Mushrooms, Spawns & Kits

Mushroom Spawn Kits: Add Flavour to Your Meals

If you enjoy growing your own tomato plants, lettuce, and spring onions for those summer salads, why not keep the grow-your-own process going through the winter? Mushrooms are the third-most bought food item for cooking , after potatoes and tomatoes. On eBay, you can choose from a variety of different mushroom spawn kits, and grow your own mushrooms year round.

, we consume 120,000 tons of mushrooms every year. Low in calories and fat, and high in B vitamins and antioxidants, they make a healthy addition to an English breakfast and add taste and flavour to those winter warming stews and casseroles. Kids are more inclined to eat healthily if they have had a hand in the growing process. Mushroom spawn kits are easy to activate, simple to look after, and will have the kids picking their own mushrooms for breakfast or dinner in a matter of weeks.

Mushrooms are not grown from seed, but from spores so small they are invisible to the naked eye. To be able to germinate, these spores need a substrate on which to grow. Depending on the type of mushrooms involved, this growing medium could be cardboard, wood chips, wood plugs, sawdust, grain, compost, or a mushroom liquid culture. These are the most popular types of mushroom available in mushroom growing kits.

• Oyster mushrooms: One of the most popular mushroom spawn kits.
• Button mushrooms: Also called Crimini or Portabello mushrooms, dependant on growth prior to harvesting.
• Shiitake mushrooms: Often grown outside and said to help reduce cholesterol.
• Enoki mushrooms: Small, long stemmed mushrooms.
• Maitake mushrooms: Another mushroom said to be high in nutritional and health properties.

Mushroom spawn kits can vary in size depending on the type of mushrooms being grown, the substrate, and the supplier. Kits can also vary in type, some are supplied in a simple box. Others are sold by the weight of the substrate, while others are sold as mycelium, when the spores have started to germinate on the substrate, and have produced the net-like mushroom spawn that covers the surface.

Most plants produce flowers or pods, which hold the seeds. Nature then uses the wind, birds, and insects, to spread those seeds, and ensure the next generation. In the world of fungi and mycelium, the mushroom head holds the spores, which then fall back onto the mycelium, and new mushrooms begin to germinate. Careful harvesting of your mushrooms should ensure good yields are repeated, often for months on end.