Trusted Books About Growing Mushrooms
The internet is full of conflicting ideas about how best to grow mushrooms. Fungi are delicate beings and the risk of contamination is ever-present. Rhysa Ferris, Mad Scientist at Monumental Mushrooms trusts Paul Stamets and Trad Cotter as the most reliable resources for learning to safely and successfully cultivate mushrooms. “I am so grateful for these two people,” Rhysa says. “The information they published was immensely helpful when I was getting started. There weren’t any old timers in town to pick their brains – so I turned to these books.”
Paul Stamets
Paul Stamets is a mycologist, medical researcher, author, and entrepreneur. He is considered the intellectual and industry leader in fungi.
These three books by Paul Stamets have been with Rhysa from the beginning. “Stamets is kind of unparalleled when it comes to organizing processes that will work, especially for so many different species that like so many different environments,” Rhysa says. “These travel from home to the mushroom farm with me in my all-purpose basket and roll around with me on the racks of sawdust blocks. The wisdom shared is scalable. As soon as we upgraded from a small sterilizer to the autoclave – I went back to my textbooks!”
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Third Edition) by Paul Stamets
Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets
The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton
Trad Cotter
Tradd Cotter is a microbiologist, professional mycologist, and retired landscape designer who has been cultivating mushrooms both commercially and experimentally for more than thirty years.
Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation by Tradd Cotter
This book lives in Rhysa’s library and is one she often recommends to students in her mycology classes. “Cotter has a-lot of low-tech, low-cost techniques for mushroom cultivation which is helpful for people wanting to learn how to grow mushrooms at home and he has interesting ideas about how to generate your own medicine,” Rhysa says. “He’s always kind of riding the mycelial wave and finding new ways of doing things.”
The Practice of Growing Mushrooms
Understanding the scientific explanations of how fungi thrive is just the first step. In practice, a mushroom grower’s gentle curiosity coupled with patience are key. Fungi communicate through touch and are highly sensitive to the energy in their surroundings.
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