DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil, Paperback

Bring mushrooms into your life as you dive into the practice of home-scale mushroom cultivation

With applications in permaculture, urban farming, cooking, natural medicine, and the arts, interest in home-scale mushroom cultivation is exploding. Yet many beginners remain daunted by the perceived complexity of working with fungi.

DIY Mushroom Cultivation is the remedy, presenting proven, reliable, low-cost techniques for home-scale cultivation that eliminate the need for a clean-air lab space to grow various mushrooms and their mycelium.

Beautiful full-color photos and step-by-step instructions accompany a foundation of mushroom biology and ecology to support a holistic understanding of the practice. Growing techniques are applicable year-round, for any space from house to apartment, and for any climate, budget, or goal. Techniques include:

• Setting up a home growing space
• Inexpensive, simple DIY equipment
• Culture creation from mushroom tissue or spores
• Growing and using liquid cultures and grain spawn
• Growing mushrooms on waste streams
• Indoor fruiting
• Outdoor mushroom gardens and logs
• Harvesting, processing, tinctures, and cooking.

Whether you hunt mushrooms or dream about growing and working with them but feel constrained by a small living space, DIY Mushroom Cultivation is the ideal guide for getting started in the fascinating and delicious world of fungiculture.

Dive into home-scale mushroom cultivation

...Beautiful and informative contribution. Well done, Mycology Maestro!
-- ROBERT ROGERS, author, The Fungal Pharmacy

Offering clear and comprehensive instructions for low-tech growing for a range of budgets, interests, and scales, this book offers practical inspiration and a sense that "hey, I can do this!"
-- DANIELLE STEVENSON, owner, DIY Fungi

INTEREST IN home-scale mushroom cultivation is exploding, yet many beginners remain daunted by the perceived complexity of working with fungi.

DIY Mushroom Cultivation is the remedy, presenting proven, reliable, low-cost techniques for home-scale cultivation that eliminate the need for a clean-air lab space to grow various mushrooms and their mycelium.

Beautiful full-color photos and illustrations and step-by-step instructions accompany a foundation of mushroom biology and ecology to support a holistic understanding of the practice. Growing techniques are applicable year-round, for any space from house to apartment, and for any climate, budget, or goal.

Techniques include:

• Setting up a home growing space
• Inexpensive, simple DIY equipment
• Culture creation from mushroom tissue or spores
• Growing and using liquid cultures and grain spawn
• Growing mushrooms on urban and ag waste
• Indoor fruiting
• Outdoor mushroom gardens and logs
• Harvesting, processing, tinctures, and cooking.

Whether you hunt mushrooms or dream about growing them but feel constrained by a small living space, DIY Mushroom Cultivation is the ideal guide for getting started in the fascinating and delicious world of fungiculture.

Fun to read and easy to digest, this guide is both practical and inspirational.
-- MAYA ELSON, mycologist and Santa Cruz Program Director, Wild Child Free School

With hands of an artist, eyes of an ecologist, and the heart of a deeply connected human, Arevalo brings the practical and joyful together.
-- NANCE KLEHM, Director of Social Ecologies, and author, The Ground Rules and The Soil Keepers

WILLOUGHBY AREVALO is a mycologist, artist, kitchen wizard, father, and educator who is a member of the Vancouver Mycological Society. He works on an organic vegetable farm while growing mushrooms at his home in Vancouver, Canada.

CARMEN ELISABETH is an artist based in Oakland, California.

Willoughby Arevalo is a mycologist, artist, kitchen wizard, father, and educator who made friends with mushrooms as a young child and has been showing people how to work with fungi for the last decade. He's been a presenter and co-organizer of the Radical Mycology Convergences of 2012, 2014, and 2016, taught at The Art and Science of Mycorenewal, Recomposing Life and Walking the Mycelial Web intensive mycology courses, and has led workshops and forays at the New Moon Mycology Summit, Telluride Mushroom Festival, and Sunshine Coast Mushroom Festival. Willoughby regularly teaches community workshops locally and internationally on mushroom cultivation, ecology, identification, foraging, and cooking, and serves on the Education Committee of the Vancouver Mycological Society. He works on an organic vegetable farm, makes art in relation with fungi, and grows mushrooms at his home in Vancouver, BC.