Mushrooms

Does anyone here have a patch. I love them but have a hard time finding good ones in the store.
If you grow your own what kind are they?
Lavina

I have a button mushroom kit on order.

From what I've read, morels are more dependable out-of-doors.

I'm a little afraid of "weeds" if I grow mushrooms out of doors.

But we'll see. This is my first mushroom kit.

i would be interested on how your mushrooms grown from your kit. always wanted to try them but they seem so expensive.

Hum, I am beginning to think this is more trouble than it would be worth. I do have a huge basement I could put them in but finding logs if I don't buy kits doesn't sound like fun.
Yes the kits I have seen are expensive to me also.

Lavina

This message was edited Oct 2, 2006 5:43 AM

you made up my mind for me. better to buy them in the supermarket. thanks

I'd love to grow shittakes, but obtaining oak logs, getting them in the right exposure, boring them and innoculating them, it still takes 2 years for mushrooms. I haven't researched morels so that's next.

I've tried the kits, twice. (Both times rec'd them as gifts.)

They'll produce but in both cases they didn't really produce an abundance of 'shooms for me (Certainly not an amount worth the price the kits cost.) However, it was fun to grow them and perhaps the fault lies with me or where I had them growing.

I bought plugs one year of "chicken of the woods" mushrooms and drilled holes in a dying tree (as instructed) and the next year I witnessed two different kinds of fungi on that tree...I was hesitant to eat them cus I wasn't positive which ones were my "chickens"!

Since then I bought a great mushroom book, (think it is just called "The Mushroom Book" but I loaned it out this past weekend so would have to do a search to double-check). It's one of the best I've ever seen with clear concise pics of many types...showing which ones are great for eating, which are bland, which are poisoness. (It even shows "look alike" mushrooms so you can tell the difference between the ones that closely resemble each other but yet one is good and one is bad.

Shoe.

I received a shitake mushroom kit for Christmas last year. It produced mushrooms but I wouldn't say that it produced $30 worth. Like Shoe said, it was fun and interesting and the mushrooms were tasty...but I wouldn't buy one.

Well, when I figure in how much I spent to plant my potato garden -- soil, compost, seed potatoes, garden implements, animal repellent, fertilizer, insect repellent -- my ping pong ball sized potatoes probably cost me $35 a piece.

Buying the mushroom kits probably ISN'T cost effective if you're comparing it against buying from the market, but it's a fun thing that I always wanted to do. I could go out for dinner, buy a couple CDs, buy a pair of jeans, go to a movie, or buy a mushroom kit.

I have never tried the kits, but we have an organic mushroom grower here who uses them to grow oyster mushrooms. They sell homesized kits but they showed me pictures of the big ones they use for production. It may be that oyster mushrooms are easier to grow here than most. We often find them in the woods in the summer. They claim that it is cheaper to buy a kit from them and grow them yourself than to buy the mushrooms from them. If I can find their url I will post it. They usually come to the farmers' market on Thursday.

http://desertfungi.googlepages.com/home

This is the url of the people who come to our farmers' market. They don't seem to be doing a lot of business over the internet, but there is contact info. Oyster mushrooms are supposed to be very very good for heart and blood.

My mushroom kit arrived today!

That only leaves an order of white crocuses yet to arrive, and I'll be done for the season.