h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm tempted now to get myself a kit for growing mushers at home. I buy plenty of them and even the ordinary ones ain't exactly cheap. Plus, one of the people in that Food Programme said the mushrooms you get from the shop can often be a patch on fresh mushers. It's always the case (except for things that have to mature) that anything picked fresh is going to taste better than something that's been stored and transported. I have a spot in the apartment that I think would be perfect for them.

Yeah, I've seen mushroom kits before that include an oak log (or other tree, not quite sure). You drill holes (or maybe the holes are predrilled) and fill them with some gunk that contains the spoors in a mulch-like medium and in a few days/weeks you have some tasty fungi.

Yeah, a quick google shows that I'm thinking of a kit for shiitake mushrooms. Some have glass bells that go over them which makes them look quite decorative.

I certainly wouldn't eat any new mushrooms I'd found in the woods without an expert. But the ones I know to be safe I've eaten in the past.

The ones I've been suspicious about I've fed to .... no, that's just a plot from Midsummer Murders.

You can get pre-drilled and spawned logs, you can get dowels that are infected with spores to insert into logs outdoors, you can get the stuff they grow in and rye grains filled infected with spores to grow from, or just a box with everything ready to go. That seems like a good place to start, although I'm tempted to get some of the dowels and look for newly fallen logs at the bottom of the complex where the trees used to be before they dug the new storm drain.

I wish I knew someone here to go mushrooming with--right now, there's fruiting fungus *everywhere*.

I'd love to go truffling