Mushroom kits have actually had a fair amount of bad press in recent times with many critics claiming that 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 feel that it really is wrong to simply compare both with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.
You can purchase mushroom growing kits for just a few different species of mushroom – you can get button mushroom grow kits and you will get oyster mushroom grow kits. fusion shroom bars are the most common and will be purchased at most garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. Nevertheless, you may also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, letting you grow your own mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and more. These kits usually cost around �5 to �10 and can probably offer you around �5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the best possible environment, and with respect 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 buy a mushroom growing kit then it does to get the mushrooms themselves. A lot 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 to allow them to grow them. Then theres the fact that in a kit you get a box and get 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 your garden (mushroom compost is among the most expensive and nutritious types of compost as the mushrooms breakdown and recycle many nutrients within the substrate). And then there’s the fact that you are 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 personal mushrooms and even if sometimes they don’t offer amazing value for money in comparison with the shop price you will learn so much from doing it yourself and can 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 personal substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and buy or make your personal mushroom spawn. This is where you can get real affordability too, growing a huge selection of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a couple of pounds investm