I recently purchased an Exhale bag (thanks to the suggestions from DGC!) and I’ve got it hanging in my grow tent. Since I’m literally just buying a bag a sawdust and mushrooms, it made me think about the feasibility of creating my own mushrooms in a backyard greenhouse scenario.
Has anyone thought about this or done such a thing? I imagine one could create small areas throughout their greenhouse where they are growing mushrooms (shiitake?) that could generate CO2 for the small greenhouse. Is this feasible?
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts! Cheers & love to the DGC!
– @QGrows
I was thinking about hanging a couple of these.
https://buildasoil.com/products/blue-oyster-straw-logs?variant=1040251460
Those look awesome, I will definitely have to check those out. They don’t mention c02 generation as a benefit but I have to imagine it would help in a greenhouse setting?
Yeah I’ve been looking at those straw log things from Build a soil too… seems like a really cool idea if you can work out the details. I’m finding compost/living soil puts out a decent amount of co2 too. I really like the idea of finding natural sources of CO2 for indoor growing. Tanks are a pain in the ass and burners are super wasteful… a natural solution that also produces edible mushrooms would be pretty sweet.
From what I’ve read, oyster mushrooms prefer lower temps than most people are running in their room, so that might cause some issues. I might have to order one of those things from build a soil… seems like there is some details to work out but the idea has a lot of potential.
I haven’t used the mushroom logs from build-a-soil (If I lived closer to Colorado, I would buy a lot of stuff from them, lol), but I get some mushroom bags from a local company here in Michigan called Deezbags (the owner’s name is Darren, so it is a play on D’s bags ). The bags from Deezbags are bagged a few towns over from me and I actually pick them up from Darren himself. They use blue mushrooms in their bags also, and I either hang them up so the CO2 falls down over the plants or put them on the floor behind my floor fan.
The bags on the floor stay cooler and the ones hanging are warmer, the mushrooms seem to grow faster in the hanging bags so I think they like the indirect light better and the temps are low 80’s up there.
Back to the question though, I think you should look into what environment you would have to have to grow mushrooms. The thing I think you might run into is a situation where you will need something like high humidity for the mushrooms, but want to lower the humidity for your flower room. Maybe if you could section off or build a room inside your greenhouse to keep a separate growing environment, and then exhaust the mushroom room into the rest of the greenhouse.
If you get it to all work, it could be awesome. Mushrooms to eat, CO2 for your plants, even mushroom compost for a top dress!
Forgot to mention the mushrooms in the bags I use are “Blue oyster mushrooms”, and again, they seem to do just fine in my room.