[WebSiteEvo]

If you buy spawn you can pressure cook your own substrate (rye grain for example) in bags or jars and add small amounts of spawn to each bag or jar. In no time at all you can get 10x the amount you started with.  You need to avoid contamination with a glove box or  Laminar flow hood, which sounds expensive but home made glove boxes work well. If you going to attempt this you really need a good book and its quite a big learning curve.

[digalotty]

that one flew over my head 

[newby]

I've grown mushrooms from kit twice with no problem, although they were cossetted. The first kit yielded several crops.
This year I'm trying various spawn on well-rotted compost, so will be interesting to compare results.
Suttons sell spawn @ £4 odd, and there's usually some on eBay around the same price.
Well worth the effort, cos it's lovely to pick your own fresh mushrooms 

Can you grow mushrooms just on the ground on an allotment ??

[iwantanallotment]

They'll need some kind of bed, and plenty of well-rotted manure/humus....but yes. Otherwise in a greenhouse or shed/garage, cold frame...almost anywhere.
The temperature is important too, ie not too warm or cold - 10 - 20C ideally.
And no over- watering, they only like to be damp, not wet. My indoor kits were never 'watered', only sprayed with a mist spray if the surface was dry. I found they preferred to be dry rather than wet - although "damp" was the optimum condition. 'Wet' rots/drowns them outright - 'dry' and they'll hold on a little bit for a drink...'damp' was perfect for them. A s-l-o-w infusion of moisture, rather than a deluge. ie outdoors, a heavy rainfall!
So good drainage is important.
It is more difficult to grow them outdoors where we can't control their environment, but not impossible 
I haven't ever grown them this way before newby, it's just an experiment which may fail miserably - in which case I'll grow them behind the sofa again  Will keep you posted.

[savbo]

2 observations - I've seen quite a few come up on piles of 'spent' mushroom compost - and there are oyster mushroom growing on a pallet at our allotment site!


Michael