StRaw vs sawDust

Where to begin! Well I will tell you that I began growing oyster mushrooms on straw. It was cheap and readily available, and making big straw logs was pretty fun! Not to mention after a quick hot water bath pasteurization and the substrate cooled down you could spawn it right away and let it incubate. That really made it just one big production day and you were off to the races.

Straw logs hanging out in the fruiting room!

All that being said straw is extremely messy and I would find pieces of straw in the pockets of my pants and all over the house. As for sawdust, it was a bit harder to source but once we found it it made things a lot better around the farm! We could fit more sawdust bags into our fruiting room which increased the amount we were able to harvest each week, and the yield as far as weight of the mushrooms had increased. Mixing and bagging the sawdust substrate takes it bit more time than straw logs but the few extra steps making sawdust blocks beats the mess of the straw any day!

White oyster mushrooms growing in supplemented sawdust!

Overall supplemented sawdust blocks take the cake, but sometimes you got to work with what you got. Getting started growing mushrooms it’s not a bad idea to try out the auld straw log but trust me you will eventually be wanting to make sawdust blocks!