Conifer Tuft
Hypholoma capnoides
Available as
Mother cultures (Petri dish)
Sawdust spawn
Plug spawn
About this strain
One of the few tasty mushrooms that grow on conifer wood. It forms clusters with orange-yellow to ochre caps 2–6 cm across and gills that are greyish at first, later purple-brown. It has a mild flavour and works well in soups, sauces and stews — eat it only cooked.
A good choice for inoculating spruce or pine stumps and logs with plugs. It fruits in autumn and winter, and in mild weather also in early spring, and copes well with cold. Caution: it resembles the poisonous sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare), which has sulphur-yellow or greenish gills and a bitter taste — only pick mushrooms you can identify with certainty.
How to grow it
Preparation
- Substrate
- blocks: conifer sawdust (spruce, pine) with approx. 20% supplement, e.g. bran, sterilised; outdoors: spruce or pine stumps and logs
- Spawn rate
- 1–2% on sterilised sawdust
Growing stages
Spawn run (incubation)
- Temperature
- 21–24°C
- Humidity
- 95–100%
- CO₂
- >5,000 ppm
- Fresh air
- 0–1 per hour
Primordia formation
- Temperature
- 8–15°C
- Humidity
- 95–100%
- Fresh air
- 4–8 per hour
- Light
- 500–1,000 lx
Pinning is triggered by cooling to 8–15°C.
Fruiting
- Temperature
- 10–18°C
- Humidity
- 90–95%
- CO₂
- <1,000 ppm
- Fresh air
- 4–8 per hour
- Light
- 500–1,000 lx
Harvest
Flushes of clusters through the cool season. On stumps the first mushrooms usually appear after approx. 1–2 years, then every year for several seasons.
Please note: these growing parameters bring together the experience of practising growers — a starting point, not a guarantee of results. Every grow has its own substrate, climate and equipment, and even small differences can noticeably change the yield. Adjust these values to your own conditions.
Available products
Prices are set individually — tell us what you need and how much, and we will send a quote including delivery.
Mother cultures (Petri dish)
- 1 pc.
Sawdust spawn
- 5 l
Plug spawn
6 × 30 mm
- 30 pcs.
Want to order this spawn?
Tell us what you need — we will reply with a quote and a shipping date.