To cultivate Ganoderma mushrooms (also known as Reishi or Lingzhi), you’ll need to prepare a suitable substrate, inoculate it with the mushroom’s mycelia, and maintain the right environment for growth. This typically involves using sawdust or wood logs as the substrate, inoculating it with Ganoderma spawn, and providing a humid, warm environment.
Steps for Cultivating Ganoderma:
- Substrate Preparation:
- Wood Logs: Use hardwood logs, such as oak, beech, or maple, for outdoor cultivation.
- Sawdust: For indoor cultivation, use hardwood sawdust, often mixed with wheat bran, sterilized, and then cooled.
Inoculation:
- Spawning: Inoculate the substrate with Ganoderma spawn, which is a growth of the mushroom’s mycelium. For logs, this involves drilling holes and inserting spawn.
- Seedling: For sawdust substrate, mix the spawn with the substrate, typically at a ratio of 3% dry weight.
Incubation:
- Spawn Run: Incubate the inoculated substrate in a dark, humid environment for the mycelium to colonize the substrate. This can take several weeks or months depending on the method.
- Humidity: Maintain high humidity (90-95%) for the fruiting body to develop.
Fruiting:
- Environment: Once the substrate is colonized, expose the fruiting body to a temperature between 21-27°C and high humidity for fruiting.
- Log Cultivation: For log cultivation, the logs may need to be watered regularly to maintain moisture.
Additional Tips:
- Sterilization: Sterilize the substrate to prevent contamination from other organisms.
- Fruiting Conditions: The fruiting body of Ganoderma typically takes several months to fully develop, so be patient.
- Log Labeling: Label logs with mushroom type and inoculation date for record-keeping.
- Humidity: Maintain high humidity (75-85%) during the incubation and fruiting stages.
- Temperature: Keep the incubation temperature at 28-35°C.
- pH: The pH of the substrate should be between 4-8.