Table of Contents
To start off this topic, all mushrooms grow at different speeds. Generally, mushrooms that people often grow at home can grow quicker than mushrooms in nature. This is because of the controlled environment of a home grow. We’re here to answer, fundamentally, how long does it take for mushrooms to grow?
There are various factors that can contribute to how fast a mushroom grows. Certain aspects like water content, fresh air exchange, and temperature can contribute greatly to grow speed.
As a final introductory point, there are different components to the mushroom lifecycle. Sometimes, the initial growing phases can be slow while the fruiting stage can be fast.
Continue with our article here for a full breakdown.
Overview: How long does it take for mushrooms to grow?
Gourmet mushrooms like Oyster mushrooms, Portobello mushrooms, and Button mushrooms will take about 4-6 full weeks to grow.
This is general timeline of mushroom grow speeds for the mushrooms that people commonly grow at home. As said in the introduction, there are many factors that contribute to this timeline.
If you grow your mushrooms in a room that has a lower temperature than the mushrooms prefer, such as 65F (which is quite cold for mushrooms), then your mushrooms will grow slowly. This is why it is always optimal to fully research the mushrooms you plan to grow in order to optimize conditions.
Another common reason for slow growth is if you have a very large mushroom substrate. It can take more time for your mushroom mycelium to grow and colonize the growing medium if it’s large. The colonization process of a large mushroom grow bag can take up to 3-4 weeks by itself!
Secondly, if you are misting your mushrooms irregularly in the fruiting stage, this can also cause the mushrooms to grow much slower. Misting is a trigger for growth for mushrooms. This is why it’s crucial to keep up misting your mushrooms at least twice a day.
One final factor to consider is growing mushrooms inside versus outside. Outside, there are more factors such as rain and temperature swings. These factors can impact your mushroom growing speed positively or negatively.
We will cover how you can speed up your mushroom growing later in this post.
Grow speed of mushrooms in nature
You may be wondering how long mushrooms can take to grow in nature, and this is a different type of question than gourmet mushrooms.
In nature, the length of grow time is generally much longer.
It’s important to note that mushrooms in nature have very different lifecycles. Some mushrooms only grow in the spring, while some mushrooms only grow every few years. These differences play into mushroom grow speed greatly.
There are some mushrooms that take months, even years to grow fruits or masses! A great example of this is the Chaga mushroom. This is a mushroom that requires very intensive conditions to grow properly, and even then it takes months to colonize and even more time to sprout the mass.
This makes many mushrooms in nature quite rare. If some mushrooms in nature need very special conditions and take years to form, then they are very hard to find.
Then again, there are certain mushrooms you can find in the woods that reliably grow every single spring. These are mushrooms like common brown mushrooms. Keep in mind you must be a mushroom expert if you plan to consume mushrooms from nature.
If you are interested in finding and consuming mushrooms in nature, we recommend browsing Google and Wikipedia for valuable resources on mushroom hunting.
What is the mushroom lifecycle?
A very important thing to understand when judging mushroom growing speed is the entire mushroom grow cycle.
We will cover the mushroom lifecycle for basic mushrooms that grow into a step and cap in this explanation.
In nature, the mushroom cycle starts with spores find their way into a tree or the soil, depending on which environment the mushroom spawns well in. The mushroom spores will begin to colonize the environment. Colonization can take a number of weeks at home or in nature. Eventually a white-webby looking growth will form. See this image here:
This material can often look like white mold, but it’s actually the appearance of mushrooms taking over a substrate (a substrate is the word for the medium that a mushroom colonizes).
Once the colonization process is complete, and the mushroom mycelium has sufficiently taken over the material that it is growing in, the fruiting process can begin.
The completion of the colonization process is when the mycelium has fully colonized the medium entirely, consuming it in the white webby material.
The fruiting process begins is when mushrooms grow out of the fully colonized mycelium. This is the part of the mushroom cycle that most people know visually from nature and other scenarios.
As the mushroom grows out of the mycelium, it will start off small but slowly grow in size. As it grows bigger, the cap of the mushroom also grows large. Once the mushroom cap is sufficiently large, it will open the veil underneath it and this contains spores. The spores will flow out of the cap, restarting the grow cycle from the beginning.
Once the mushrooms have released their spores, they will slowly begin to dry out and die. The mushroom mycelium may even fruit more mushrooms again to spread more spores.
This is the completed basics of the mushroom process.
Why are my mushrooms growing slowly?
If you’re growing basic gourmet mushrooms at home and they are taking a long time to grow, let’s look at a few reasons for why this may be.
Low grow room temperature
Mushrooms grow quite slowly when they are growing in colder conditions than they prefer. This is like many other things in nature. Plants, just like mushrooms, also grow slower in colder conditions. They will still grow, but the entire lifecycle process will go slower when the mushroom is trying to grow in 50F-65F.
Low temperatures is the most common issue with the mushroom grow cycle going slowly!
Substrate too dense
If your mushroom substrate has very little air pockets inside of it, this can also cause your mushrooms to grow slowly. This is why growers use ingredients to their mushroom substrate such as vermiculite which allows for small air pockets in the substrate. Fresh air exchange and fresh air access is important to gourmet mushroom growth.
Poor misting schedule
When you enter the fruiting stage of your mushroom growing, it’s important to start a very strong misting schedule immediately.
When your mushrooms aren’t receiving enough water, they will grow slower and they will grow smaller. They will grow quickly and strongly if you keep up a 2-3 times-per-day misting schedule.
Poor Lighting
Not all mushrooms require light in general, or even to begin the fruiting process, but many benefit from it. If you want to optimize your grow setup, then we recommend introducing a regular source of light especially in the fruiting stage.
This can be done using a basic LED light above the mushrooms. This can also be done using natural light. A manual light source is usually only needed if you are growing somewhere dark such as a basement.
Sometimes, mushrooms are just slow!
Keep in mind, mushrooms may just need more time than you expect. Be patient when it comes to growing mushrooms, especially if you are a beginner. In our experience, the colonization process of the mushroom substrate can be unexpectedly slow.
Read more about the mushroom growing process in our post here.
How can I speed up my mushroom growing?
If you want to increase the speed of your mushroom growing, then follow the above steps carefully. Make sure to keep the conditions of your mushroom grow area at a stable, warm temperature. The best temperature for growing mushrooms around the high 60F to mid 70F range. This represents an ideal temperature for mushroom growth at all stages.
Secondly, we will emphasize again, make sure the water content for your mushrooms is strong. Keep misting your mushrooms on a regular schedule, even if it seems like mushrooms are growing slow!
Lastly, we also recommend incorporating light into your growing systems. This can help the fruiting process and it can help trigger mushrooms to grow big and strong when the fruiting begins.
When to harvest mushrooms?
So, you’ve monitored how long it takes mushrooms to grow and you’re looking at your own grow critically. You may be wondering when the perfect time is to harvest your mushrooms.
There is a very specific window in which harvesting your mushrooms is best. Harvest your mushrooms right before or right after the veil underneath the cap has opened.
This means you are harvesting your mushrooms right before the spores start to come out of the mushrooms. This is the ideal length and strength of your mushrooms, so be careful.
If you wait too long, your mushrooms will begin to spread spores everywhere all over your mushrooms, and this is not an ideal outcome.
Conclusion
Recapping, how long does it take for mushrooms to grow? For most gourmet mushrooms, you can expect about 4-6 weeks from start to finish.
If you’re a new grower, you should allocate more time to this process as you learn the ropes and optimize your grow setup and conditions.
Secondly, always research resources such as Google and Wikipedia, as well as other mushroom growing websites in order to grow your mushrooms efficiently. This will allow you to be successful very early in your mushroom growing career!
