Amateur Green Thumbs
Try to Grow Mushrooms

The latest recipe for home epicures: Take a block of sawdust and oat bran. Soak well. Put it in a plastic sack and wait until fungus forms. Snip and eat.

No, really.

Grow-your-own mushroom kits are popping up like you-know-whats -- in everything from gardening and specialty catalogs to Web sites devoted solely to the art of mycology. To hear these outfits tell it, would-be fungus-farmers can do this all in the comfort of their living rooms, harvesting crops of exotic portabellos and oyster mushrooms within weeks. And a lot of people are sold: One major supplier, Field and Forest Products, says its sales are up 50% in the past two years.

But we were a bit skeptical. After all, can you really grow mushrooms without mucking up the house? Would we have to keep our lights dim? And most importantly, could we not only eat them safely, but serve a delicious shiitake-and-asparagus stir-fry to our friends?

Though it was news to us, mushroom kits were actually developed about a decade ago to appeal to people who wanted exotic varieties but were worried about where they were grown. These days, safety is less of an issue, but growing legions of mushroom-lovers want the thrill of raising their own. Thinking this sounded like an offbeat gift for the gardeners and gourmets on our holiday list, we went to five catalogs and ordered shiitakes -- the most common kit available -- from each, as well as more exotic varieties like oyster mushrooms and "pom pom blancs."

Our kits arrived as dry, bread-loaf-sized bricks of sawdust or straw, mixed with mushroom "spawn," or culture. Some instructions bordered on the ritualistic or bizarre: We had to prick some of the balls with foot-long pointed sticks, while another kit required us to buy seven rolls of toilet paper for "planters." But in general, we had to soak each block overnight in water, cover it with a plastic bag and mist it with distilled water daily. As we waited to see if anything would actually grow, we stocked up on mushroom recipes; after all, these kits promise to yield fungi several times over, for six months or longer.

Our most disappointing experience: the shiitake and blue-oyster kits ($23 each) from Choice Edibles. While the starter blocks looked pretty much like all the others, the instructions said we should put them in a climate-controlled growing "cave" -- specifically, a 20-gallon aquarium outfitted with an air pump and other gizmos. The company, when called, said we could also try growing our kits in plastic bags, though the results might not be as good. They weren't: After nearly two months, we still don't have any mushrooms.

The shiitake kit from Seeds of Change was another slow starter; after several weeks, it bore a dozen small but tender mushrooms, enough to slice over salad for two. We're still waiting for more.

The other kits, however, bore fruit quickly. Just 11 days after receiving the pearl-oyster kit from Territorial Seed Co., we had a pound-and-a-half of delicately flavored, light brown beauties -- enough to serve over pasta for a family of four. The company's shiitake kit, however, yielded only a few ounces after three weeks and developed patches of green mold. (Though we watered this one as often as the rest, we were told by expert Linda Goin, who runs the Web site fungifest.com, that we might have oversprayed. "Unless you really know what you're doing, about 50% of people fail," she notes.)

Raintree Nursery's shiitakes, however, seemed supercharged. Within a week, we harvested three oaky-flavored giants, the biggest five inches across (they were delicious raw, drizzled with olive oil). More memorable, however, was the same company's "Tee Pee Roll Oyster Kit." Yes, as in "toilet paper": This kit required us to saturate seven full rolls of tissue in hot water and pour mushroom spawn into each tube. As this science project progressed, the wet toilet paper melted into heaps and became covered with masses of white webs. But after about five weeks, the webs turned into oyster mushrooms, and we harvested a dozen big ones that made a scrumptious soup.

Better yet were the kits from Gourmet Mushroom Products. Less than two weeks after they arrived, we were able to slice 18 shiitakes from one of the blocks; they were firm, with a woodsy scent and four-star flavor. The other kit was for a mushroom we'd never heard of -- pom pom blanc, or bearded mushroom. As instructed, we drizzled these puffy five-inch growths with butter and baked them in the oven, and found them light and delicate, unlike any mushroom we'd ever tasted.

And the best news of all: At less than $17 each, these were our least expensive kits, easily making them not only our Best Overall, but Best Value. We figured that, with shiitakes going for $12 a pound in stores, it would take just one more crop for us to start undercutting our grocer. And even if that doesn't happen, we might stick with the home-grown mushrooms anyway. These simply had more flavor than anything from a store. Maybe it's because they're fresh. Or maybe it's because we grew them ourselves.

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