How to grow mushrooms

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By Day Two of Vision Group’s Harvest Money Expo 2025, it was evident that training workshops are one of the main attractions of the event. One of the trainings that filled the room and met the audience’s expectations was the mushroom growing and value addition workshop.

“When I see you come for training, I am happy that mushroom growing is on the rise,” said Abel Kiddu, the managing director of African Mushroom Growers (U) Ltd.

He painstakingly explained what it takes to grow mushrooms, highlighting the following steps:

1. Preparing a substrate, which is basically a mixture of cotton husks, water, and lime. He, however, added that other materials are used to make a substrate, such as coffee husks, sorghum, rice straw, and other agricultural wastes. Kiddu said cotton husks are the best because they give the best yield. “If you have 100 kgs of cotton husks, you will get 150 kgs of fresh mushrooms. Yet if you used 100 kgs of coffee husks, you’d get 40 kgs of mushroom,” he said.
2. Sterilisation, where the cotton husks are boiled to remove or kill any disease-causing contamination.
3. After sterilising, it is time to plant the spawn in the incubation house for about 10 days. “When it turns purely white, which we call colonization, it means the garden is a success.
4. Grow house: following colonisation, the mushroom garden is then taken to the grow house. “The grow house should be well-aerated because mushrooms need oxygen to survive. The house has to have spaces to allow air to flow in and out,” he said. Kiddu further explained that a grow house should be made out of papyrus, a polythene bag, eucalyptus, and poles. The papyrus allows in enough light, but not the glare of the sun, cautioned Kiddu.

In tandem with the expo theme, Farming as a Business: Value Addition and Cooperatives, Kiddu encouraged attendees to grow mushrooms on a commercial scale. “A grow house should be 20 by 20 ft so that it can have 1000 gardens. In order for you to start a business as a commercial grower,” he said.

(Credit: Eddie Ssejjoba)

(Credit: Eddie Ssejjoba)

Sponsored by aBi, Kingdom of Netherlands, Uganda Development Corporation, Pepsi, Bella Wine, Tunga Nutrition, and Engsol, the expo was a buffet of farming knowledge, served up in a fun setup that lit up Namboole and left many yearning for more.