I have read many people have grown mushroom patches using oak wood chips, hard woods like oak are preferred by mushrooms. Oyster Mushrooms are a very easy starter Mushroom from what I've been told but I would check out some sites specialized in shroomery before going gun ho. Good site to learn everything thing you need to know. https://www.shroomery.org/11327/Gourmet-Mushrooms-may-contain-outdated-info

I've not grown them myself, but I've read that the wine-cap mushroom (Stropharia rugosoannulata) is a good species for outdoor culture because it can truly perennialize if well-established. And it's supposed to be a tasty edible variety (although once again I can't say from personal experience).

Do update whenever you make progress on your mushroom project--outdoor mushroom culture is something I've always wanted to try, and I'd love to learn some tips from you!

if you grow on logs with dowels, shiitake is your best bet, specially if you have oak logs (though hickory logs also work). One 20 lbs log will give you 10 to 20 lbs of shiitake over five years.

My brother is really into mushroom logs, I can tell you this. If you are going to do it, get yourself the "stop" for the drill bit for the pegs, and do a ton of the logs at one time cus once your setup to do it, its worth just doing a whole bunch of em.

This is a good site for sourcing some fungus. http://www.fungi.com/

This is their webpage for "Plug Spawn" Plug Spawn is what you use for doing Mushroom Logs. http://www.fungi.com/plug-spawn.228.html

We eat a tsp. of ground dried mushroom per person per night in our soup. Having logs will give you some satisfaction, but it will work out your upper body for sure! Over time I have gone to lazier solutions, they are now stacked with lots of space in between, and instead of soaking them in a 55 gallon drum, I sprinkle them for 24 hrs. Less production, but a lot less work.

After having read up on mushroom growing, I decided to start small and try growing oyster mushrooms on cardboard. Cardboard is apparently perfect as a starter because it doesn't contain any nutrients that bacteria can feed off of, so it's not as easy to contaminate. Bought some plug spawn, boiled some cardboard and the mycelium is starting to run 5 days later. So far so good. I will use this cardboard to inoculate a bucket full of cardboard and other goodies like wood chips and maybe coffee grounds. If I can successfully fruit that, I will then use that bucket full of cardboard to start a straw or wood chip bed outside. Any suggestions to help increase likelihood of success welcome.

I've done oysters with coffee grinds before. A trick is to just freeze the grinds after you brew the pot of coffee because the grinds at that point are pretty if not completely sterile. Then when you have enough saved up add your pegs/spawn and let er rip. A couple of my Shiitake logs had flushes from all the cool rainy weather we have been having. Some monsters this year.

Those are some nice looking shrooms. What do you do with them?

your extension service should have some info on the plugs/process etc. it's not cheap, but it won't cost you your first born … and it takes time … and you need to stagger your plugs ….

@J4c11 we eat em.

If considering mushrooms you should have a controlled environment such as bags, logs. For vegetables when weeds come up we can readily id them and remove but that is not usually the case with mushrooms. Spreading spawn on the ground and hoping for the best is risky.

I grow shiitake mushrooms on logs and am fairly confident that the harvest is safe although some have raised concerns. I agree that Houtz should have a general mushroom forum and maybe specialized forums.