Thursday, July 15, 2010

Update on my mushroom growing kit.

And we have mushrooms! Actually we had mushrooms, they have all been eaten since I took these photos. :-) I can't seem to get ahead of my "to do" list and I meant to do this post several weeks ago. Oh well, you can fight life or just go with the flow! :-)

It has been pretty cool to watch the mushrooms grow and once they start, they grow very, very fast. The only problem we've had is I think it's too warm in our house, so they aren't doing quite as well as we might hope. We never use air conditioning and it's been averaging around 80 - 85 degrees in the house during the day and mid 70's during the  night. Mushrooms grow best when the high temperature is in the low 70's during the day and the 50's - 60's during the night.

We will definitely do this again, although I might wait until the fall when the weather cools down a bit.
The one down fall to growing mushrooms and something I did not expect was the dust they put out. Wow, it's a lot. I'm assuming it's their spores, but where ever the mushroom growing kit was there was a white dust all over the surrounding surfaces. I wonder if someone with allergies might have issues with that. I'll have to ask the "mushroom man" next time I see him at the farmers market.




Overnight the mushrooms grew from the little buds (in the first picture) to the mini mushrooms in the picture below. 


Harvested and ready to eat!




5 comments:

  1. That's awesome Therese. Once they are harvested will more continue to grow or is it a one time thing? I would love to get my hands on one of these.

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  2. You get 2-3 batches of mushrooms. The first growth is the best. We got about half as much the 2nd time, although that might be because it was so hot in our house. I look forward to trying it again.

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  3. My husband Bryan put together & sold mushroom kits as well, his were a bigger but without the plastic frame, and now he is focusing on just growing the mushrooms himself and selling them to stores and restaurants!
    -Renee

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  4. Wow, I love the photos. I also bought my first kit in January. My kit was just a polystyrene and cardboard box. A few people told me not to bother as their kits had failed, but the kit was half price so I didnt have much to lose.

    i'm happy to say that after about four weeks I had a lovely crop of mushrooms. If you'd like to have a look at my photos and posts please check out http://www.getselfsufficient.org/blog/

    Are the ones you grew some kind of oyster mushroom?

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