The cold blue oyster is one of our most beautiful winter mushrooms and commercial fruiting strain with an extremely low fruiting temperature window. Meaty and sweet, this mushroom is also known for its antiviral properties, so it is a great mushroom to eat and toss into a soup during the colder months. Optimum fruiting occurs when temperatures fall in between 35-50F, which means a cold shock down to a near freeze is needed to produce after a flush has rested. Outdoors it fruits well on oak, sweetgum, poplar, and many other hardwood species. Indoors we recommend fruiting this strain on pasteurized wheat straw and cotton hulls for incredible yields. We like to grow this strain indoors during the winter and turn off the heat to the growing room to save on production costs, so it is a good strain to cultivate seasonally. The colder the temperature the deeper blue the caps are!
| Edibility and Taste | Meaty and Sweet |
| Grows On | Hardwood Logs and Stumps (Outdoors): alder, ash, aspen, beech, birch, elm, maple, oak, sweetgum, box elder, cottonwood, willow, ailanthus, tulip poplar. Pasteurized Straw or Agricultural Byproduct (Indoors) |
| Fruiting Temps | Needs COLD SHOCK. Prefers fruiting 35-50, once baby mushrooms form they can mature quickly at higher temperatures, then cold shocked again every few weeks. |
| Availability | September – March (Year round special request) |