Grow Your Own Mushrooms at Home

A block that looks rather unremarkable one day can be covered with mushrooms a short while later. Few home-growing projects provide quite such a visible demonstration of how extraordinary fungi really are.

Mushroom grow kits bring that experience into the home without requiring you to become an expert mushroom cultivator. Much of the difficult work has already been done: the growing medium has been prepared and inoculated with mushroom mycelium. Your part is to provide the conditions that encourage it to fruit.

GoGardenNow is pleased to offer mushroom grow kits for anyone who would like to discover the pleasure of producing fresh mushrooms at home.

A Different Kind of Gardening

Mushrooms are not plants. They have no leaves, flowers, or roots, and they do not obtain their energy from sunlight through photosynthesis. They belong to the kingdom Fungi and grow from an often-hidden network of fine filaments called mycelium.

The mushrooms we harvest are the fruiting bodies produced by that larger fungal organism.

A grow kit lets you watch this normally hidden life cycle unfold before your eyes. Under suitable conditions, tiny pins emerge from the prepared substrate. They enlarge, sometimes with remarkable speed, until recognizable mushrooms are ready to harvest.

Easier Than Starting from Scratch

Growing mushrooms entirely from scratch can require specialized materials, careful preparation, and close attention to sanitation. A prepared grow kit removes much of that complication.

Exact instructions vary by mushroom and kit, so always follow the directions supplied with yours. In general, the grower provides the appropriate combination of moisture, humidity, fresh air, temperature, and indirect light.

No vegetable patch is required. No digging is involved. You do not even need a particularly green thumb—though perhaps a reasonably competent spraying finger helps.

Watch Them Grow

Part of the pleasure is simply observing what happens.

Once fruiting begins, mushrooms can change noticeably from one day to the next. That makes a grow kit an entertaining project for adults and an especially interesting way to introduce children to fungi and the natural world.

Keep an eye on the developing mushrooms. You may be surprised at how quickly harvest day arrives.

From Grow Kit to Kitchen

For edible varieties, the reward is more than botanical—or, strictly speaking, mycological—curiosity. You can harvest fresh mushrooms that you have grown yourself and take them directly to the kitchen.

Depending on the variety, home-grown mushrooms can be sautéed, roasted, added to soups and sauces, served with eggs, incorporated into pasta dishes, or used wherever their particular flavor and texture are best appreciated.

Always identify and consume mushrooms according to the grow kit's instructions. A cultivated kit is no invitation to experiment with unidentified wild mushrooms.

More Than One Harvest?

Some mushroom kits are capable of producing additional flushes after the first harvest when properly cared for. Production generally diminishes eventually as the nutrients within the growing substrate are exhausted, but coaxing another crop from the same kit is part of the fun.

And when the kit has finally finished producing, you will have witnessed a biological process quite different from raising a tomato plant or rooting a cutting.

Discover the World of Fungi

Gardeners spend most of their time looking upward at leaves and flowers. Mushroom growing directs our attention toward another kingdom entirely—one that has always been present in the garden, woodland, compost pile, and soil beneath our feet.

A mushroom grow kit makes that hidden world wonderfully accessible.

Explore our selection of Mushroom Grow Kits at GoGardenNow and try your hand at growing a harvest of your own.