Mushrooms are delicious and nutritious, packed with protein, vitamins, and antioxidants. They add a depth of flavor to dishes, and you can use them as a focal point in vegetarian meals. You may have noticed there are more types on the grocery store shelves than ever before, and you may have also heard that you can just grow them at home.
While mushrooms are not plants—they are the fruiting bodies of fungi, which are in a different kingdom entirely—you can “grow” them at your house, in your kitchen, or in your garden. Some are much more difficult than others, but specialty kits have made a few species simple.
We’ll explain which are easiest to cultivate and how to get started with them. You’ll be adding fresh fungi to your meals in no time.
The Short Answer
When it comes to cultivating edible mushrooms at home, the process has never been easier. There are countless grow kits online for oysters and other species, and you can venture into the realm of more complicated techniques too, if you wish.
Some thrive in versatile conditions and emerge quickly, which is what makes them so adaptable to home growing. Others, like the often-foraged chicken of the woods, require specific trees and the better part of a year. Still even more difficult to cultivate are morels, which is at this time a true fool’s errand, unless there’s a major scientific breakthrough.
The Long Answer
The easiest species to cultivate are going to be fast, adaptable to a wide variety of conditions, and affordable, with a variety of kits and instructions available online for beginners.
These options are a great way for novices to get into the hobby before exploring more advanced varieties. They’re also easy-peasy for someone who’s not too interested in learning the mechanics but just wants fresh mushrooms for dinner.
Let’s take a look at four of the easiest: oyster, wine cap, shiitake, and lion’s mane.
Oysters
Oyster mushrooms are simply the easiest varieties to grow. If you ever received a standard grow kit—the kind where you just spray a block of substrate with water and mushrooms shoot out over the course of a few days—it was most likely oysters.
The Pleurotus genus includes roughly 40 species of oysters in both tropical and temperate regions around the world. Many of these are cultivated and eaten. These are gilled species that often emerge in clusters with caps that expand as the fruiting bodies reach their mature size.
Oysters thrive in multiple substrates, including straw, sawdust, and cardboard. They grow super fast, possibly ready to harvest in a matter of weeks. Their preferred temperature range isn’t far from typical room temperature. It’s no wonder why oysters have become the standard for grow kits.
Typically, these grow kits involve an already-colonized brick of substrate. All the grower needs to do is spray the substrate each day or so with water to keep it moist, and wait. You will often find these Pleurotus kits in three colors: golden, pink, and blue.
These three species will have basically the same growing conditions; they are just slightly different in flavor, texture, and of course color.
Golden
P. citrinopileatus, or the golden oyster, is a bright and cheery shade of yellow. The caps are solidly yellow, while the stem and gills are a lighter shade of yellow and almost white. Additionally, the caps are round and smooth, with an indentation in the center.
They have a somewhat nutty and citrusy taste. Their flavor is more aromatic than other oyster varieties. When cooked, they lose a bit of their color and fade slightly to brown.
Pink
P. djamor, or the pink oyster, has a very distinct appearance. They are truly pink! The caps and stems are a bold shade of salmon, sometimes appearing more pastel and sometimes leaning toward neon.
Unlike their golden and blue counterparts, the pink oyster caps aren’t as perfectly round and have more of a ridged appearance. Pink oysters also have a woodier texture and flavor. Because of their hardiness, they have a “meatier” appeal in the kitchen.
Blue
Finally, the “blue” oyster usually refers to P. ostreatus, which is truthfully just the standard oyster mushroom. This species does lean towards a blue color, though it’s a grayish blue. Blue oysters are similar to golden when it comes to their rounded caps.
These are reliable classics for anyone who’s a little shy in the kitchen. You can use them interchangeably with button mushrooms that you’d get from the grocery store. They shine in many dishes and have a classic, shroomy taste
Wine Cap
If you’re interested in growing fungi in the garden, your best bet is probably wine caps, Stropharia rugosoannulata. This is a “toadstool” type—the kind that pops out of the ground with a classic stem and cap shape.
Wine caps are often called garden giants, and they’re perfect for gardeners who have a slightly shady patch of garden real estate. You can even try growing them in your pathways.
All you really need to do is put down alternating layers of substrate and wine cap spawn, with a final layer of substrate on top. Wood chips, sawdust, or a combo of both should work. Keep this area moist but not soggy, and in a few weeks, you should see wine caps emerging.
Wine caps get big fast if you don’t harvest them, and some even call them “godzilla mushrooms.” They’re very similar in both texture and flavor to portobellos, so you can use them in place of portobellos in the kitchen.
Shiitake
Shiitakes, Lentinula edodes, are popular in Asian cuisine, and you’ve probably seen them at a nearby grocery store. These are a step above oysters in difficulty, but you can grow them in various ways.
Instead of buying a grow kit, you can try inoculating your own spawn block. You can also buy the various components of a grow chamber online, and you can even try propagating them from store-bought.
If you’re up for the challenge, you can experiment with growing shiitakes on a log with plug spawn that you can buy online. This will take a bit more time and finesse.
Shiitakes have an earthy, smoky taste. They’re also pretty meaty and excellent to use as a meat substitute or to bulk up meals. There are countless ways to prepare them, whether they’re an ingredient, a side dish, or the main focus of a meal.
Lion’s Mane
Lion’s mane, Hericium erinaceus, is totally different in appearance from the mushrooms most people are familiar with. A “tooth fungus,” lion’s mane appears to be a large white mass with spines hanging down.
In the wild, they’re found emerging on the side of trees in summer and fall. In the home, they’re often produced in grow kits. Not only are these super easy to cultivate at home with standard pre-made kits, but they also taste like crab meat.
The crabby flavor of lion’s mane makes its uses in the kitchen obvious. You can use it as a meat substitute, and more specifically, as a crab substitute, preparing “crab” cakes or “crab” soup. These fun and unusual fungal fruits even have a crab-meat-like texture.
And like oysters, cultivating lion’s mane in the home is as easy as ordering a grow kit, spraying it with water each day, and then waiting for your harvest.
Final Thoughts
Online retailers have made it easier than ever to grow mushrooms, mostly through simple spray and grow kits but also with spawn that you can layer in the garden or use to inoculate your own substrate block. If you’re interested in getting started, look into oyster, wine cap, shiitake, and lion’s mane.
