Crimini! All About Mushroom Growing Kits

Want fresh mushrooms for your meals, or specialty mushrooms not available at your local grocery? You can grow your own with mushroom growing kits, available at garden supply stores locally and on-line. There are quite a number of choices: shiitake, oyster, pom pom blanc, morel, portabella, white button mushroom, and others. These are also a great choice for teaching children about mushroom growth, and special educators’ kits with instructions are available.

Essentially a mushroom kit is a container of mushroom growing medium already seeded (“pre-inoculated with mushroom spawn,” to be technical). Your responsibility is to make sure that the growing mushrooms’ conditions are adequate (usually cool, dark, damp). Once the mushrooms begin to grow, they will generally keep growing for several weeks. Mushrooms are also sold as spores and as “mushroom logs,” or in bottles that can be on a desk or coffee-table while the mushrooms grow. Kits for backyard cultivation are also available.

Making the most of your mushrooms

As the mushrooms can range from basic white button mushrooms that might go in a tomato sauce to ones you have perhaps not even heard of, you can do mushroom growing as simply or as extensively as you like. If you are a gourmet cook and want to make a meal with a different kind of mushroom every night, you will spend more money but can easily get all the mushrooms you want. Many of the kits supply descriptions of ways to cook the mushrooms, or even have companion cookbooks.

Because mushroom growing is container-based, you don’t need to have a large garden or many garden supplies to do it successfully. It is a good way to bring some growing life into an urban setting and feel a little bit like a farmer. But be careful—raising your own fresh food can be addictive.

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