Best Mushroom Growing Shelves (Build Plans)

Hey mushroom friends!  This is all about making the perfect shelves for fruiting mushrooms.  Many hobby growers and mushroom farmers alike grow mushrooms using wire shelves.  These work, but over time wire shelves rust, causing the chrome or paint to peel.  They are hard to clean without power washing and have many places for contamination to hide.  At Cloud Culture mushrooms, we’ve been developing a good system for shelves that require the least effort to clean and have the fewest places for contamination to hide.  The trick is to use the least number of fasteners, and create shelving with very few right angles or overlaps, which are both hard to clean.

These build plans create a shelving system that is 4 to 8 feet long, with 5 shelves that are double-deep, and 4 rows of pipe per shelf.  Long runs can be created by gluing connectors between PVC runs, but we recommend having a vertical wood support every 8 feet, so the PVC doesn’t sag too much in between supports.  Here is what you need to build these awesome shelves.

 

Mushroom Shelf Build Items:

2 – 2’’x12’’x6’ or 2’’x14’’x6’ pressure treated wood

1’’ PVC Schedule 40, white pipes for 5 double-deep shelves (need 20 pipes no longer than 8 ft. long)

4 – 3’’ diameter 1’’ tall PVC flat end caps (the feet)

4 – ¼’’x4’’ galvanized steel lag bolts

4 – 2’’ galvanized steel washers for the lag bolts

40 – 1.25’’ round vinyl end caps

1 Quart Cut-N-Seal (Sealer for cuts in pressure treated wood)

 

Tools:

Power drill

1 spade drill bit, size 1-3/8’’

5/32’’ drill bit

Pipe reamer

Small paint roller

1’’ paint brush

 

Directions:

Start by marking and drilling holes in the wooden vertical supports.  Drill 1-3/8’’ holes ¼’’ in from the side with a 4’’ or 5’’ gap on center in between the two PVC pipe holes.  Do the same thing for the second row from the other side of the board.  You’ll end up with 4 holes going side to side for each of the 5 shelves where the PVC pipe will slide through.  Vertical spacing should be approximately 13’’ on center starting 4’’ from the top and ending 16’’ from the bottom, not including the PVC cap “feet.”  The bottom gap is to prevent contamination of the lower blocks, but you could add another shelf lower if desired.  Keep in mind that the vast majority of contamination exists in the bottom two feet of airspace in a vertical air column.  Contamination settles to the floor, so we don’t recommend a shelf below the 16’’ mark.

After your holes are drilled, use the reamer to clean up any splinters caused by the spade bit while drilling the holes.  You don’t want any extra wood chunks sticking out from the holes or anywhere else on the wood.  Next, predrill the holes in one end of the wood on both boards 2 inches in from the edges, for the plastic cap “feet.”  Use a 5/32’’ bit to predrill the four-inch-long holes in both wooden supports.  You’ll end up with 4 total holes for the feet, or 1 per cap.

Next, use the Cut-N-Seal to seal every surface of the wooden supports.  Seal in the holes, the flat sides, and the top and bottom using the paint brush and roller.  Let it dry, and put on a second coat per the application instructions.

Drill a ¼’’ hole in the center of the 4 flat PVC caps.  Once the Cut-N-Seal is dry, attach the caps with the open side pointing away from the wood using the galvanized lag bolts and washers.  The caps will act as a spacer between the wood and the floor so your wood supports won’t sit in water that may accumulate on the floor in your fruiting room.

Now, assemble your shelves by sliding the PVC pipes through the holes.  Make sure to clean your pipe before this step to keep the space between the wood and your pipe clean.  Leave a couple of inches of PVC pipe sticking out on both sides of the wood on opposite ends of the pipe.  Your shelf should be standing on its own!  The last touch is to put the vinyl end caps on the ends of the pipes so water doesn’t accumulate inside.  Letting water collect inside the pipes would create the perfect area for contamination to hide that would be very difficult to clean.

Now you have awesome mushroom fruiting shelves that are extremely low maintenance and hold 5lb or 10lb mushroom fruiting blocks!  You could also set mushroom growing trays across the PVC pipe too.  Even better, when it comes time to clean them, you can take a rag with bleach water and run it down each pipe very easily.  This will save a massive amount of time and effort compared to cleaning wire shelving.  Also, an added bonus is that there are fewer dripping points compared to wire shelves.  If your fruiting space requires very high humidity, wire shelves will drip all over, which is not good for growing mushrooms.  PVC shelves don’t have that problem.

These shelves work well, but modify them as needed to fit your specific setup.  You may want shelves that are taller, at an angle, wider, or maybe something entirely different.  We hope you can use this information to make some shelves that far outperform wire shelves.  Comment below and let us know if you have design ideas that can further improve this system.  We're already considering other options for the feet that don't have an open space underneath them, but for now they are working great!

Check out our other mushroom growing tips and tricks!“Always grow culture”