Grow kit difficulty levels represent time, steps, and flexibility
We never get tired of feeling rewarded when we see generous clusters of towering Black King Oysters or Blue Oyster mushrooms with dark and smoky caps.
You can feel the same sense of fulfillment with your own grow kits. You can now choose which mushrooms you want to grow depending on the challenge you desire. We have mushrooms for beginner growers and those who want to take it up a notch for fruitbodies with distinct flavours and textures.
We determined the difficulty based on three factors: time to grow, the steps to follow, and how strictly you must follow those steps.
Most of our grow kits are labelled a “beginner’s difficulty”. They are the Pink, Blue, Snow and Italian Oysters, along with the Lion’s Mane.
The Pink Oysters are the easiest to grow of the bunch. If you follow the instructions half the time, you should still get at least two harvests of mushrooms. Snow and Italian Oysters are also flexible with the temperature but try to keep it at 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) maximum.
Blue Oysters will grow with white caps in warmer temperatures. Lion’s Mane mushrooms will grow more in branches like cauliflower instead of a pompom. Both mushrooms are still great to eat despite those appearances. However, Lion’s Mane mushrooms may turn yellow sooner when the temperature is hotter.
Mushrooms will grow quicker in ideal conditions as well. Pink Oysters are our fastest fruiting mushroom. They take about a week to fruit, compared to the rest of the beginner’s mushrooms, which take between 10 to 14 days.
The Black King Oyster, Chestnut and Pioppino mushrooms are an intermediate difficulty. These require more attention and patience to achieve impressive clusters of our more premium mushrooms.
Black King Oysters are exciting mushrooms to try because of how big the stems become in such little time. You have to mist the humidity tent and maintain a consistently cool room temperature for around 18 days before the mushrooms pin. They should then turn into a massive cluster with thick stems within days.
Pioppino and Chestnut mushrooms both have a pronounced nutty flavour and have pleasant chocolate brown caps as they first appear. They take at least two weeks for primordia (baby mushrooms) to form and another three to five days to fruit.
These mushrooms are not currently available to order online but you can visit us in person or contact us if you are interested in growing them. We have instruction manuals made for them as well.
Please be consistent with intermediate-level mushrooms. They can potentially stop growing whenever the temperature is too hot, the air is too dry or the block is not getting enough oxygen.
They can also turn into the stars of meals and decorate your home when you are consistent, so fear not; it will be worth the patience and attention in the end. You can visit our grow kit page whenever you decide which mushrooms you want to try fruiting. As always, contact us if you have any more questions, or read more of our grow kit blogs for added information.