December came, bringing snow and unusually cold winds. Like all good vegetable gardeners, I tucked my garden in for the winter, putting the plants to bed, cutting some back, covering some with freeze cloth. The brave garlic pokes valiantly green above the soil.

It will grow again in the spring, I told myself. Then I retreated into the work of coordinating the seed orders and planning the garden for 2026.

Three weeks later, the mushroom kits arrived in the mail. Two of them said to refrigerate for 4 weeks. However, the other two said OPEN IMMEDIATELY.

Immediately? But the website said I could refrigerate them all! I thought.

Ten minutes later I had unboxed the two mushroom kits and set them up on the grow tower. Shiitake and pink oyster.

And so began my adventure in mushroom growing.

Taking Some Help from the Pros

There are a few different ways to grow mushrooms at home. Since this is my first attempt, I chose the indoor tabletop farm method, which means that a mushroom grower pre-inoculated a grow block and all I needed to do was keep it warm and moist. Eventually, I’d like to try the plug method where you purchase inoculated plugs that you yourself drill into logs.

FUN MUSHROOM FACT – did you know that different mushrooms prefer different types of wood? For instance, shiitake mushrooms like alder wood while oyster mushrooms prefer aspens. Reishi mushrooms are very picky, preferring to grow only on hemlock!

Inoculating a log takes practice and time. If you choose that method, you likely won’t get mushrooms for a full year. Tabletop, pre-inoculated blocks let you start right away and I thought a little practice would be a good idea.

What do I do now? I wondered.

I’m one of those plant parents who likes to hover. Every morning I mist my seed trays and peer into the soil, anxious to notice the first little hint of green. When my seedlings emerge, I talk to them. I offer encouragement and praise.

My coworkers avoid my office during seed starting season.

Mushrooms, it turns out, do not require that level of care. Not three days after I lightly watered the shiitake block I had little fruiting mushrooms.

Here is the shiitake block after 3 days.

And the pink oysters a few more days later …

And a few more after that.

Learning When to Harvest

Through this whole process I did nothing except mist with water. I probably couldn’t have stopped them from growing if I tried.

Which introduced the next question: How do I know when these mushrooms are ready to harvest?

You can pick shiitake at almost any stage, but they are best when you can feel the gills beneath the cap. Premium taste occurs when the gills are about 80% open. Smaller shiitake travel better but have less flavor. Large shiitake are tougher, but excellent for grilling.

Naturally, this made me wonder at what percentage gill openness commercially available shiitake are sold in market. Turns out that’s not really something you can google, despite my best efforts. However, an educated guess would be that like much of our fruit, they are picked underripe so they will travel better. When you have supply chains that stretch across the country, travel hardiness is an important factor that farmers consider when selling a crop.

Being near Kennett Square does mean we’re at an advantage when it comes to mushroom freshness, but I think few things can top picking a mushroom from your own windowsill and putting it in a stir-fry so I immediately began to dream of doing exactly that. Less than 2 minutes from harvest to cooking? Yes please.

And in fact, it worked out exactly that. I picked about a pound of shiitake that were sincerely delicious.

Experimenting with Growing More

On to the next question. I’m a gardener, so the first thing I think when I see a cool plant (or mushroom) is “how do I make more of you?” Ask any gardener you know, we all do it. So naturally I started to think through how I might make more mushrooms.

The grow block for the shiitake is inoculated with enough mushrooms for 2 to 3 flushes of harvest. The first one is largest, with declines with all following flushes. Once the first harvest is past, I can allow the block to fully dry out and refrigerate it for up to two weeks. Then I can soak it in cold water and wait for it to fruit again.

I know what you’re thinking. Can you boost production by allowing one or two of your mushrooms to sporulate and re-inoculate the grow medium?

Maybe. I’m certainly going to try. For some varieties of mushroom it only takes a few weeks for the spores to colonize a grow medium, forming hyphae that later fruit into the mushrooms we eat. I think the biggest question is how long the block itself will provide enough food for the mushroom to grow. Either way, I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens.

Once the block is fully spent it can be composted — which I’m pretty excited about, I think it could make an excellent addition to my compost pile.

Stay tuned as we continue our mushroom growing adventure!