🍄 Mushroom Farming

What this course covers

12 modules · 72 written lessons · about 52,685 words · 360 quiz questions · 12 capstone projects.

Every lesson has learning objectives, worked numbers, a "do this today" task and a knowledge check. Videos are free material made by other people; the written lessons are the course.

The Business of Mushroom Growing

Mushroom growing turns agricultural waste into a food crop in about a month, on a floor area smaller than a bedroom, without owning land and without waiting for rain. This module covers why that business works, who actually buys mushrooms in African cities, the three different businesses hiding inside the words "mushroom farming", the one number that measures whether you are any good at it, and how to cost a cycle with your own local prices. It also tells you plainly where the evidence runs out, because the price and market data for African mushrooms is thin and this course will not invent it.

1. Why Mushrooms Fit a Small Space
2. Who Actually Buys Mushrooms
3. Three Businesses, Not One
4. Biological Efficiency: The Number That Grades You
5. Costing a Cycle With Your Own Numbers
6. Records, Scaling and Where the Value Really Is

Open module 1 →

What a Mushroom Actually Is

Every practical decision in mushroom growing follows from one biological fact: a mushroom is the fruit of a much larger organism that lives hidden inside the substrate. This module covers what mycelium is, the six stages of the life cycle in the order you manage them, why fungi can digest straw and wood when almost nothing else can, why contamination is a race between organisms rather than a chemical problem, and how to read what the crop is telling you. Get this module right and the rest of the course stops being a list of rules to memorise and becomes a set of decisions you can reason through.

1. A Mushroom Is a Fruit, Not a Plant
2. The Life Cycle in the Order You Manage It
3. You Are Growing Mycelium, Not Mushrooms
4. White Rot: Why Fungi Can Eat Wood
5. Contamination Is a Race, Not a Chemical Problem
6. Reading What the Crop Is Telling You

Open module 2 →

Choosing Your Species

Species choice is the first decision you make and it constrains every decision after it - your substrate, your building, your cooling costs and your buyer. This module makes the case for oyster mushroom as the lead crop for most African growers on the strength of real African trial evidence, explains honestly why button mushroom is a harder crop for lowland tropical Africa and why no African trial data for it exists at all, covers the other species named in the African literature and the evidence gaps around each, and treats wild mushroom identification as the life-safety topic it is.

1. The Decision That Constrains Everything Else
2. Oyster Mushroom: The Crop the Evidence Supports
3. Button Mushroom and the Cooling Problem
4. The Other Species Named in the African Literature
5. Wild Mushrooms: The Life-Safety Lesson
6. Matching the Species to Your Site and Your Buyer

Open module 3 →

Spawn: The Seed of Your Crop

Spawn is living mycelium grown through a clean carrier so you can plant it into a much larger volume of substrate. It is the single input where a hidden failure costs you the whole batch - the substrate, the labour and the growing-room time slot all at once. This module teaches what spawn actually is, the three-tier chain behind every bag you buy, sterile technique without a laboratory, how to judge spawn on arrival, how to multiply your own from a verified-good batch, and the contamination that ends a cycle before it starts.

1. What Spawn Actually Is
2. The Three Tiers and Why Trouble Travels Downstream
3. Sterile Technique Without a Laboratory
4. Buying Spawn: The Honest African Picture
5. Testing Spawn Before You Commit a Batch
6. Making Grain Spawn, and the Contamination That Ruins a Batch

Open module 4 →

Substrates and the C:N Ratio

Substrate choice is the single biggest lever you control, and it is free to test. Across every African trial gathered for this course, the difference between the best and worst substrate inside the same study ran from under 10 percent biological efficiency to over 100 percent. This module explains what a substrate has to do, teaches the carbon to nitrogen idea honestly including the large gaps in the data for African crop residues, sets the moisture targets that matter more day to day than any ratio, and walks through exactly what the Ethiopian, Nigerian and Kenyan trials actually found - including the results that contradict what most growers assume.

1. What the Substrate Actually Has to Do
2. Carbon to Nitrogen: The Idea, and the Gaps
3. Moisture: The Number You Manage Every Day
4. What the Ethiopian and Nigerian Trials Found
5. What the Kenyan Trials Found, and the Bean Straw Result
6. Choosing the Substrate That Is Actually Near You

Open module 5 →

Preparing the Substrate

Between gathering your substrate and spawning it sits the step that decides whether the batch lives: killing enough of the competition without killing the substrate. This module draws the line between sterilisation and pasteurisation and explains exactly what each one kills, sets out every sourced heat method with its temperature and time, teaches the lime treatment that works for growers with no reliable fuel, and walks through chopping, the pre-ferment, cooling and bagging as one continuous practical sequence. It also says plainly where the evidence runs out, because no controlled trial comparing these methods on African substrates under African conditions was retrieved.

1. Sterilise the Grain, Pasteurise the Bulk
2. What Each Method Actually Kills
3. Hot Water, Steam and the Oil Drum
4. Lime: Treatment Without Fuel
5. Chopping, Amending and the Pre-Ferment
6. Cooling, Bagging and Spawning

Open module 6 →

The Growing House

A mushroom house is not a shed with bags in it. It is a machine for holding five things steady: temperature, humidity, fresh air, light and cleanliness. This module shows you what those five targets are, where the sourced numbers come from, how to build a workable house from gum poles and locally cheap walling, and how to run it when you own no thermostat, no humidifier and no CO2 meter. It also tells you honestly where the evidence for African growing-house design simply does not exist yet.

1. The Five Things a Growing House Controls
2. One Room, Two Rooms or Three
3. Building It Cheap and Building It Washable
4. Holding the Temperature Without a Thermostat
5. Humidity, Misting and Wet Caps
6. Fresh Air, Carbon Dioxide and Light

Open module 7 →

Spawn Run to Harvest

This is the production cycle itself: how long colonisation should take, how much spawn to use, what actually triggers pinning, how many flushes a bag gives you and how sharply they taper, and how to calculate biological efficiency correctly so that the number you write in your book is the same number a researcher would write. It ends with a diagnostic method for a batch that goes wrong, because a grower who can read their own failure is a grower who improves.

1. What Happens Inside the Bag
2. How Much Spawn to Use
3. Triggering the Pins
4. Flushes and the Tapering Harvest
5. Biological Efficiency, Properly Defined
6. Reading a Batch That Goes Wrong

Open module 8 →

Pests and Diseases

The things that eat your crop or spoil it before you can sell it: green mould, cobweb, the bubble diseases, bacterial blotch, sciarid and phorid flies, and mites. This module teaches identification and, far more importantly, prevention - because almost every problem here is a hygiene problem, not a chemical problem. It also tells you plainly how thin the African evidence is on this subject, so you know which parts are sourced fact and which parts are your own job to observe.

1. Why Hygiene Is the Real Control
2. Green Mould, the Most Damaging Contaminant
3. Cobweb, Dry Bubble and Wet Bubble
4. Bacterial Blotch and Wet Caps
5. Flies and Mites
6. Chemicals, the Regulator and Your Own Records

Open module 9 →

Harvesting, Handling and Shelf Life

Mushrooms are 85 to 95 percent water, and everything you earn from a crop can be lost between the shelf and the customer. This module covers when to pick, how to pick without bruising, why cooling immediately is the single biggest lever you have over shelf life, how to pack, and how to measure your own real fresh window under your own transport conditions. It ends with the ordinary food-safety hygiene that protects both your customer and your reputation.

1. Knowing When to Pick
2. How to Pick Without Damaging the Crop
3. Cooling, the Biggest Lever You Have
4. Packing for the Journey
5. The Short Fresh Window and How to Sell Inside It
6. Food Safety at Harvest and Handover

Open module 10 →

Drying, Packaging and Food Safety

Drying turns a crop that spoils in days into one that keeps for months and reaches markets fresh mushrooms cannot. This module covers why to dry, the sourced two-stage drying method, how to test and store dried product, and what a label must carry and who decides that. It ends with the most serious material in the whole course: wild mushroom poisoning, why no folk test works, and the single commercial rule that keeps you and your customers alive.

1. Why Dry, and What Drying Is Worth
2. The Two-Stage Drying Method
3. Storing Dried Product Without Losing It
4. Labelling and What the Regulator Decides
5. Wild Mushrooms Can Kill You
6. The Only Safe Commercial Rule

Open module 11 →

Costing, Records and Growing the Business

Everything earlier in this course was about growing mushrooms well. This module is about knowing whether growing them is making you money, which is a different question and needs different work. It covers the six cost categories every mushroom budget must carry, how to calculate break-even per bag and per kilogram with your own figures, the records that actually manage a farm, how to price and sell, when scaling is safe, and how to pull the whole course into one business plan you can act on.

1. What a Growing Unit Actually Costs
2. Break-Even Per Bag and Per Kilogram
3. The Records That Manage the Farm
4. Pricing and Selling What You Grow
5. Scaling Without Breaking What Works
6. Your Business Plan, From Everything You Have Learned

Open module 12 →