Growing a Wine Cap Garden Mushroom Bed - Stropharia rugosoannulata

I have always been fascinated by fungi and wanted to try to grow edible mushrooms for sometime. I did some research and found a species that was said to be easy to grow in the garden and was easy to ID once it did fruit. In August 2016 I set up a raised bed using a substrate of straw with a casing on top consisting of a 50/50 mixture of peat and soil from my garden. Over the fall and winter I watched the spawn colonize the substrate with mycelium and the following May had my first flush/fruiting of mushrooms.

Year two (spring 2018) update: At the end of the growing season in the fall added more straw and a bunch or yard debris (leaves, twigs, dead garden plants) as food for the next year. I have seen some of the nice white mycelium deep down in the bed and am hoping for a new crop sometime this year.

Note: In much of the video I call the straw substrate "hay" but it is really straw...some how I got it stuck in my head to call it hay.

Stropharia sawdust spawn from Fungi Perfecti: www.fungi.com

Time lapse section was done with an old iPad 2 on a power cord and in a large ziplock bag to protect it from the weather. There was a small hole in the bag for the lens to see through.

Time Lapse app: Stop Motion
Video Editing Software: iMovie for MacOS