blue Oyster - (Pleurotus ostreatus) is one of our most prolific indoor commercial fruiting strains with an extremely WIDE fruiting temperature window. Meaty and sweet, this mushroom is also known for its antiviral properties as well as cholesterol lowering abilities. Optimum fruiting occurs when temperatures between 50-80F, but it can produce as high as 95F. Outdoors it fruits well on oak, sweetgum, poplar, and many other hardwood species. Indoors we recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls for incredible yields. We grow this strain year-round indoors and it forms beautiful, thick clusters. The blue color quickly fades into a light steel-blue, grey color. Like all oysters, these mushrooms are high in protein and wonderful sautéed, grilled, or fried as a side or even the main course!
Edibility and Taste: Meaty and Sweet
Grows On: Hardwood Logs and Stumps (Outdoors): alder, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, maple, oak, sweetgum, box elder, cottonwood, willow, ailanthus, tulip poplar. Pasteurized Straw or Agricultural Byproduct (Indoors): cereal straws, cotton, paper waste, fresh spent coffee grounds
Fruiting Temps: 50-80F
Availability: Year-Round
The Cold Blue Oyster - (Pleurotus ostreatus) is one of our most beautiful winter mushrooms and commercial fruiting strain with an extremely low fruiting temperature window. Meaty and sweet, this mushroom is also known for its antiviral properties, so it is a great mushroom to eat and toss into a soup during the colder months. Optimum fruiting occurs when temperatures fall in between 35-50F, which means a cold shock down to a near freeze is needed to produce after a flush has rested. Outdoors it fruits well on oak, sweetgum, poplar, and many other hardwood species. Indoors we recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls for incredible yields. We like to grow this strain indoors during the winter and turn off the heat to the growing room to save on production costs, so it is a good strain to cultivate seasonally. The colder the temperature the deeper blue the caps are!
Edibility and Taste: Meaty and Sweet
Grows On: Hardwood Logs and Stumps (Outdoors): alder, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, maple, oak, sweetgum, box elder, cottonwood, willow, ailanthus, tulip poplar. Pasteurized Straw or Agricultural Byproduct (Indoors)
Fruiting Temps: Needs COLD SHOCK. Prefers fruiting 35-50, once baby mushrooms form they can mature quickly at higher temperatures, then cold shocked again every few weeks.
Availability: September - March (Year round special request)
Golden Oyster - (Pleurotus citrinopileatus) - One of our most beautiful oyster species, this warm weather strain is VERY FRAGILE when mature. They resemble a bouquet of beautiful yellow flowers, smell like fresh watermelon, and taste like roasted cashews when you saute them in oil! An excellent gourmet mushroom for local food markets since this one does not ship well over long distances. (Optimum fruiting temperatures fall in between 75-90F. Log cultivation is not recommended in cold climates since this strain may not overwinter. We recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls. when others are going dormant in the extreme heat of the summer. Typically fruit in 2-3 weeks indoors on straw, unfortunately it is not a heavy yielder, however this is one of our best selling mushrooms at the market, since they don't weigh much we typically charge $20 per pound for these beauties and sell out in one hour!
Edibility and Taste: Sweet and nutty
Grows On: Hardwood Logs and Pasteurized Substrates
Fruiting Temps: 75-90F
Availability: April-September
Our Brown Oyster - (Pleurotus ostreatus) strain is one of the best tasting in our collection. Very similar to the native white oyster, this strain differs in that it has a softer, inflated stem that is edible! The entire mushroom can be sliced and cooked, making it a great value for consumers. This strain can grow to almost a foot across and the cap margin becomes a beautiful, wavy shape when mature.
The Brown oyster is light sensitive, so it does not like growing in clear containers or bags, opt for black bags or use nursery pots, buckets or bins with holes in them. This strain becomes trapped in clear containers and they cannot find the holes to escape! Not as sweet as the blue or elm oyster, this one is the best meat substitute we have, and can be oiled and grilled whole for oyster sandwiches or cubed up and threaded onto kabobs.
Outdoors it fruits well on oak, sweetgum, poplar, and many other hardwood species in the spring and fall. Indoors we recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls for incredible yields. We grow this strain year-round indoors and it forms beautiful, thick clusters, and is the most CO2 tolerant of all of our oyster strains. We are able to produce this mushroom indoors year-round due to its wide temperature fruiting window.
Edibility and Taste: Meaty and Earthy
Grows On: Hardwood Logs and Stumps (Outdoors):alder, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, maple, oak, sweetgum, box elder, cottonwood, willow, ailanthus, tulip poplar. Pasteurized Straw or Agricultural Byproduct (Indoors)
Fruiting Temps: 50-75F
Availability: Year Round
Phoenix Oyster - (Pleurotus pulmonarius) mushrooms are the true summer oyster, that prefer warmer temperatures and can be distinguished from white-spored P.ostreatus with their beautiful lilac colored spore-prints. Most strains have all white fruitbodies, and this one is no exception. This strain was originally isolated from the ID tables at Oconee State Park, South Carolina growing out of a Virginia Pine branch. It will fruit on conifer wood, but the mushrooms are small. It prefers to fruit on hardwoods or can be grown on pasteurized agricultural waste, such as straw or cotton. This culture is great for mycoremediation projects and can also convert piles of conifer mulch and stumps into soil , and has shown high activity in breaking down herbicides. This mushroom is a treat to eat, has a soft, velvety and sweet flavor reminiscent of anise and is super easy to grow during the warmer months of the year!
Edibility and taste: Sweet and Meaty
Grows on: Hardwoods, also can fruit on Conifer (Pine)
Fruiting Temps: 75-95F
Availability: Year-Round
Pink Oyster - (Pleurotus djamor) - This tropical oyster mushroom is a stunning pink color and resembles the flavor of seafood, making it a big hit with chefs and market buyers. We grow this mushroom during the warmer months indoors under blue LED lights and the caps are almost brilliant RED! This mushroom should be picked young, as they age the fragrance intensifies and is less desirable, and the color fades too as they enlarge, so we prefer to pick these mid-way through maturity and they store much better than older fruitbodies. We recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls for substantial yields when others are going dormant in the extreme heat of the summer. Can be grown year-round indoors or intercropped with greenhouse plant production in tropical climates and can fruit in as little as 7-10 days at temperatures around 85-90F! We also use this mushroom for classroom activities since they fruit very quickly for students and teachers to observe. This will also grow on cardboard, paper and coffee grounds.
Edibility and Taste: Seafood
Grows On: Agricultural byproducts, spent coffee grounds, paper and cardboard
Fruiting Temps: 75-95F
Availability: April - September (Year-round by special request to warmer climates)
King Oyster - (Pleurotus eryngii) taste exactly like the freshest scallops you could ever dream of and can become addictive. The entire mushroom is basically an enlarged, tender stem, that when laid on its side and sliced into thick dials, can be sautéed with butter, basil and a dash of salt to produce an amazing dish. Great mushroom for anyone with shellfish allergies that wish they could eat shrimp or other seafood, this mushroom has a hard time making it to the dinner table, where most are plucked directly from the pan when no one is looking. Cultivating this mushroom is more difficult that regular oyster mushrooms, but well worth it when you get the hang of it. It prefers pasteurized straw or sterilized sawdust grown indoors, and typically likes cooler weather, so avoid trying to grow this one in the dead of summer unless you are using well insulated grow rooms. We have not had any problem selling these for $20 per pound and are much safer than some seafood!
Edibility and taste: Like Scallops with butter and basil, dash of salt
Grows On: Hardwood sawdust or agricultural waste indoors
Fruiting Temps: 50-65F
Availability: Year-Round
The Aspen Oyster ( Pleurotus populinus) - Populinus is a beautiful white smooth capped oyster mushroom that is very similar to P. ostreatus. Aspen oysters grow on aspen, cottonwood and sometimes maple but will grow on most any populus. When growing indoors you can use a variety of substrates including wheat, rice. Straws, hardwood sawdust, cornstalks and coffee waste. This mushroom will always have a white spore print with gills running decurrent down the cap to the short sometimes non existent stem. The cap is either flat or convex and these mushrooms grow in a shelf stacked like formation with open spreading caps that are smooth and open when mature. These mushrooms have a very mild flavor and can easily replace button mushrooms in any recipe. Pairing well with many dishes and flavors you can use this to replace meat or as a great source of nutrition however if you undercook them you may end up with a very soft texture so I personally prefer to cook oyster mushrooms a little longer so that the texture firms up a little.If you are cultivating these indoors you can expect them to fruit every 7-10 days and on average they flush around 3 times!
Edibility and taste: Edible down to the stem, very mild taste.
Grows on: Hardwood logs (Outdoors): aspen, cottonwood and sometimes maple, will grow on most any populus. (Indoors): Wheat, rice, straws, hardwood sawdust, cornstalks, coffee and agricultural byproduct.
Fruiting temps: 60-70F
Availability: Year round.
The Tarragon Oyster (Pleurotus euosmus) - This is a beautiful tarragon smelling oyster mushroom. This may be one of the richest tasting oysters that we have had yet! This tasty mushroom smells slightly like anise and has a marbling of light grey on white. It grows a lot like P. ostreatus, with a cap that is curved outward and later on becomes depressed in the center. These mushrooms are generally very brittle so you’ll want to be gentle harvesting them. The gills are long and decurrent, running down the mushroom to the stem. The stem is short or sometimes it may not be present at all. It is edible down to its stem which is a little fibrous if eaten. It grows on a variety of growth mediums including, hardwood logs, coffee waste, cottonseed hulls, straw and hardwood sawdust. You can also experiment with different growth mediums and see what it grows on, you would be surprised at the number of things you can produce these mushrooms on! After full colonization you can expect to see fruiting bodies develop after around 4-8 days. If you are cultivating these mushrooms indoors you can expect about 3 flushes around two weeks apart. You can expect this mushroom to fruit in temperatures varying between 70-80 degrees however we have had it fruit at temperatures below that it just didn’t yield as much.
Edibility and taste: Taste of tarragon and slightly anise, edible to the stem.
Grows on: Hardwood logs, hardwood sawdust, cottonseed hulls, straw, coffee grinds and many other substrates. Have fun! Experiment!
Fruiting temps: 70-80F
Availability: Year round
Flamingo Oyster (Pleurotus salmoneostramineus) - Soft pink oyster.
Edibility and taste: Similar to pink oyster
Grows on: Hardwood sawdust, cottonseed hulls, straw, coffee grinds and many other substrates. Have fun! Experiment!
Colonization temps: 70-85F
Fruiting temps: 70-98F
Availability: Year round
Mulberry Oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) - A regular customer Mickey has been telling me about this brown oyster that fruited about 7 times in one year from a mulberry tree in his yard. 7 times? Of course I wanted a copy of this mushroom. Not only that, but he saw it fruiting in 20F degree weather. The mushrooms are large and meaty. You can plant them on a variety of hardwoods outdoors, and have mushrooms pretty much year round once they start fruiting.
Edibility and Taste: Meaty and Earthy
Grows On: Hardwood Logs and Stumps (Outdoors): mulberry, alder, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, maple, oak, sweetgum, box elder, cottonwood, willow, ailanthus, tulip poplar. Pasteurized Straw or Agricultural Byproduct (Indoors)
Fruiting Temps: 20-75F
Availability: Year Round
Oyster mushrooms are low on calories, fat free, cholesterol free, gluten free, very low in sodium and very high in protein fiber. Rich in iron, zinc, potassium, phosphorus, selenium, calcium, folic acid, vitamin B1, B3, B5, B12, vitamin C and vitamin D. These mushrooms also lowers cholesterol and is an amazing antioxidant. One more amazing feature of this mushroom is its anti-cancer properties.
*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.