Grains for mushrooms growers

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Crop Production: mushrooms

Specialty mushrooms are a small but growing segment of the mushroom industry and suitable for small producers.  Most specialty mushrooms are being grown in white millet, rye and soybean hulls. White millet is grown in Colorado or imported during droughts. We want to test grains like winter wheat, oats, buckwheat, and yellow millet that can be locally grown. Replacing grains or materials like soybean hulls with buckwheat allows regional farmers to raise niche grains for direct markets. Most grains pass through at least five hands before the end users. The old handbook on mushroom growing has not been updated, nor has any research been done on other grains.  When Noreen's son started growing mushrooms over 14 years ago, he found success in growing on various grains, which made us ask if we could use other grains. The possibility of using low-protein winter wheat, buckwheat, oats, and yellow millet will help us diversify our grain production by adding new markets, and we can use cover crops such as winter wheat. We will also monitor the flavor as no one knows how different grains affect mushroom flavors. We will grow oyster mushrooms, because it is fast-growing and used in culinary meal preparation.

In 2024, we were successful in growing and using millet. After many tests, the millet showed that Minnesota Grown could be used to grow mushrooms instead of importing millet or sending it from a third-party buyer/seller in Colorado. This grant shortened the supply chain, reduced the overall cost, and gave farmers more market share. Another breakthrough was that the millet previously used was always dehulled, removing the outer layer. With many tests, the millet was tested for quantity, quality, fruiting body, and production hull versus dehulled millet. The testing resulted in the same production as the hulled. This helped reduce the cost of sending the millet to be delivered both to the location for dehulling and then being sent back to to the farm and later sent out to R and R Cultivation. This also decreased the miles the millet was transported to be processed and increased the market to Minnesota growers. We are now testing buckwheat and winter wheat.

Solution- We will compare the productivity of yellow millet, buckwheat and winter wheat as certified organic mushroom growing substrates. The grains will be grown, combined, and cleaned at Doubting Thomas Farm in Moorhead, Minnesota and shipped to R and R cultivation in New Hope, Minnesota. The grains will be sterilized and then inoculated with spores of oyster mushrooms.  We chose oyster mushrooms because they are fast-growing and can go from spores to mushrooms in 2-3 weeks.  We will record the fruiting times and total production for each grain and repeated the experiment several times. The mushrooms will be sent to a chef in Fargo and one in Minneapolis who will evaluate the quality of mushrooms grown on different grains. After testing individual grains, combinations of grains will be tested, and the "recipe" will be written down. The test will be repeated using combinations of our grains and looking at the mushroom color, poundage produced, and the timing of fruiting. From there, more combinations and trials will evolve out of the first tests.  We will make adjustments to the grain mixes as we receive data from the early test results and repeat the procedure.  We will use an Excel sheet to compare grains and grain combinations. By comparing the weight of mushrooms produced on different grain substrates, we will start to calculate a cost of production, and we will know which grain substrate will be the most profitable. Grower bags will be prepared and have testing involving growers testing the for fruiting and production. The chefs will determine any flavor difference in-kind. All the work will be combined, and decisions  will be made by retesting.

Objectives

1. Determine what grains serve as the best substrate for growing mushrooms
2. Determine which combinations of grains provide the best substrates
3. Develop specs for farmers wanting to grow grains for the market
4. Figure out baseline pricing to the mushroom grower and fair to the farmer
5. Figure out best practices for shipping organic grains while keeping integrity in place
6. Help stabilize the cost of grain by being a regional farmer, then outsource to large companies
7. Pictures as well as notes, will be collected on the way for other growers and mushroom growers
8. Share findings with others at the winter conference or research poster board
9. Share findings through on-site tours, presentations, conferences, and field days.
10. Gather info on flavor of mushrooms good or bad, when switching grains from chefs. ( Andrea Baumgartner and Sean Sherman)