Look at these bad boys!!
My darling brother bought me the best present ever. A grow-your-own, pink oyster mushroom kit. For a few years now I have been experiencing the joy of collecting wild mushrooms, much of which is documented on this blog, but growing has not been a part of that hobby. It is now!
The kit comes with a bag filled with hay and comprehensive instructions. When you are ready to start, you send off for the spores, ensuring they are at maximum viability. Once you receive the spores, you prepare the bag and distribute the spores within it, then you pack it all back up in the box and leave it for three weeks for the mycelium to grow. There was mycelium growing in my bedroom!!
Once the three weeks is (finally!!) up, you open the box, stand up the bag and mist it a couple of times a day until you are ready to harvest. My mushrooms were practically jumping out of the box! Within a day there were many, many 'pins' (baby mushrooms) poking out of the growing holes. Within three days they were fully grown mushrooms. I practically watched them grow (although that may be because I didn't have much on that week)!
As someone who truly loves mushrooms, it was unbridled joy to monitor, tend and harvest them. You were supposed to harvest them before they started spraying their spores everywhere, but I couldn't resist letting them go to full maturity. I could literally see clouds of spores billowing out of the box. What fun!
I have just harvested my first 'flush' (see, I've got all the mushroom-growing lingo down) and apparently there are four or even five flushes to go! Fantastic.
I have so far made two lovely pink-tinged dinners with them, and I've still got loads left. Hopefully the next flush will cool its heels a bit, so I can make my way through the first lot.
This kit offers you not only the possibility of adding stunningly beautiful, unusual ingredients to your dishes, it provides the daily delight of seeing mushrooms develop through their life cycle. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
There are all kinds of different mushrooms available, but I ask you, what could really be better than pink oysters?
Get your own growing kit here!
If you would like to see these mushrooms in action on the dinner table, check out my Miso Umami Broth with Buckwheat Noodles, Pak Choy & Pink Oyster Mushrooms or a particularly lovely recipe for Buckwheat-brown Rice Tempura of Pink Oyster Mushrooms (whole grain!).
Wow they look gorgeous! I never knew growing mushrooms was so easy. Did they taste as good as wild ones?
They were delish, but I think St. George's mushrooms still have the edge!
Beautiful pictures. There won't be mushroom on the plate for anything else.
There's always room on my plate!
Brilliant pictures. Do pink taste any different from white ones?
I'd love to say they tasted pink, but they were basically the same as the regular ones. But they do look extremely cool so I can conclusively say they were much more enjoyable to eat!
Hello ,
I have recently started growing some pink oyster mushrooms and they look amazing up close!
I however do not know when to harvest them, are there signs I should look for? I read somewhere that when the caps start to point out they should be picked.
Thank you in advance
🙂
Hey Valon!
In the final picture on the post you can see how mine looked right before I picked them. Once your mushrooms become fully mature, they will start to spray mushroom spores - you'll actually be able to see the clouds of spores in the air. You're supposed to pick them before that point, but I couldn't resist seeing that amazing sight!
They grow very quickly and generally I harvest when they become a reasonable size, about 10cm. The edges also start to flatten out a bit when they're mature.
Do let me know what dishes you make with them!