It’s darn cold outside, and dark, too. I miss my garden—both the produce from it and the time I spend outside. To bring a little vegetable gardening back into my life I’ve been experimenting with some growing under lights. And to start, I’m growing mushrooms indoors.

There are several mushroom kits on the market that provide a growing medium pre-loaded with mushroom “seeds.” Seed isn’t the right term, of course, because these are mushrooms, which don’t have seeds. The mushroom version of a seed would be a spore, and spores germinate to become mycelium, which are flat moldy-looking interconnecting bodies that exist below and along the growing medium’s surface. From this mycelium arise fruiting bodies, which are the structures we visually recognize as mushrooms.

One of the more recognizable mushroom kits on the market is from a brand called Back To The Roots. Not only can you find them online at places like Amazon, you can even find them in the produce section of your local grocery store. I’ve tried the kit before—and not with much luck the first time around. I got nothing! But I thought I’d give it a second chance.

How to Grow

The kit comes with a compressed growing media the size of a brick and vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag. The brick consists of spent coffee grounds and perhaps one or two other components to keep it all together. To begin, you need to cut an X through the plastic on one side of the brick, and then place it X size down into a bucket or bowl of water for up to 10 hours. This helps moisten the compressed growing media, and although it’s moistened it doesn’t fall apart.

From there, peel back the flaps from the X in the plastic and lightly scratch the whitish surface of the growing media. This helps to activate growth. Now, do be gentle because that whitish stuff you are scratching is the mycelium from which the mushrooms will grow. Scratch too much of the white off and you end up with fewer mushrooms. More on that in a minute.

You’ll need to keep the moistened and lightly scratched compressed brick in a horizontal position and in indirect light. Mist its surface with about 2-3 teaspoons of water each day. You want to keep the surface somewhat moist but not wet. After about 5-7 days you’ll start to see tiny white bumps appear on the surface of the brick. At this point you’ll turn the brick upright and lay off the watering.

It’s really amazing to see the mushrooms growing. They literally double in size each day. If the brick seems to be getting too dry, do give it another misting, but you won’t need to water every day. You’ll want to harvest them in about 10-14 days after you began the process.

Now, about scratching off too much of the whitish mycelium. That’s exactly what happened my second time around. You can see in the photo that the mushrooms grew just in the very bottom corner where I hadn’t scraped much. But what I love about this Back To The Roots kit is once you’ve harvested one side of the brick, you can start the process over again with the other side. I get another chance to learn from my mistake and try to populate that whole surface with mushrooms.