How long does it take to grow mushrooms?
The answer to this question depends on several things, including the stage of mushroom growing you want to start with, the method of inoculation, the temperature, the kind of substrate you are using, the mushroom species, and the specific mushroom strain. Starting at the very beginning, mushroom spores can take from a few hours to several days to germinate. A culture of mushroom mycelium growing on a petri dish of nutrient agar can take 24 hours (for morels) to upwards of a month (for Agaricus species and Stropharia Rugosa-annulata, for example) to spread across the better part of the plate. Using a chunk of agar culture to inoculate small jar of spawn, it can take 2-4 weeks for the spawn to reach maturity (1-2 weeks if you inoculate the spawn with other spawn). If you start with a quantity of spawn and fresh bulk substrate, it takes about two to three weeks for standard oyster mushrooms to reach fruiting stage, and a similar length of time for Lions Mane (although I prefer to incubate them longer before letting them fruit), whereas the Elm Oyster takes six weeks, and shiitake can take longer. (This all can be accomplished more quickly using liquid inoculation techniques). If you start with a ready-made kit, already grown-through with mushroom mycelium, it can take from a week to a month for mushrooms to form, depending on the species. (Thicker, fleshier mushrooms tend to form and mature more slowly than others.) In general, of course, the more optimum the substrate, the temperature, and any other relevant growing conditions, the faster the mushroom mycelium and the forming mushrooms will grow.
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