Growing food in an apartment or small space isn’t always easy—especially without an outdoor deck or balcony. Here at our downtown Toronto office, we’re growing delicious oyster mushrooms on the top of our fridge, and they’ve just started to fruit after only two weeks.

We bought our Mushroom Kit from Fun Guy Farms and have been taking care of it by misting it a couple of times per day to maintain a high humidity level. The kit doesn’t like direct sunlight, so the top of the fridge is a perfect spot for it to sit. Once the mushrooms started to grow, we directed the mist round the inside of the bag and onto the block, rather than directly onto the mushrooms (they don’t like getting too wet).

Once we pick the first crop, we’ll let the block rest in its tent for about two weeks before soaking it and starting over. Once we’ve totally depleted the kit, we can reuse it as soil conditioner in our office’s potted plants, or in our gardens. No waste—nothing but delicious mushrooms and happy plants.

We can’t wait to bake them with some olive oil and garlic. Mushrooms provide several vitamins and minerals, as well as protein and essential amino acids. Growing your own mushrooms is a great way to avoid chemical additives and maximize the nutritional value by eating them as fresh as possible.

If you have a backyard, you can grow mushrooms outdoors on a log. One log should produce mushrooms for 4 to 5 years with the proper handling and conditions. After harvesting, leave the log alone for 6 to 8 weeks and then soak it, which will allow for three to four harvests per season. Over its total span, a log should produce about 8 pounds of mushrooms.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Food, Gardening, Toronto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.