While walking around sometime in June, I saw a flyer for All Things Fungi - a festival about, well, all things fungi. At that point in time, I was still in my tomato obsession phase but found it interesting enough to snap a photo to remember. Lucky are those who live in Sussex.

Poster for All Things Fungi Festival 2024. The flyer lists various activities such as UV night walks. glass blowing, lectures and food trucks.

This got me thinking about whether I could grow my own mushrooms, and how such a process even happens.

Brief fungi facts

Mushrooms are just one part of the fungus. They’re formed from hyphae (which are small rope-like structures that make up most of fungi). The network of hyphae - the mycelium - grows throughout the soil or whatever substrate they have colonised.

For instance, the largest organism on Earth is an Armillaria ostoyae that occupies roughly 10 square kilometers.

Mushrooms can pop up in the same spot for years as long as the underlying mycelium is sill there.

What it means when we get a grow kit

A grow kit is essentially a block of fully colonised substrate that has been taken over by the mycelium and is now ready for fruiting (i.e. growing mushrooms). People who want to get more involved in the mushroom cultivation process may create their own substrates and wait for the mycelium to colonise it.

There are several mushroom grow kit providers in Singapore such as Bewilder, Kin Yan Agrotech, Fogo Fungi and Mushroom Kingdom. I decided to get the Kin Yan Pink Oyster kit on Shopee as it was the only kit that appeared to be in stock at the time.

Growing process

It took about 5 days between receiving my kit and harvesting my first flush of mushrooms.

Day 0 (12 Sep 2024)

The instructions on the kit said to cut an X through the plastic and to spray the block with water 3 times a day (the kit came with a small mister).

Mushroom grow kit with an X slit cut into the plastic to allow mushrooms to grow

The reason we need to do this is that the Pink Oyster Mushroom (pleurotus djamor) has a pinning humidity of 95%.

I also scratched part of the surface with a fork as some websites recommended that for their grow kits, but I didn’t really see how it affected mushroom growth at all.

Day 3 (15 Sep 2024)

Little pins start to appear after what felt like 3 days of pointless misting.

The “pinning humidity” mentioned earlier refers to the humidity needed to trigger mushroom development. There are some slight differences between mushroom primordia and pins, but they’re both stages that occur before the mushroom properly fruits. For more about stages of mushroom growth, check this out.

Pink oyster mushroom primordia start to appear

Day 4 (16 Sep 2024)

They grow up so fast. For oyster mushrooms, these two things matter a lot:

  1. Fresh Air Exchange (place your shrooms in a well-ventilated area)
  2. Humidity

The humidity needed for fruiting is lower than that of pinning. Pleurotus djamor fruits at around 85-90% humidity.

Due to Singapore’s humidity (which hovers around the mid-80s), I got away with being less diligent about misting (I only really misted twice a day). If you are in a less humid area, you may need to create a humidity tent for your mushrooms.

pink oyster mushrooms fruiting from a grow kit. Some mushrooms are beginning to show their caps.

Day 5 (17 Sep 2024) - 150g

First harvest! The mushrooms on my kit grew quite unevenly, so I decided to harvest some on this day and some on the next day.

Pink oyster mushrooms growing

This was what they looked like in the morning on the 17th.

Pink oyster mushrooms on a red weighing scale

I harvested my first round around 11pm that night and got 150g of mushrooms.

After harvesting, I put them in a paper bag lined with some paper towels to absorb moisture.

Day 6 (18 Sep 2024) - 140g

I decided to harvest the rest of the mushrooms a day later, but later regretted that decision.

I got about 140g from this harvest. The mushrooms I harvested a day later were less pink, and had more ruffled gills. They were still edible, but not as tender as the mushrooms I harvested the day before.

Pastel pink oyster mushrooms on a red weighing scale

For a clearer comparison, I took a photo of them side by side:

Comparison of pink oyster mushrooms harvested at different times from the same grow kit. The ones harvested earlier are more pink.

Keeping the grow kit going

Each grow kit can yield multiple flushes of mushrooms. The grow kit’s instructions said to cut another X on the back of the kit, but I personally found that the mushrooms continued growing along the edges of old growth.

I continued spraying the grow kit to keep it moist.

Cooking the mushrooms + subsequent harvests

After trying pink oyster mushrooms in tomato hotpot and in stir-fries, my sense is that they are best when fried till crispy with some garlic and butter.

Fried pink oyster mushrooms

Pink oyster mushrooms get described as ham/bacon-adjacent. They don’t taste exactly like that, but I would say that’s the closest flavour that approximates a pink oyster mushroom before you actually try one.

The mushroom yield per flush diminishes over time as the substrate’s nutrients get used up. Interestingly, my mushrooms after the first flush were all white instead of pink. I’m not sure about what caused the change.

Here are some of the subsequent flushes and the dishes that were made with them.

12 Oct 2024 - 30g, omelette with chives and mushroom

I gave these to Sroyon and his friend (packaged in an old yogurt container).

Oyster mushrooms in a yogurt tub

They turned it an omelette with chives and mushroom that was part of a very tasty lunch spread =)

Table with three dishes: rice vermicelli in soup, oyster mushroom omelette with chives, stir-fried bok choy Photo credits to Sroyon!

9 Nov 2024 - 10g, mushroom palak paneer

The final round was quite sad. I went to my friend’s place to learn how to make daal and palak paneer, but didn’t have enough mushrooms for them to constitute their own dish.

A very sad 10 grams of mushrooms

We ended up tearing the mushrooms into shreds, and threw them into the palak paneer to cook. This ended up being surprisingly good as the mushrooms soaked up the flavour of the sauce while remaining somewhat toothsome and chewy.

Palak paneer simmering on the stove in a wok

A bowl of basmati rice topped with mushroom palak paneer and daal

Our meal :D

What I’ve done with my used-up grow kit

I’ve crumbled up part of my mushroom kit to mix into soil as mushroom compost can improve moisture retention - but be careful to avoid using it on acid-loving plants as mushroom compost is slightly alkaline.

I’ve also crumbled up part of the kit to mix with coffee grounds and cardboard to see if it’ll continue growing.

Was this cheaper than just buying the same thing at the supermarket?

TL;DR: No.

The kit cost me SGD14.40 (while it was on sale). I got about 330g of mushrooms from September to November. Pink oyster mushrooms from the same farm – Kin Yan Agrotech – costs SGD3.34 for 130g. For 330g of mushrooms, it would’ve cost me SGD8.47 to buy it from the supermarket.

In that sense, it probably wasn’t worth it. However, I’d say that the entertainment value of getting to cook some freshly grown mushrooms was worth more than the difference in price. It’s also hard to compare mushrooms that I’ve just picked off my own kit vs ones that’ve been packed and delivered to the supermarket.

(Is this delusional coping? Probably.)