When you start with the cultivation of mushrooms at home, it is important to know about the lifecycle of the mushroom.To successfully cultivate your own mushrooms at home, it is necessary to have an insight into the lifecycle of the mushroom.
To most people the mushroom exists of a stem and a cap. What these people do not realize, is that there’s an entire network of so-called mycelium beneath the mushroom. Mycelium is a tight network of cells under the ground. This mycelium underground is actually the plant of which the mushrooms are the fruits.
During its life course the mycelium has only one goal: The existing of the species. The mycelium does so by growing mushrooms. These mushrooms produce spores and drop these when they reach adulthood.
The lifecycle: 
- a mature mushroom drops spores
- spores fall on the ground – spores germinate
- they meet compatible spores
- mycelium originates – pinheads originate
- primordia formation – growth mushroom – mature, drops spores
- circle completed
In general for the cultivator this means to:
- obtain spores
- make substrate
- inoculation
- incubation
- place them into fruiting conditions
- pinhead formation
- growth mushroom
- make a spore print