OT Mushroom kits

[The Figster]

I am looking to grow some mushrooms at home with my 2 boys. There are a lot of kits too choose from, does anyone have any recommendations?

Thank you
Ian

[SarinaP]

My sister got me one on Amazon for Christmas--I threw away the box but I know it was about $20 and you just added a little water and misted it occasionally. It was for oyster mushrooms. Worked great!

[SarinaP]

I think this was it--I remember the cover art: http://www.amazon.com/Back-Roots-Org...r+mushroom+kit

[Jaylyne]

they have it in home depot.. or lowes... around 13 to 15 dollars

[growcrazie]

I cut a few oak logs and bought some plugs. I have had more @@@@ake mushrooms than I can use. Should have them for years

[figgrower]

Bountiful Gardens has several kits, and plugs available.

[jrdewhirst]

Like growcrazie, I cut some oak (and maple) logs, bought plugs for shiitake and oysters. I did 99% of the work myself, but I had my two granddaughters (6 & 9) drill holes and hammer dowels (with help). They loved it. The only downside is the long wait. We inoculated the logs a year ago, and we saw the first little shiitake a couple of weeks ago.

If you want a quick result, I'd get a bag for oysters from somebody like Field & Forest. Oysters are fast in a medium that isn't as dense as a log.

Or you could make a bed of slightly aged wood chips and inoculate with stropharia. You may get mushrooms same year.

[JohnnyK]

I've used plugs and oak logs as well. It's easy to do, and I got great results.

[Harborseal]

Assuming your boys are 6 - 10 you want reasonably quick, fool proof results. All the oyster kits tend to work well. Just get the cheapest one(s). Fresh Market had some kits for $13. HD near me doesn't carry any so call first. Amazon, FungiPerfecti and others are good sources. At FP you can get different colors. The mushrooms you grow from kits never taste as good as the ones you pick from the wild but you really have to know what you're doing to pick from the wild

[Needaclone]

I picked up one of these kits in Home Depot last summer for $9.99

http://backtotheroots.com/products/mushroomfarm

Then I promptly forgot about it for about 9 months...
I came across it about 3-4 weeks ago and decided to give it a go. There wasn't much activity for about 2.5 weeks, but I eventually saw signs of activity. Then everything happened very quickly over the course of 4 or 5 days. Definitely a cool thing to watch.
I was growing them in my master bathroom. I was up there on Sunday morning when some bright morning sun was shining through the windows, and I could see little streams/whisps of "smoke" coming off the mushrooms -- presumably they were giving off spores at that point. I should have picked them that day or the next, because then I started noticing that they didn't seem so fresh and healthy anymore. Now, three days later, I'm still thinking I need to harvest them before they go to waste. I'm just figuring I'll harvest them when I'm ready to use them rather than pick them and put them in the fridge...but time slips by...

It was a pretty cool experience overall.

I've also heard good things about Fungi Perfecti...they seem to have more varieties and their kits are currently cheaper than they were the last time I looked, which was probably over 5 years ago.