I’ve wanted to try growing my own edible mushrooms for a while now, so I bought this mushroom grow kit from MidwestGrowKits.com! It only took a few weeks, and it was a very fun experience.
As an added benefit, I got to try Pink Oyster mushrooms (For the first time!) on a delicious breakfast sandwich. This was definitely a big win in my book!
It came in a plastic wrapped block with some directions, so I just sliced open the bag to introduce some air and kick it into fruiting, and misted the bag and box heavily. You want to make sure the mushrooms have plenty of water to drink, to grow big and strong!
Mushrooms are kind of like us. They have all the food they need inside this bag, so we just need to make sure they have the right amount of air and water to grow to adulthood.
After this, I just put it back in its box, kept it wet, and put it up in my closet. I also made a “humidity dome” out of a plastic bag with holes poked in it, to ensure it didn’t dry out too quickly, but still had air to breathe.
A few days later, I came back to check on it and found these little guys growing!
Another few days;
I accidentally let them get a bit too dry, they could look better. I made sure to keep up more with misting, and here’s how they bounced back:
They came back completely! Once they looked a bit more like this;
I finally felt it was time to harvest them. They remind me of little roses!
I picked them off the block early in the morning, and wound up with almost exactly a quarter pound of fresh Pink Oyster Mushrooms, for a total of $20. Plus I had a blast learning and watching them grow!
I will totally do this again. Until then, here are the 2 meals we made using our beautiful mushrooms 🙂
We just seasoned them with salt, pepper and garlic, and threw them on some bread with avocado. It was great!
I hope this encourages someone to start their own gourmet grow! It’s incredibly simple, affordable and fun. Shout out to Midwest Grow Kits!
Today, I received my Pink Oyster Grow Kit from Midwest Grow Kits. These little guys grow fast, look beautiful, and taste delicious. I’m going to update this blog daily, documenting my progress with this grow kit from start to finish. Stick around and let’s see what happens! 🍄
This is what comes in the box, along with a flyer containing instructions. It lists 2 different ways that we can grow this out, I’m going with the easier option.
Here’s how the bag looks right out of the box. The bag is completely sealed, except for the white filter at the top, which allows for fresh air exchange. The block inside the bag would have started out brown, but now that it’s fully colonized with mycelium, it’s fully coated in white. There are some orange spots near the top as well, and that’s okay! It’s just a natural growth hormone, produced by the mycelium when it’s ready for mushroom production! It’s a great sign.
Now, I need to give it air in order to trigger mushroom production. To do this, I’m going to cut a large U-shaped flap in the front of the bag, like so:
You want to cut into the mycelium as well, just a little bit. Wakes it up a little!
It needs to be kept in a decently moist environment to really thrive. To do this, I’m going to use the provided water mister to spray the whole bag, and the entire box that the bag came in. Then I will put the whole bag back in the box.
Finally, I’ll take a regular sized plastic bag, spray the inside of it, and put it on top of the entire box, in order to create a humidity-retaining dome. Here’s how it looks now:
And that’s it! I’ll leave it in a spot in my kitchen that gets indirect sunlight, and within 7-10 days, fresh mushrooms should emerge.
In the final days of December 2023, I had a very sudden realization: I wasn’t happy with who I was. Having dealt with depression and anxiety for about 20 years by this point, I was no stranger to this feeling, but I was fed up. I never wanted to go out, be with people, go to work, I never really wanted to do anything. I would suck it up and force myself to do things sometimes, but it was harder than it should have been. All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and hide from the world, all the time. I was never even sure what I was hiding from, I just knew I didn’t enjoy much, and I was sick of it. I had to make a change.
This wasn’t my first time trying to make a change. I’ve tried all the classics, like regular exercise, healthy diet and talk therapy. These all helped me immensely to become the person I am today, but I still had the lingering feeling that just wouldn’t go away. I just didn’t feel like I was a part of, or had a place in, this world. I had heard of people having success with mushrooms, so I started to look into that option. It made me nervous to even think about, but it made me more nervous to think about continuing to live without a major change. And besides, I had tried shrooms a couple times in my younger years, how bad could this be? I decided I wanted to try this option, but this left me with one question: Where would I get shrooms?
Apparently, the world had heard my shouts into the void, and decided to give me a little tease. On December 31, 2023, I went into work and ran into a coworker I hadn’t seen since before the holidays. He pulled me aside, saying he had a little gift he’d been waiting to give me, and pulled out a small jar filled with shrooms, about 2 grams total. He handed it to me, explaining how his friend had grown them, and given them out as Christmas presents. I was blessed enough to receive some as well, and my journey truly began.
That night, New Years Eve, my girlfriend and I split the mushrooms I’d been given, and spent time listening to music, painting, and finally, watching the ball drop. For the first time in years, I felt at peace. Like a deep fog had been lifted from my mind, and I could just BE. Be present, be mindful, be myself, be part of the world, be part of the universe. I could finally live and breathe without the weight of depression on my shoulders, for the first time in years. We had a magical night together, and I was excited for 2024.
This wild coincidence felt like some kind of divine timing, like the universe telling me that I was right, this was the path that I should be taking. My issues weren’t quite solved yet, though. After all, I didn’t actually have a source for more mushrooms, this was a one time thing.
One thing my coworker mentioned stuck with me though, his friend grew them? How? At the time, I had no clue that someone could just do that! Obviously mushrooms grow from somewhere, but the concept of just growing them at home was brand new to me.
So, I found myself a mushroom grow guide on reddit, and began trying to learn the entire process. This guide that I found was very detailed, and I mean DETAILED. It had so much information, that I was completely overwhelmed. It seemed impossible, I just didn’t think I could do it. Over the next couple weeks, I spent hours reading and re-reading the guide, slowly getting comfortable, but trying to make sure I had a full grasp on it. I had many conversations with people on the forum, and asked many questions, sometimes getting different answers. Every grower has their own technique, it seems!
2-3 weeks of constant googling later, and I felt prepared. I finally had all the steps memorized, knew what I needed, and knew where to get it all, for the best prices even. I bit the bullet, nervous that I may have just wasted $150, but excited to try out a new hobby. A few days later it all arrived, and it was finally time to start the process.
2 months later, I had my first full harvest, and a head full of new knowledge and amazement. The main thing I had learned, was that the whole process was actually SUPER easy! I had massively over prepared, worried about nothing, and even spent a little bit more money than I really needed to. It was so easy, that the hardest part was just having patience. Once I had all the materials, I only had to do about 2 hours of work, and 2 months of just waiting for things to happen. It was so easy, that I wrote the simplified guide I linked above, just to help other people in the same position I was in.
Now that my harvest was done and dried, I found myself with 2 ounces of product. This would have cost me somewhere around $4-500 from less legal sources, yet I had only put in about $150. I was thrilled! This was so much more than enough to begin my experiments, enough to last me years! So I began my journey. I put myself on a schedule of taking 0.2 grams, every 3 days.
On those days, I’d come home from work and take my 0.2 grams. I’d put on some music, and begin journaling about myself, my feelings, the ways I’d been living, the things I was sick of, everything. Just analyzing my entire life, and allowing myself to be vulnerable and open with, well, myself. And it felt great, every time. I wasn’t necessarily having grandiose, life changing epiphanies or anything, but I could feel my thought patterns somehow healing for the better. The best way I can think to put it, is like this: If my mind was a business, I was just the manager, lost in the daily grind and operations of keeping things afloat. But when I took my mushroom micro dose, I was a consultant, brought in to look around and optimize workflow.
After each time, I’d feel a decent amount better, but I wasn’t having any big “aha!” Moments, like I had expected. But after about a month of continuing this, I realized that I was indeed changing. I was spending less time in my bed, hiding from the world. I found myself waking up excited to get started on some new project, or even go some place, like the thrift store or grocery store. While I used to think of these tasks as draining chores, I suddenly found myself with a brand new perspective, happy to be around others and taking care of myself.
A few more months of this, and I realize I can hold conversations without second guessing my words. I realize I can just leave my house and go to the store, without even a second thought. No more hyping myself up to do a quick grocery run, no more rehearsing my order in line at the coffee shop. I was finally living the way I always imagined regular, healthy people do, the way my depression had always stopped me from living. At long last, I became a part of this world again, and I have mushrooms to thank for this transformation. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was the best thing I have ever done for myself, and the effects have been long-lasting.
Mushrooms gave me my life back. Thanks for reading my story, I hope it helps someone out there achieve the same results I had.
Disclaimer: This page is not meant to be a full-on guide to growing anything. This page is meant to simplify the process, eliminating as much of the guess work and research for your initial setup as I can. This guide relies on the most affordable mycology supply website I’ve found, Midwest Grow Kits.
This guide is written for people who are following this detailed shroom-growing guide found on the subreddit, r/unclebens, except we’ll just use premade grain jars instead of Uncle Bens rice bags, to make it even simpler. The r/unclebens guide is the best guide I’ve come across, so it is still a perfect reference.
I created this page because when I first read through that guide, it was SO incredibly detailed, that the whole process seemed more complicated than it actually is.
Here is a simplified list of Everything you will need for the process, along with direct links to the products themselves, organized by source.
70% Isopropyl Alcohol from Amazon – Spray on and wipe everything involved, including your gloves. Cleanliness here is possibly the most important factor in making it to harvest.
3x 24oz Grain Jars from Midwest Grow Kits – Inject each jar with 2-3cc of the spore syringe. These jars have higher chances of success than rice bags do, and less variables such as moisture content. Flame sterilize your needle with a lighter before each injection for best chances of successful colonization.
Premade Substrate from Midwest Grow Kits – Once your grain jars are fully colonized and white, mix one jar with an equal amount of this dirt-like substance in a 6qt shoebox container.
6qt ‘Shoebox’ Containers from Amazon – (It’d be better to buy 3 at a cheap store in real life. You can get 3 for $3. This link is just the best deal amazon had.)the perfect size for your mushroom-growing environment, to ensure you can keep the humidity levels just right. Sounds complicated, but comes easily with experience. (and following the guide on r/unclebens)
Fine Water Mister from Amazon – Helpful for when your substrate dries out a bit. Water drops hitting the mushrooms can harm your process, finer water droplets are safer.
Mushroom Dehydrator from Midwest Grow Kits – Every day, a new grower thinks they can dry their harvested shrooms in an oven, or an air-fryer. Sometimes this works, sometimes it burns their entire stash, leaving them with nothing to show for all their time, money and effort! Better safe than sorry, the way I see it. (Side note, I was using a dehydrator from amazon, but found this one to be much better due to it being custom built for this purpose.)
Dessicant Packets from Amazon – Throw your harvest shrooms in a jar and put a couple of these in there with them, to ensure they stay dry for years to come.
Digital Scale from Amazon – For weighing out your doses once you have dried your harvest. Very important to your experience, mushrooms can vary greatly in weight, leaving you with wildly different experiences, if you dose without a scale!
And there you have it! At the time of writing this, and where I am located currently, the grand total of this guide is $138. That’s a pretty solid price to have ounces, even pounds of beautiful, freshly harvested product. Enjoy 🙂
Feel free to reach out in the comments or contact our email with any questions, I’m always happy to help!
*Note: These All-in-One (AIO) Bags would be an even easier method than what I listed above, essentially combining the substrate and grain into one big bag. You would inject this bag and just wait, basically. I have seen little success with this method, others have had great harvests. If you’ve got the money to spare, can’t hurt to try, right?
*Another Note: Cheaper methods do exist, you could make your own substrate and grain spawn at home for even cheaper, it just requires more learning and some additional equipment. If you’re a beginner who feels intimidated by the process, just stick to the premade basics!
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