Mushroom kits have actually had a fair amount of bad press in recent times with many critics claiming they provide very poor affordability when comparing the yields of the mushroom kits with the actual price of the mushrooms in the shops. I find this a very unfair comparison and believe that it is wrong to simply compare the two with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.

You can buy mushroom growing kits for only a few different species of mushroom – you will get button mushroom grow kits and you may get oyster mushroom grow kits. Both of these are the most common and may be purchased at most garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. However you can also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, letting you grow your own mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and much more. These kits usually cost around �5 to �10 and can probably provide you with around �5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the perfect environment, and based 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. Almost all of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and are usually grown far away and imported across, where it is so much cheaper for them to grow them. Then theres the truth that in a kit you get a box and get the substrate (compost or straw) as well as a small bag of spawn. Once polkadot chocolate buy mushrooms from a shop you aren’t left over with excellent compost for your garden (mushroom compost is one of the most expensive and nutritious forms of compost as the mushrooms breakdown 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 spending money on too.

For me mushroom growing kits are an effective way of growing your own mushrooms and even if sometimes they don’t really offer amazing affordability when compared to the shop price become familiar with 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 find your personal substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and buy or make your personal mushroom spawn. This is where you can get real value for money too, growing a huge selection of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a couple of pounds investm