Courtesy of Green LA Girl and Back to the Roots, I received one of Back to the Roots Pearl Oyster Mushroom growing kits. Basically its a box with a bag inside composed of recycled coffee grounds and mushroom spores.
Day 1
The instructions for the kit were pretty easy. You can see in the picture above, where I cut a cross in the bag. After that, I soaked the whole bag in water for 24 hours to make sure everything was nice and moist. Returning the bag to the box all I had to do was mist under the flaps of the bag twice a day and wait for them to grow.
Mushrooms Sprout! (Day 9)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t there for when they sprouted. I was off on my trip to the Bay Area and Alicia was watering my mushrooms at the time. She told me she had misted them the previous evening and when she woke up the next morning they had sprouted! After that they continued to grow fairly quickly. By the time I got home the next day they were almost ready to harvest.
Day 10
I ended up having to harvest this first batch a little earlier than I would have liked, but luckily I still have the other side of the bag to grow. Tonight is Day 1 for the second batch in fact. According to the Back to the Roots website, I may even be able to get additional batches out of the same bag (only the first two are expected). Even so, the mushrooms were pretty decent sized when I harvested them, and quite tasty in the Japanese style curry I used them in.
Day 11 (right before harvesting)
