Learn all the steps that are taken to get fresh Canadian mushrooms to your table just in time for dinner.

Step 1: Making the Substrate - Gather ingredients

First, the mushroom farmer must prepare the compost or substrate. The quality of the substrate is important for a good crop of mushrooms. The substrate is the mushroom’s food source. Substrate is made from wheat straw or hay, poultry litter, stable bedding and high protein suppliments such as soybean meal and feathermeal.

Step 2: Making the Substrate - Mix the Ingredients

When the ingredients are mixed with water, a nutritionally-balanced growing substance for mushrooms is created. During this process, intense heat is produced (71°C/160°F), which destroys any pests and bacteria. This is called pasteurization.

Step 3: Making the Substrate - Pasteurization

The substrate is pasteurized to guarantee that no bacteria or micro-organisms remain in the substrate before the spawn (fungal seed) is added. Simply stated, mushrooms grow in ‘clean dirt’.

Step 4: Mushroom Spores - What are Mushroom Spores?

Mushrooms grow from microscopic or tiny particles called spores. They do not grow from seeds like other plants. Spores are produced under the cap of the mushroom in the gills. Mushroom farmers use spawn that contains mushroom spores as seed to produce the mushroom crop.

Step 5: Mushroom Spores - Producing Mushroom Spawn

Spawn is made by inoculating or injecting a piece of sterile or clean grain with mushroom spores. Spawn is produced in sterile laboratories. Farmers buy the spawn. Next, the farmers spread the spawn on trays full of substrate, which are in rooms that are climate controlled to promote proper mushroom growth.

Step 6: Mushroom Growth

The substrate is covered with a layer of peat moss. In three weeks pin-like mushrooms appear. One week after the mushrooms start pinning, they are ready to harvest, except for the Portabella mushrooms.

Step 7: Mushroom Harvest

Harvesting is done by hand. Mushrooms are packaged and refrigerated quickly before being shipped to restaurants or food stores. From the moment of harvest, mushrooms are kept at a constant temperature of 2°C/32°F. This temperature is maintained from the farm all the way to the grocery store. This is all done within 24 hours of harvesting.

Step 8: Fresh Mushrooms

The production process from substrate production to market takes about 3 months. Since growth does not depend on weather, Canadian mushroom farmers produce fresh mushrooms all year round.