[Thrift]

I am thinking of buying mushroom kits for Christmas presents, preferably something a bit unusual and exotic.

Can anyone recommend a variety, supplier etc. please? I would love them to have lots of lovely, yummy fungi  .

[arugula]

Hi Thrift,

I too would be interested in any answers to this question. Not for gifts but to have my own mushrooms as I am just not brave enought to go foraging (as was discussed recently in the Frugal Living area). I even have more than one ID book, but no human experts.

Lorna. 

[Thrift]

Hi Lorna,

Would be good wouldn't it! I used to find lots of wild ones but alas, all riddled with maggots......slightly off-putting.

Hope someone helps.

[glennroy]

havent tried it myself YET, but have bought a basic mushroom growing starter kit from B & Q for a reasonable price of £5.99 , and intend to get stuck in a.s.a.p,
quite a reasonable price for a Christmas pressie, and what a great idea, look out family and friends mushroom growing for new year!!!

[crh75]

I was given a shitake mushroom kit for my birthday. I think it came from the local garden centre. I have also got some button mushroom spawn but I need to get some manure to grow it in. 

[arugula]

Ooh crh75, where do you get the mushroom spawn? I've seen those Shiitake logs but not knowing how much of a harvest you can expect from these things.... can you enlighten us?

[Roll Roll]

I was given one for my birthday in Febuary, but i still havn't got round to doing it. 

Thing is, it need's to be kept warm and dark,  so heat is a problem this time of year, and in the summer it's the last thing on my mind. Always too much going on

[sunshineband]

Maybe it's just us but we have had no luck with the cheap kits sold in a cardboard box -- just a few measly mushrooms hardly worth the bother....

and the injected log I bought SIL also came to naught.

As I said, might just be us, so let's hope others have had more success 

[crh75]

Hi argyllie,
The shiitake came in a pack with some cardboard. All I had to do was soak the cardboard, sprinkle the spawn between layers of cardboard and but it in the airing cupboard for 3 weeks.  Then put the cardboard somewhere damp and the mushrooms will grow. Mine is still in the airing cubboard so we will see how it works.
The button mushroom spawn just says put it in a box of well rotted manure.
I’m not exactly sure where they came from as they were a present.

[SG6]

I am just about to have a go with pink oyster mushrooms.

The pack came for a garden centre, £3.50 if I recall. The instructions say to get some straw and pour boiling water over, to sterilise. Place the straw in a container and add the mushroom mix and keep in a warm place to enable it to multiply through the straw.

Then it goes in a fridge to scare it for a couple of weeks.

After that bring it out and the cold of the fridge should have made it kick into mushroom production mode.

My thought was to use wood shavings instead, I know that oyster mushroom normally grow on wood. So it seems a fair option. For the container I bought a large plastic container from Wilkinsons something like 2.5litre. The wood shaving come from Tesco, the pet section has packs of it in for hamster/mouse bedding.

From pictures on the net it looks like a cage instead of  a container may be better as the mushrooms can then grow through the side. But it seems too much trouble for a first attempt to make one.

So far that adds up to £6.

Slight hiccup is that I have the container, I have the wood shavings, just cannot locate the mushroom stuff.

[scabs]

I bought one of the B&Q kits and have started it off. Just waiting for the mushrooms now!

Seemed a reasonable price for 'up to three crops'.

[Thrift]

Thanks all  

Knew you would help! They all seem very reasonably priced.....one problem would definitely be finding room in the fridge though. Just have to wait for a frosty spell.

One thing I remembered later was that years ago I had bags of compost from the mushroom farm to treat my borders and ....you guessed....a bumper crop.

Be fun trying to gift wrap a bag of compost!!  

[willowman]

I think (if my memory serves me right, which it usually doesn't these days) that Which, or Gardening Which, did a report on mushroom kits, including the ones where you have to insert plugs into cut logs.
The conclusion was that, for the return in terms of mushrooms grown, it was a waste of time and extremely expensive.
Will now go and see if I can locate the relevant article, bear with me.

[willowman]

Aha, not so senile after all.
Gardening Which, November 2008.
Part of their verdict reads
"Our testers had expected their kit to be fun but it wasn't to be. The meagre crops were not only disappointing but worked out costing between 7 and 22 times more than mushrooms from a supermarket."
So, you pays your money and takes your choice!

[Kristen]

I've grown Marshall's mushroom kit twice. It comes in a polystyrene box.  Neither occasion produced much (as per the Which? article I would judge)

I have read that you need to use fresh kits, and goodness knows how long they had been hanging around in the garden centre ... Marshall's don't sell them online, so I have no idea how one might get a fresh kit?