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See why.Mushroom Growing Kit
Gardeners might enjoy this mushroom growing kit, but it didn’t quite deliver on its promises.
What You Need To Know
You can’t get any more local than food you grow yourself on spent coffee grounds. That’s the idea behind this mushroom growing kit, which claims to grow oyster mushrooms in as few as 10 days: Just cut into the cardboard box and spritz the coffee grounds, which are injected with mushroom spawn, with water twice a day. After harvest you can turn over the box and grow a second batch. We placed two kits in the test kitchen away from direct sunlight as advised. After 10 days, the mushrooms had sprouted but remained too small to bother cooking—that is, until one weekend when we left them in a room with a humidifier. By the following Tuesday, the boxes had exploded into big, beautiful mushrooms, though by this point it had been a month since we started. So is it worth it? Only if you enjoy the gardening process, since the kit won’t save you any money: Oyster mushrooms sell for about $12 per pound and our $19.95 kits each yielded two 1/2-pound batches.
Everything We Tested
Recommended with reservations
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
This compact little mushroom garden produces flavorful oyster mushrooms. Though it claims to yield up to 1½ pounds of mushrooms in as few as 10 days, our kit took nearly a month to grow 1 pound. As with most gardening, the growing time and crop amount will vary depending on growing conditions. This is a fun project that produces high-quality, great-tasting mushrooms, but if you’re looking for a bargain you’re better off buying mushrooms at the supermarket.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
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