How to Grow Mushrooms From Mushroom Growing Kits

Mushroom kits have actually had a good amount of bad press recently with many critics claiming that they provide very poor value for money when comparing the yields of the mushroom kits with the actual price of the mushrooms in the shops. I find this an extremely unfair comparison and feel that it really is wrong to simply compare the two with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.

You can purchase mushroom growing kits for only a few different species of mushroom – you can get button mushroom grow kits and you could get oyster mushroom grow kits. Both of these are the most common and can be purchased for the most part garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. However you can also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, allowing you to grow your personal mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and more. These kits usually cost around �5 to �10 and can probably give you around �5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the best possible environment, and based on the variety as some mushrooms cost more then others in the shops).

I hardly understand why people moan when it costs more to buy a mushroom growing kit then it does to buy the mushrooms themselves. Most of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and are usually grown in other countries and imported across, where it really is so much cheaper to allow them to grow them. Then theres the point that in a kit you get a box and obtain the substrate (compost or straw) in addition to a small bag of spawn. Once you buy mushrooms from the shop you aren’t left with excellent compost for the garden (mushroom compost is probably the most expensive and nutritious types of compost as the mushrooms break down and recycle many nutrients within the substrate). And then there’s the fact that you’re growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth spending money on too.

In my opinion mushroom growing kits are an effective way of growing your own mushrooms and even if sometimes they don’t really offer amazing value for money when compared to the shop price you will learn so much from carrying it out yourself and will probably take great pride in growing and then eating your own mushrooms. Maybe even once you have learned a little more about cultivating mushrooms you can cut out the middleman and discover your own substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and purchase or make your own mushroom spawn. One up chocolate bar ‘s where you can get real value for money too, growing hundreds of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a few pounds investm