Mushroom kits have actually had a fair amount of bad press recently with many critics claiming that they provide very poor value for money 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 really is wrong to simply compare both with the amount of mushrooms that they produce.


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

I 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 are usually grown in other countries and imported across, where it really is so much cheaper to allow them to grow them. Then theres polka dot mushroom chocolate that in a kit you get a box and obtain the substrate (compost or straw) in addition to a small bag of spawn. Once you buy mushrooms from a shop you aren’t left over 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 spending money on too.

In my opinion mushroom growing kits are an excellent way of growing your personal mushrooms and even if sometimes they don’t really offer amazing value for money in comparison with the shop price become familiar with so much from carrying it out yourself and can probably take great pride in growing and eating your own mushrooms. Maybe even once you have 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 couple of pounds investm