Mushroom kits have actually had a fair amount of bad press recently 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 feel that it is wrong to simply compare the two with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.

You can buy mushroom growing kits for just a few different species of mushroom – you may get button mushroom grow kits and you could get oyster mushroom grow kits. These two are the most common and may be purchased for the most part garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. However you can also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, enabling you to grow your personal mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and more. These kits usually cost around �5 to �10 and will probably offer you around �5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the best possible environment, and based on the variety as some mushrooms cost more then others in the shops).

Pretty mushrooms don’t understand why people moan when it costs more to get a mushroom growing kit then it does to get the mushrooms themselves. A lot of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and so are usually grown in other countries and imported across, where it really is so much cheaper to allow them to grow them. Then theres the truth that in a kit you get a box and obtain the substrate (compost or straw) as well as a small bag of spawn. When you buy mushrooms from a shop you aren’t left with excellent compost for the garden (mushroom compost is one of the most expensive and nutritious types of compost as the mushrooms break down and recycle many nutrients within the substrate). And there’s the fact that you’re growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth paying for too.

For me mushroom growing kits are an excellent way of growing your own mushrooms and also if sometimes they don’t really offer amazing value for money when compared to the shop price become familiar with so much from doing it yourself and will probably take great pride in growing and eating your own mushrooms. Maybe even once you’ve 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 own mushroom spawn. That’s where you can get real value for money too, growing hundreds of pounds worth of mushroom from literally a few pounds investm