How to Grow the Wine Cap Mushroom

Stropharia rugoso-annulata

King stropharia, or the wine cap mushroom takes its name from the rich wine like coloring of the cap in its younger button state. As it gets larger, it can lighten in cap color becoming a golden yellowish brown with age. The gills are a pale gray when young, changing to a purplish gray, and later on in life a purplish black. The stipe or stem is whitish when young, and yellows with age. This species is native to north east North America.

King stropharia has a delicious mild potato cooked in a red wine flavor, and the stem has an asparagus-like texture. Garden Giants are extremely low in sodium and calories, as well as fat and cholesterol free. They also contain iron, protein and calcium, making them a healthy addition to your meal.

Benefits of King Stropharia in Your Garden

• Garden giants break down hardwood chips, and other substrates. By doing this, they enrich and build a rich layer of soil to nurture plants in the garden.
• They attract earth worms. Earth worms love the smell of the sweet king stropharia mycelium. They will help aerating the soil in that area and deposit worm castings, which are great for your plants.
• The mycelium will help reduce the damage caused to the root system, when the area is infested with nematodes. Mycelium will capture and destroy the nematodes.

TIP: Word of caution, once the earth worms learn where the mycelium is, they will come for it, so moving the bed each year to another location might be a good idea, if you are looking to eat mushrooms.

King stropharia comes in form of  sawdust spawn, weighing approximately 5lb and it will inoculate a cubic yard of wood chips or 1 square bale of wheat straw. They do prefer to have bright, but indirect sun to partial sun, so make sure that you’re not placing the bed in bright full sun. A good place for these would be at a tree line, tucked behind a garden shed, next to a retainer wall or just about anywhere with the correct light.

Growing  the Garden Giant on Wood Chip 

What You Will Need

• Fresh (up to two months) hardwood chips – You can either make your own, check craigslist, check with your local arborist, with your power company, or a local mill
• Spawn – you can get spawn here
• Cardboard – take off all plastic tape, and or metal
• Straw or leaves
• Water

Method

Step 1
Prepare an area by creating a rectangle hardwood log frame for the bed (optional), you can use logs that are inoculated with other strains such as Reishi! Try to use logs that are around 6-8” in diameter. Locate the site in a shady area or between rows of vegetable plants in the spring.

Step 2
Cover the entire floor of the mushroom garden with cardboard from flattened boxes. Water the cardboard until it is saturated. Sprinkle spawn lightly  onto the cardboard over the entire surface. 

Step 3
Add 3” of fresh hardwood chips and sprinkle more spawn on top. Pack the surface to remove any air pockets. Sprinkle lightly with enough water to moisten the chips.

Step 4
Cover with another layer of cardboard. Tear the cardboard, so that the moisture can make it to the bottom layer. You can also use a thin layer of newspaper. Sprinkle another layer of spawn onto the cardboard, covering the entire surface.

Step 5
Add a second 3” layer of fresh hardwood chips or lawn compost and mix it generously with sawdust spawn. Pack the surface to remove any air pockets. Sprinkle lightly with enough water to moisten the chips.

Step 6
Cover with straw or leaves to a depth of 1-2” to help preserve moisture and to shade the chips.

TIP: Do not make your bed deeper than two feet. You don’t want the mycelium to become anaerobic and die.

Step 7
Water everyday for the first week, every other day for the 2nd and 4th week. Water once a month thereafter, unless it receives sufficient rain. After 4-8 months the mushroom mycelium, or filaments of the fungus will spread throughout the chips and penetrate the surrounding soil, distributing nutrients to nearby plants. Check back on your patch often. Mushrooms grow extremely fast once they start fruiting, you don’t want to miss them! Your patch may fruit several times a year.

Growing the Garden Giant on Straw 

What You Will Need

• Straw from a cereal grain – You can get this locally from a farmer, a feed store, or big stores like Home Depot and Lowes
• Spawn
• Cardboard – take off all plastic tape, and or metal
• Straw or leaves
• Water

Method

Follow same instructions for the woodchips, but substitute woodchips for presoaked straw in all steps.

TIP: This method will fruit much faster, because straw is not as dense as woodchips.

Growing the Garden Giant in a Container 

This is a great method for those who want to evade earth worms, or don’t have enough space to grow outdoors.

What You Will Need

• Presoaked straw or woodchips, or both. it is OK to mix these two substrates
• Container: any type of plastic container (will need drainage holes in the bottom), a carboard box lined with a trashbag (will need drainage holes in the bottom), black nursery pots (already has holes :))
• Spawn
• Water
• Potting soil, and a handful of your native soil

Method

Step 1
Presoak the substrate the day before.

Step 2
Drain the substrate.

Step 3
Mix the spawn with the substrate really well.

Step 4
Fill your container with the spawned substrate. Pack it well. Leave two inches at the top for potting soil layer.

Step 5
Water gently so you are not washing the spawn down to the bottom of the container. Water everyday for the first week, every other day for the 2nd and 4th week. Water once a week after that. 

Step 6
After a few weeks, the whole container should be colonized. You will see stringy, filamentous mycelium growing all through out the container. Try not do disturb it much. At this point, you will case it.

Why do we need this casing? Without it, the mushrooms will not fruit. This is why you don’t see king stropharia growing on logs. They are terrestrial mushrooms. Add the handful of your native soil to the casing (just in case the potting soil was sterile, not containing microbes),  and wet it down really well. Add 1-2 inches of the potting soil to cover the surface.

Step 7
Water. You don’t want this layer drying out. To keep it humid, you may even cover the whole area with a humidity tent, which is a fancy word for a see-through plastic bag with holes in it.

Step 8 (Optional)
Seed your whole container with some wheatgrass, to create a functional, and pretty microclimate and habitat for mushroom formation. Planting wheatgrass will elevate oxygen, and provide a dewy hideout for the baby mushrooms.

Interplanting King Stropharia in an Existing Garden

You can also interplant the Garden Giant with your existing plants. You would mostly use the same process that you would if you were building a bed exclusively for the wine caps except you would do it around your plants. We use this method around our blue berries each year. Instead of weed eating around them, we just cover the area with cardboard, and build a mushroom bed on top of it. You are getting rid of the grass, growing mushrooms, and bringing in extra nutrition for the blueberry bushes. Win win situation all around.

Fruiting, Picking and Storing

Mist the mushrooms as they appear to prevent drying. It is critical that the baby mushrooms never dry out. As the mushrooms enlarge, you need to mist occasionally, but not all the time. Excessive watering can attract bacteria that rot and decay the mushrooms.

Mushrooms generally double in size every day. Pick just as the mushrooms start to slow or stop doubling in size, and do not water before picking. Pick the mushrooms in a button stage. This way you will beat the maggots to them, and the stems will not be wormy. The deeper you make your bed, the bigger those buttons will be.

What’s Next

When your King stropharia bed is established, you can add a new layer of wood chips to it once a year in the fall, after it fruits, to feed the mycelium and keep the bed fruiting. You can also take some of the colonized wood chips from your established bed, and use it to inoculate a new bed.

And now for the recipe.

King Stropharia Cous Cous Salad with Ginger and Orange

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked and cooled cous cous – I had pearl, so I used that
• Fresh herbs – I used parsley and some basil
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger minced – you can add more if you love ginger
• 2-3 oranges – supremed
• 1lb king stropharia – stems removed and sliced
• Olive oil

Method

• Get your saute pan nice and hot.  Add your oil and sliced mushrooms. I usually throw in some thyme with them.
• Turn you heat down to medium and season with salt and pepper and cook well and set aside to cool.
• Before you supreme the oranges, zest one of them into the cous cous.
• To supreme an orange, you will cut off both ends, then cut the rest of the rind off making sure that you remove all of it. Once you have removed the rind you will cut your segments in between the white membranes.
• Mix together all your ingredients. Toss with olive oil, and season to taste.

Always be sure to correctly identify your mushrooms before consuming!