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 believe that it is wrong to simply compare both with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.
You can purchase mushroom growing kits for only a few different species of mushroom – you can obtain button mushroom grow kits and you may get oyster mushroom grow kits. Both of these are the most common and will be purchased at most 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 give you around �5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the perfect environment, and according to the variety as some mushrooms cost more then others in the shops).
I don’t understand why people moan when it costs more to get a mushroom growing kit then it does to get the mushrooms themselves. Most of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and are usually grown far away and imported across, where it really is so much cheaper for them to grow them. Then theres the fact that in a kit you get a box and obtain the substrate (compost or straw) in addition to a small bag of spawn. When you buy mushrooms from the shop you aren’t left with excellent compost for the garden (mushroom compost is among the most expensive and nutritious forms of compost as the mushrooms breakdown and recycle many nutrients within the substrate). And there’s one up mushroom bar that you are growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth paying for too.
In my opinion mushroom growing kits are an effective way of growing your own mushrooms and even if sometimes they don’t offer amazing affordability when compared to the shop price become familiar with so much from carrying it out yourself and can probably take great pride in growing and eating your personal mushrooms. Maybe even once you’ve learned a bit more about cultivating mushrooms you could cut out the middleman and find your personal substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and buy or make your personal mushroom spawn. That’s where you can get real value for money too, growing a huge selection of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a few pounds investm