How to Plant, Grow, and Care for Reishi Mushrooms

For over 2000 years, Ganoderma lucidum, a reishi mushroom, has been prized for its restorative properties. A highly revered medicinal mushroom, reishi is one of only a handful of herbs that are believed to nourish all of the three treasures in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Jing, Chi, and Shen. Shen is our spirit, our higher self, and is the key to living a peaceful life. If I could only have one mushroom, edible or medicinal, it would be reishi. Its emphasis is on supporting your inner being, your spirit. 

In this article, I’ll share expert tips on how to successfully grow beautiful reishi mushrooms, which thrive in a variety of environments – from containers to companion planting in your veggie garden. You’ll learn the key factors that influence reishi’s growth, the different methods to get you from spawn to harvest, and how to avoid common pitfalls along the way.

So if you’re ready to enter the exclusive ranks of reishi growers, read on! With a bit of know-how and care, you’ll soon be enjoying your own home-grown “mushrooms of immortality.”

What Is It?

The most extensively studied and used reishi mushroom is Ganoderma lucidum. It is one of six Ganoderma species commonly called reishi. In China, it is known as “Lingzhi,” which means divine mushroom. You can find reishi in the Ancient Chinese Herbal Encyclopedia. 

Reishi’s use goes beyond tinctures and teas. The Artist Conk, Ganoderma applanatum, is a reishi mushroom that is used as a drawing medium. The antler growth structure of reishi is used in crafts as jewelry trees and unique sculptures.

There are recipes for making paper using reishi and much of the vegan mushroom “leather” is made using reishi mycelium. It is my favorite because the versatility of this mushroom allows for so much experimentation. In tea, it can be combined with other herbs from your herbal tea garden to potentiate the benefits. I like reishi with holy basil for gentle stress release or with chamomile to wind down and ground yourself at the end of the day.

Characteristics

Reishi mushrooms are a type of polypore fungus, meaning they have a woody texture and grow shelf-life structures called conks. These conks are typically kidney-shaped with a shiny red, orange, and yellow surface.

Wild reishi are perennials, coming back year after year, and are known for their medicinal properties and associated symbolism of longevity. When grown at home from a kit, you can expect one or two fruitings with a small one to two-week dormant period in between each growth cycle. 

Native Area

Several different species of the Ganoderma genus are collectively known as reishi mushrooms. Ganoderma lucidum, the species found in many tinctures and teas, is native to hot and humid locations in Asia, but can also be found in Europe.

In the United States, there are several species of reishi: Ganoderma curtisii, commonly found in the southeastern U.S.; Ganoderma sessile, which is prevalent in eastern North America; Ganoderma tsugae, which grows on hemlock; and Ganoderma oregonense, found in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. These wood-decaying fungi play a crucial role in a forest ecosystem by helping to decompose woody materials, contributing to nutrient cycling. 

How to Grow

As with most edible and medicinal mushrooms, growing reishi has different difficulty levels. I am going to go over two ways to grow them. The first is with a kit, and the second method is using grain spawn. I will not go over how to create grain spawn as it’s too advanced for the scope of this article.

But if you are interested, there are many online tutorials and places to purchase liquid culture or specialty genetics. It may seem out of order, but I will first review growing from a kit. This is because it involves the least number of steps and no specialty equipment. 

Growing From a Kit

When you order a reishi kit, there are several ways to grow it. The trickiest thing to get right is often the water and the airflow. Simply put, with many mushrooms, the correct airflow will dry them out. First, do not remove the sawdust mushroom block from the plastic.

You might be tempted to build a little tent around your mushroom block to keep the humidity up, but then – egads! – the airflow is too low, leaving your mushrooms to atrophy from too much CO2. The reishi mushroom is blessed to be able to handle both high CO2 and low CO2, so there is a certain amount of flexibility, and in this way, it is a bit easier and a good mushroom for a beginner. 

So, with this in mind, pull the top of the bag to create a little air pocket zone above the sawdust block and slice a few small airholes in this pocket zone. The mushrooms will grow up into this little pocket, and you can fully open it when you’re ready to harvest. The block stays nice and humid because you never take it out of the bag or open it fully until harvest, so it’s never exposed to direct air.

You’ve created a nice humid environment, but the CO2 is fairly high because mushrooms expel CO2 like humans. And since you haven’t fully opened the bag, very little air exchange is happening. This high CO2 is why the mushrooms grow in an antler shape instead of the large round conks. They are trying to escape all that excess carbon dioxide, leading them to grow tall and thin. 

Option 1: Growing Conks from a Kit

But what if you want conks?? Not to worry. Take your kit; do not remove the block from the plastic bag that it is in. 

The sawdust block never dries because you haven’t removed it from the plastic. The reishi will grow as large conks because they are growing out and expanding into all the fresh air. 

Option 2: Bury the Kit

Now, you can do one really fun thing with a reishi kit. Reishi blocks love to be buried. One of the most common cultivation techniques is to innoculate logs, bury them, and then wait for the mushrooms to emerge from the soil. And one of my favorite ways to grow reishi from a kit is simply to bury it. You know how earlier I said, never remove it from the bag … well, in this case, remove it from the bag.

Option 3: Growing From Grain Spawn

Growing reishi from grain spawn is more difficult than growing from a kit and will require some equipment. It is very rewarding, and once you have successfully done it, you can use these techniques to grow almost all wood-loving mushrooms, including lion’s mane and king trumpet:

Light

Reishi mushrooms need very little light, and, in fact, direct sunlight is harmful. It will scorch their leading white edge and kill the mushroom. They prefer dappled shade or indirect light.

The light inside your house is perfect. The shade found at the forest’s edge or the dappled sunlight provided by vigorous garden plants, like tomatoes, is ideal as well. If you choose to grow them in your garden, do so at the base of larger plants. 

Temperature and Humidity

Reishi mushrooms thrive in warm, humid conditions, ideally between 70-80°F (21-27°C) with a relative humidity of 85-95%. To create the perfect microclimate, you can mist your growing area regularly, use a humidity tent, or opt for natural methods like companion planting with water-loving veggies that create shade and boost local humidity.

When buried, the conks will grow low and very near the ground, rarely getting above six inches. Using a living mulch, like white Dutch clover, will create the perfect humid zone for the mushrooms. Or, if you prefer, straw mulch also creates a moisture-rich microclimate.  

Indoors, use a low-speed fan to keep air circulating, especially if you are growing shelves of mushrooms.

Fertilizing

Add a food source when you are in initial production, making your blocks. Do this before sterilization and adding spawn. With plants, fertilizer acts as catalysts that assist the plant in growing, but fertilizer is not the plant’s food. The soil, water, and sun are food sources. With mushrooms, the nutrients are the food source. Usually, this is sawdust with an added nitrogen source, like soybean hulls. 

If you are in mushroom growing circles that focus on growing gourmet or medical mushrooms instead of dung-loving mushrooms, you will come across what is known as “master’s mix.” This is a 50/50 mix (by weight) of hardwood sawdust pellets and soybean hulls, which also come pelletized.

Another common way of making blocks is to use hardwood sawdust and add wheat bran. How much bran? That depends on your purpose, time frame, and mushroom strain. Typically, you use 5-15% wheat bran (by weight). The higher the percentage of bran, the higher the nitrogen, the higher the risk of contamination. 

In this way, it is similar to plants, where higher nitrogen fertilizer might give you vigorous growth but also increase your pest pressure. Pull back on your nitrogen if you have been trying to make blocks yourself and keep getting contaminated. If you make a master’s mix, change the ratio to 65/35, sawdust to soybean hulls. Or if you are using wheat bran, try 10% or even 5%. As a hobbyist or small farm, the speed you gain from increasing the nitrogen percentage is often lost in higher contamination rates.  

Harvesting and Storage

When to Harvest

It can take up to two months for a reishi fruitbody to fully mature after you initiate fruiting. You’ll know when your reishi is ready to harvest because the white leading edge will become thin and lose the white color. Keep in mind that a fully mature reishi mushroom will drop lots of spores and will leave a light brown dusting everywhere. The spores can create quite a mess if you are growing inside.

I highly recommend harvesting early unless you enjoy cleaning. If you are growing outside, cleaning isn’t a concern. Harvest early to avoid this as soon as you first see spores. Even though they drop from the bottom of the mushroom, you may first notice them on the cap. The cap will lose its shiny luster, and if you wipe your fingers across it, your fingertip will color a reddish-brown from the spore transfer. 

How to Harvest and Store

To harvest, cut the fruit off at the base, which is attached to the sawdust block. Often, you can pull it off with a gentle tug, but if not, use pruning shears. If you are slicing your reishi mushrooms for use in tinctures and teas, slice right after harvest. If you let them fully dry, they will be rock-hard and very difficult to slice. After slicing, place them in the sun or a food dehydrator to dry.

You can also place them on a rack with a fan, but it will be a slower process. Make sure they are fully dry before storing. After drying, store them in glass jars. Date the jars and, like other dried herbs, use them within 2 years. 

Consider sun-drying! Mushrooms produce Vitamin D when sun-dried and are the only non-animal food product with substantial amounts of bioavailable vitamin D.

Common Problems

The most common problem new mushroom growers face is contamination, typically Trichoderma. You may be familiar Trichoderma as it’s often sold as a soil additive and can be beneficial in gardens. But what is it? It is an opportunistic fungi that includes many species. Some are very aggressive.

For mushroom cultivators, it is a menace. It appears as a green mold that outcompetes the mushroom you are trying to cultivate. It is so aggressive that once you see it, it’s over, folks. Toss in the towel. You can always begin again. It doesn’t just work by growing faster and outcompeting your chosen mushroom species. Trichoderma produces enzymes that degrade the cell walls of other fungi, including mushroom mycelium, inhibiting growth. 

Proper sterilization is the best way to prevent Trichoderma contamination. Once your mycelium is fully established, i.e., your fruiting block is white and fully colonized, you don’t need to worry about it. This is a problem in the beginning stages of growth when your mycelium is young and still getting established.

If you start with a fruiting kit, this part is already done. The company that you purchased it from likely has a commercial autoclave and a professional lab environment where everything is produced, leaving you with a clean block. 

Frequently Asked Questions