Harvesting, Drying and Long Term Storage
In this article we will discuss the harvest, drying and long term storage process as it pertains to mushrooms. We will cover the signals used to determine the optimal time to harvest, the benefits and drawbacks of different strategies and common questions that come up. Additionally we will cover the drying process, including different ways of drying mushrooms, the benefits and drawbacks of common strategies and some of the questions that come up. Finally we will discuss safely storing mushrooms for use at a later date. We will answer questions like: what are some considerations that should be made when implementing a long term storage plan, and other common questions regarding long-term storage. Although this information may be helpful to anyone interested in mushrooms the examples that we will be using and the basis for this information has largely come from our experience with closed bag growing systems like those used by wonderbags.
When choosing when to harvest your mushrooms you will usually use your most mature mushrooms to act as your signaling mechanism. Because the individual goals of each persons project can vary, there are different harvest strategies that each have different advantages and disadvantages. There are three primary strategies that should be considered:
Early harvesting seeks to produce the most aesthetically pleasing mushrooms. This is accomplished by harvesting before the veil of the mushroom breaks.
A Golden Teacher mushroom with the veil stretching but not yet broken.
While potency and yield may be less than optimal at this point, many growers like the early harvest strategy because it produces very beautiful fruit. Because mushrooms grow so quickly, the window in which to conduct an ideal early harvest can be quite short lasting for just a few hours before the veil actually breaks. because maturity within your canopy can vary a bit you may also find that many of your mushrooms are very immature by the time that your most mature mushroom(s) is at the ideal time for an early harvest. This is totally ok and even though your harvest will not produce as much weight as other harvest strategies if the prettiest mushrooms are what you are going for this is probably a strategy worth trying out. With varieties of mushrooms that drop spores, this strategy will ensure that no potential spore drop affects the aesthetics of your mushrooms.
2. Middle harvests seek to balance aesthetics, yield and potency. This is what we typically recommend and what we believe most growers seek to achieve in their harvests. For this strategy, you wait for the veil to break on your most mature mushrooms and often wait a number of hours (usually from 6-48) to allow your canopy to reach a nice balance of maturity. Each variety has an optimal harvest window that lasts for 12-48 hours after the veil has dropped on the most mature mushroom(s). Somewhere in that window, likely on the front half of it is your perfect middle harvest moment. This is when the caps are open, but not inverted. Before spores have fallen, and before cracks or frays have started to show up on the mushrooms.
3. Late harvest seeks to optimize yield, by sacrificing aesthetics, and settling for very slightly less potency. This is the strategy that we use to evaluate the highest yield potential of a given variety in a specific growth method. For this strategy you are waiting until the last possible point in the fruiting cycle of the mushrooms to do your harvest. The resulting mushrooms are not always very pretty but they are abundant with close to peak potency.
Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages and it is up to you to decide which is best for you.
Drying
First, its important to note that mushrooms can be used fresh. Many people and traditions prefer this method as they tend to taste better, be more potent (and therefore require lower dry equivalent weight for equal effect) and there is a certain virility life to fresh mushrooms that doesn’t always exist with dried mushooms. However the shelf life of fresh mushrooms is very short, the shelf life of dry mushrooms is very long (1-2 years) if stored properly. So it is typically necessary to dry the majority of mushrooms from a harvest for use at a later date. Similar to harvest, their are 3 primary strategies that cultivators use to dry their mushrooms. You can dry mushrooms using a food dehydrator, which is our recommended method, air dry them in a dark and dry place with adequate air-flow and you can use a dessicant to dry them. We will go through each method, discuss the advantages and disadvantages with each strategy and make some recommendations to enhance your success.
Using. dehydrator: You can obtain a food dehydrator from amazon or from many home good/kitchen supply stores for as little as $30. It is essentially a heating element, fan and system of shelves that allow heated air to pass through them to the contents of the system so it really doesn’t need to be anything too fancy. Commercial growers will often convert a small room or closet into a giant food dehydrator by using a heater and fan (or dehumidifier) and some shelf racking. Its also worth mentioning that many air fryers and convection ovens have food dehydrator settings that can be used to dehydrate mushrooms provided they can operate at temperatures below 120F. Essentially after harvesting your mushrooms, we recommend cutting off the smallest part of the stem that has substrate stuck to it, cleaning them off a bit with your fingers, a paper towel or small brush and then placing them onto the shelves of your food dehydrator so that none of the mushrooms are touching. If the mushrooms touch eachother a little bit thats fine and they can be packed quite tightly, because they shrink a bit during drying if they are touching they can sometimes fuse at the contact point. Place these racks inside the food dehydrator and close it. Select the lowest temperature setting, we typically use 95F for our tests but some growers will use temperatures up to 120F. Temperatures higher than this during dehydration can destroy the therapuetic compounds inside the mushrooms and limit their effectiveness as medicine. If you dont have enough room in your dehydrator to dry everything at once it is ok to let them air dry until there is room for them. This method usually takes 24-48 hours to complete making it the fastest method to use. The only disadvantage is that it can require purchasing additional supplies.
Air drying: air drying is the easiest method for drying your mushrooms, essentially after your mushrooms are harvested and cleaned up a bit you just want to spread them on a cookie rack, paper plate or towel so that they are not touching. Place this in an area that is dark and dry with good airflow. If you have a small fan that can blow fresh air over the mushrooms as they dry this will help speed things a long. If you add a small space heater into the area then you have essentially created a food dehydrator. Like with using a food dehydrator you want the temperature to be between 80-120F. Higher temperatures can damage the mushrooms. If the humidity in your home is above 40% it can be very challenging to get the mushrooms dry enough for long term storage. Air drying can also take a really long time. It can take 4-8 days to complete depending on the environment and size and density of the mushrooms you are trying to dry.
Using a desiccant: Using a dessicant is a good way to dry mushrooms in a place where the humidity is too high for traditional air drying and you dont have access to a food dehydrator. Food grade silica gel is the best dessicant to use. Packets of this can be purchased online or at various hardware stores. You will want to line the bottom of a cardboard box, bucket, or glass jar with the silica gel and then place some newspaper on top of the silica gel so that the mushrooms are never in direct contact with the dessicant. Then you can place the mushrooms on a rack, paper plate or directly on the newspaper and close the container. You will need 2x as much silica gel by weight as you have in fresh mushrooms. For example to dry 250g of fresh mushrooms you will want roughly 500g of silica gel. This process can take 48-96 hours to complete. The moisture will transfer from the mushrooms to the silica gel, and then the silica gel can be recharged using heat to remove the moisture from it and reused again and again. The downside to this method is that it is a little more of a complicated set up than the other methods discussed here. It also is sometimes challenging to get the mushrooms completely dry using a dessicant, but it is a good alternative to air drying if the humidity is very high in your home.
Regardless of how you dry your mushrooms you will want to look for “cracker dry consistency” to signal that they are completely dry and ready for long term storage. This is when the mushrooms crack or break under your fingers when you squeeze or press on them as opposed to flexing or squishing at all. Its important to check the top of the cap and the thickest parts of the stem on your largest mushrooms to make this determination. Its also recommended to check your mushrooms again for this consistency 8-24 hours after transferring them into an air tight container for long term storage. If you caught them a little early, then it should be apparent when you check on them as they will have softened and lost the cracker dry consistency. If this happens then you can just give them a little more dry time using your chosen method.
Once your mushrooms are completely dry store them in an airtight container like a plastic bag, glass jar or tupperware container and they will be goo to use at your time of choosing. We recommend storing this container in a cool dark place like a closet, cupboard, drawer or box. We do not recommend storing them in a freezer or refrigerator as there is some research that suggests that storage in cold conditions can diminish the shelf life.
We hope this information has been helpful to you, if you still have additional questions please reach out to your community or email us for answers.