I’ve been interested in trying to grow my own mushrooms for several years. This year I finally decided to buy a blue oyster mushroom kit from North Spore. I’ve been hesitant in the past to shell out what I considered to be a rather expensive price for a mushroom kit. Oyster mushrooms can typically be found at your local farmers markets for between $8-14 per pound. Most blue oyster mushroom kits sell for around $25 plus shipping. All in you will spend around $34 delivered to your door depending upon where you live. Typically you can only expect to get 1-2 pounds of mushrooms from these ready made mushroom kits which does make the kit somewhat expensive depending upon your actual yield.
What I didn’t expect was the actual entertainment value I would get from my North Spore mushroom kit. It arrived in early Jan and the block was a bit broken up inside. Per the instructions I compressed the block back together and let it sit for a week to allow the mushroom mycelium to bind the block back together. After waiting for the block to form back into a solid mass, I cut an X in the front of the bag per instructions, spritzed it with water and set it in an out of the way room of the house. Twice a day I would spray the front opening to keep the mushroom kit moist. Its rather dry in my house so I also set the block in a clear tote with a wet sponge directly below the opening to provide some added humidity. The entertainment began as soon as I started seeing tiny mushrooms appear. I was amazed at how quickly they actually started growing almost doubling in size daily. I found myself constantly checking on their progress throughout the day. I’ll post a few photos to show the daily progression of my blue oyster mushrooms growing.
After about a 7 days the mushrooms were at a point they should be harvested. I was quite curious to see how much my efforts were actually going to yield. I was pleasantly surprised when i put them on the scale and found that the fruits of my labor weighed in at 12.7 oz. Quite the accomplishment given this was the first time I’ve attempted growing mushrooms. I had been reading lots of horror stories about peoples many failures with this same type of endeavor so am very pleased with my little success. Now its time to reset the kit and wait for a second and maybe third flush of mushrooms. I enjoyed this so much that I might even consider adding fresh mushrooms for sale at my upcoming spring plant sales at the nursery. If you decide you might like to try growing your own mushrooms I highly recommend giving it a try. If you do decide to try growing your own mushrooms don’t forget to stop by Shawler’s Family Nursery this spring and let me know how it went.
