Mushroom kits have actually had a good amount of bad press recently with many critics claiming 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. Moon Bars find this a very unfair comparison and believe that it really is wrong to simply compare the two with the quantity of mushrooms that they produce.

You can purchase mushroom growing kits for just a few different species of mushroom – you can find button mushroom grow kits and you may get oyster mushroom grow kits. Both of these are the most common and will be purchased at most garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. Nevertheless, you may also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, enabling you to grow your own mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and much more. These kits usually cost around �5 to �10 and will 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 buy a mushroom growing kit then it can to get the mushrooms themselves. Almost all of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and so are usually grown in other countries and imported across, where it is so much cheaper for them to grow them. Then theres the fact that in a kit you obtain 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 with excellent compost for the garden (mushroom compost is among the most expensive and nutritious forms of compost as the mushrooms breakdown and recycle many nutrients present in the substrate). And then there’s the fact that you are growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth paying for too.

In my opinion mushroom growing kits are an effective 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 doing it yourself and will probably take great pride in growing and then eating your own mushrooms. Maybe even once you’ve learned a little more about cultivating mushrooms you can cut out the middleman and find your personal substrate (straw, newspaper, manure) and purchase or make your personal 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