LETS START

Mushroom kits have actually had a fair amount of bad press recently with many critics claiming that they provide very poor affordability when you compare 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 is wrong to simply compare the two with the quantity of mushrooms that they produce.

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


I don’t understand why people moan when it costs more to buy a mushroom growing kit then it can 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 is so much cheaper to allow them to grow them. Then theres the point that in a kit you obtain a box and get 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 one of the most expensive and nutritious types of compost as the mushrooms break down and recycle many nutrients present in the substrate). And then there’s the fact that you’re growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth paying for too.

In my opinion mushroom growing kits are an excellent way of growing your own mushrooms and also if sometimes they don’t offer amazing value for money in comparison with the shop price you will learn so much from carrying it out yourself and can probably take great pride in growing and then eating your own mushrooms. Maybe even once polkadot shrooms have learned a little more about cultivating mushrooms you could cut out the middleman and discover your own substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and buy or make your personal mushroom spawn. This is where you can get real value for money too, growing hundreds of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a couple of pounds investm