Best Humidifier for Growing Mushrooms

It’s an amateur chef’s dream to have their own mushroom supply.

Morels thump unami power into a dish, and shiitake mushrooms are both delicious and medically beneficial with high concentrations of manganese (one of the most powerful antioxidants) and Riboflavin. Lion’s Mane, Oyster mushrooms and Enoki also do well grown from home, even by the greenest of gardeners.

But you don’t need to be told the upside of growing your own, of course. It just happens to be a topic which makes us a touch rhapsodic.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because your crop is reaching the peak of the growing cycle and you’re looking to capitalize on their lush potential.

Perhaps you’re looking to upgrade from the humble but simple and durable spray bottle, which is fabulous if you’re only dealing with a small or experimental crop. As your shroom empire grows, your means of controlling ambient relative humidity has to grow in sophistication.

Or maybe you want to move your crop somewhere while sustaining that high moisture rate. Airing cupboards, garages and basements can be great places to stash your fruiting chambers, but they’re probably not so hospitable for you.

Specialized pastimes require specialized products, so we’ve looked at the best five humidifiers to keep your crop moist but not droplet-spotted. Following that is a small buyer’s guide which explains how the different types of humidifier operate, and what to take into account when choosing the ideal product. Finally, we’ve answered a few commonly asked questions.

Need to get moving? Here’s our top five.

Summary of reviews

Product name	Water capacity (size)	Color	Dimensions (inches)	Product link
Homasy Cool 2.2L Quiet Ultrasonic Easy-to-Clean Air Humidifier	5 Gallons	white	23 x 14 x 11 inches	Check Price
Miroco Cool Mist Humidifier, 26dB Ultra Quiet, 6L Ultrasonic Humidifiers	50 pints	white	15.4 x 11 x 24.3 inches	Check Price
Crane Drop Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier	30 Pints	white	12.2 x 8.2 x 17.3 inches	Check Price
Honeywell Easy to Care Cool Mist Humidifier HCM-710	70 Pints	white	16.6 x 11 x 24.3 inches	Check Price
Elechomes Warm and Cool Mist Humidifiers	4 gallons	white	12.2 x 8.2 x 18.9 inches	Check Price

Homasy Cool 2.2L Quiet Ultrasonic Easy-to-Clean Air Humidifier

This is a dinky little humidifier for a small room, which couldn’t be easier to use, refill or clean out. If you’re growing your mushroom crop in a shady corner of a den or alcove in your room, then just sit this alongside and let it do its misty thing.

It’s the most compact unit in this selection with just a 2.2L tank (0.58 gallons) with a 360° rotating nozzle for even ambient moisture and an adjustable dial for you to vary the humidity level to your requirements. It’s designed to run up to 24 hours continuously, and then the device will engage auto shut-off mode.

This ultrasonic vaporizer is pretty much subsonic as well. At 28 decibels (db), it’s quieter than a peace-loving mosquito. To put the noise level into context, it’s on a level with whispering.

Weighing at just 2.5lb unloaded, it’s not going to weigh down a shelf, even when filled with water.

 

Miroco Cool Mist Humidifier, 26dB Ultra Quiet, 6L Ultrasonic Humidifiers

This humidifier has quite a few things in common with the Homasy, so we’ll just gallop through those first: it has an auto shut-off feature, a 360° rotating nozzle, and it’s very easy to clean with its 90mm water inlet. There’s no problem getting your hand in there with a cloth for a thorough anti-bacterial wipe-down.

The key difference is in size. With a 6L (1.58 gallon) tank, this can run continuously for between 20 and 60 hours depending upon your chosen humidity setting. It’ll ensure even, ambient moisture in rooms up to 430sq ft/40m2. If you’ve dedicated a room in your home to growing your crop, then this is the best option.

Even though this is a much larger unit with a greater humidifying capacity, it’s even quieter than the Homasy. Not possible? Think of that peace-loving mosquito, and then imagine his equally peaceful, library-dwelling cousin.

Not that this will interest your mushrooms in particular, but there is a nice night light you can turn on. It’s subtle: more like a glowing accent than any real form of useful illumination, but enough to guide you across the room to change the settings if need be.

The only note of caution we have with the Miroco is that the accompanying instructions for placing the unit have seemed fussy to some customers. It must be 2 feet off the ground, definitely not on carpet and ideally not on metallic or wooden surfaces.

This doesn’t leave that many alternatives in a normal home. Having said that, if you know this in advance, then you can figure out options for the best spot in advance. Some have balanced it on a stool with an aerated platform to keep the ventilation going.

 

Crane Drop Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier

This is the third of our ultrasonic humidifiers. It’s the middle ranker in terms of the size of the water reservoir, but it’s also powerful, humidifying rooms up to 500sq ft. It’s one of Amazon’s best selling counter-top humidifiers and comes in six designs.

You could lose the gray one among your mushrooms, but the orange, green and pink units will stand out, very vividly, in any setting. If you want something a touch avant garde, this could be the design for you.

A significant distinguishing feature is that it’s made with anti-microbial material, which is a definite bonus for the ongoing health of your spores and fruits, and the Crane Store takes unit hygiene seriously enough to produce quite a bit of educational material on the best and easiest ways to clean it.

They also provide an optional extra, which is the demineralization filter for areas with hard water. You can screw this directly into the tank.

Otherwise, the features will be very familiar by now. You can vary the speed of the mist production, adjust the 360 nozzle, leave it to run 24-hours at a go and trust that it’ll shut off when the water levels are low.

 

Honeywell Easy to Care Cool Mist Humidifier HCM-710

This humidifier is of a different design to the previous three. While those were ultrasonic (fuller operating details to follow in the buyer’s guide), this is a wicking humidifier. It works by drawing water from the unit into an absorbent wick and then aerating that moisture upwards into the air with the use of a fan.

It’s easy to fill (from the top) and easy to clean, featuring a wicking filter treated with protec antimicrobial solution to inhibit mold growth. The filter also captures minerals from the water and doesn’t eject white dust, which is good news for anyone with large but finely meshed aircon vents in the same location.

It runs for up to 36 hours on a single 1gallon filling, which makes it less high-maintenance than some other models. It also has a humidifying reach of 600sq ft, so it’s one of the strongest models on offer. That said, it’s not particularly quiet and it doesn’t dispense as evenly as some of the other models.

 

Elechomes Warm and Cool Mist Humidifiers

This humidifier has almost the same capacity as the Miroco at 5.5L (1.2gallons) but more dispersal power, filling a room up to 755sq ft while releasing 600ml an hour on the warm setting, and 300ml/hr on the cool setting.

The design is convenient—you don’t have to top it up quite so often as with smaller models and it’s easy to refill (through the top) when you do. No more fighting with awkward internal compartments. The warm mist setting is useful for those parts of the house which turn a little arctic over the fall and winter.

You can buy demineralization filters for this model (SH8820 filter). They expand the lifetime of the humidifier, give you clearer air, and they only need to be replaced every three months or so with moderate. And for a fairly big machine, it’s very, very quiet. Picture that peace-loving mosquito meditating in an exam hall.

It has an easy, intuitive console and produces ultra-fine mist. This is good news for young or fragile mushrooms (like lion’s mane or enoki) or those which are more at risk of topical droplet damage.

 

 

 

Best Humidifier for Growing Mushrooms Buying Guide

We’ve tried to include a range of humidifiers in terms of size, cost, and versatility. You might find your ideal unit among the ones recognized. If you want to widen your search and you’re new to mushroom growing, then the following information may be helpful.

Ideal conditions for most mushrooms

Keep them out of direct sunlight, heat, and away from drafts. Windowsills can seem like a good option because of the condensation on the windows, but that just demonstrates how much warmer the inside of the house is in comparison to the great outdoors.

In terms of ideal conditions, mycologists will advise, as a rule of thumb, to keep the ambient temperature between 55 and 60°F. Dropping much below 50-55° will give you a miniature crop, which could turn out to be a costly experiment.

Different mushrooms and seasons will require different levels of relative humidity, but the average requirement is 80-90%. Once you’ve got them started in a warm climate (70° or so), you can pop them in a closet, cabinet or dedicated office corner with your humidifier nearby.

Make sure your shrooms get a good rate of air flow. Like us, and unlike your ferns, they breathe oxygen and expel CO2 . Like their beloved growers, they suffer from stagnant air and CO2 buildup.

Finally, if your absence from the house for a couple of days means that you need to keep that humidifier turned off for a while, then you can preserve the immediate humidity of the air around growing bags, logs or boxes by draping a single layer of burlap or rough-meshed canvas over the top.

This will trap moisture while allowing them to breathe until your return. Give them a gentle sprinkling of room-temperature water before you go.

Choosing the right model for your needs

As you’ll have seen, they’re not machines with broad-ranging functions, bells and whistles. Let’s look at a few elements which might be important to your choice.

Size

You can select them by the size you require according to the size of your room, or the extent of moisture you need expelled per hour. Console machines are generally larger and probably suitable for those of you running an amateur-professional business, dedicating at least one room to their growth and environment control.

The 1-gallon humidifiers fall more closely into the category of table-top humidifiers, suitable for the corners where you might have a fruiting chamber stashed. You can expect a rate of 180-210ml/hr from these. The larger ones can dispense 300+ml/hr.

Appearance

The importance you place on the unit’s aesthetic design is a personal thing. You’ll want it to blend in if your harvest is sprouting away cheerfully in your bedroom. However, if it’s being kept in a special room, then it’s a less critical aspect of your decision, of course. Whether the dehumidifier looks pretty or industrial, it’s (arguably) not vital to have a shroom with a view.

Manner of mist distribution

There are warm and cool humidifiers, and some which perform both functions, as we’ve seen. Ultrasonic humidifiers are the growers’ design of choice, able to reach higher levels of relative humidity. They work by vibrating a disc so fast that it disturbs the water molecules and creates a mist. This pushes water into the air.

Evaporative devices contain a strip of material, the wick, which draws water into the fabric and within range of a fan. The fan pulls moisture into the air. The process is self-perpetuating because as soon as the wick dries, it attracts more water from the reservoir’s supply.

Their reservoirs drain far more slowly, which is convenient, but they are quite noisy in comparison to the ultrasonic units and they can’t release moisture to the same extent. However, there are some strains of fungi which cope better with a lower relative humidity level, and for those, an evaporative device is both perfect for the purpose and less expensive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can mushrooms grow overnight?

You’ll often see a fresh and dramatic sprouting of mushroom caps overnight after balmy and moist conditions have prevailed, but if you’re asking if there are any 12-24 hour miracle shrooms, then yes. The Dictyophora indusiate grows so fast that you can hear the cap creak. Alas they are not domestic mushrooms with a huge culinary audience.

Can I grow button mushrooms at home?

Yes, but you’ll need a box, manure, compost, and spores, which you can buy online as a single entity or as part of a kit. If there’s a vegetarian in your life who is fed up with being left out of burger night, then you can grow portobello mushrooms from home, too. Fair warning—they do take up a lot of space.

Can I grow mushrooms from store bought mushrooms?

If you’re exceptionally patient, happy to learn from your mistakes, and if you have the environmental monitoring powers of a forensic mycologist with a point to prove, then you can grow them from the stems of the button mushrooms. Pot them in soil, give them the optimum growing environment and hope they shoot for the skies instead of rotting. You’ll know whether you’ve been successful within a week.

What is the most profitable mushroom to grow?

Along with bamboo, herbs and ginseng, oyster mushrooms are the big hitters in terms of grown-from-home profit. You can buy kits to grow yellow, pearl, pink, white, gray and black oyster mushrooms, which is excellent news.

Their growing cycle is around six weeks from commencement to harvesting, which is nicely regular and predictable if you have good relations with the local farmers’ market stall supervisors. Unsurprisingly, you can also do a booming trade in shiitake mushrooms, particularly in areas with a high population of far-east Asian eateries.