Growing mushrooms

I want my own supply of mushrooms, can you guy's give me some advice on where to start. What types of mushroom are good for beginners to grow? should i buy spawn or should i buy a mushroom kit?

Fungi Perfecti is a great Mushroom company, headed by the highly respected mycologist Paul Stamets. I have used many of their products with complete satisfaction. http://www.fungi.com/home.html

To answer your question on what to mushrooms to start with..... I suggest Fungi Perfecti's "The Garden Giant Mushroom Patch"... easy, prolific, great as part of a garden guild, and very tasty. http://www.fungi.com/product-detail/product/the-garden-giant-mushroom-patch.html

SporeWorks offers liquid cultures. They have very reliable and excellent service.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the cultivation of mycelium and aquired what supplies you did not already have, then make your purchase... Any pleurotus species would be a great starting point. Whichever species of fungi perfecti that you chose to work with, I highly suggest starting with ones that can be cultivated outdoors during two or more seasons out of the year.

I agree with Rick, but you might want to read one of the excellent books (Mycelium Running, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms) by Paul Stamets about cultivation first before ordering spawn. The garden giant (king stropharia) is a real good one for beginners and can be easily grown on wood chips in a garden. Maybe you could find a local spawn producer in the UK. Winter is an excellent time to read up on cultivation, and spring is a great time to start mushroom projects in your climate. Good luck!

Stropharia rugoso-annulata (wine cap, garden giant) can be put out after danger of all frost, if placed under 3~6 inches (8~15mm) of good mulch... It can be started and expanded "indoors" ahead of time, as to have a large amount of spawn to put down as soon as possible
It can be expanded in bins to great volumes

Thanks guy's

i don't think fungi perfecti or sporeworks ships to the uk. I've been watching a lot of videos about how people grow mushrroms commercially and domestically. I bought some spores for white button mushrooms i tried to start them in compost and newspaper about 6 weeks ago it just seems like nothing is happening. so i'm trying again this time in a bucket in my basement using compost and wood chips lets see how that works out...

Liquid cultures are not very beginner friendly. I think the bag is easiest. You could add boiled sawdust or chips to your bag to extend it. Then the wedge or totem method with logs works from that sawdust, or you could go to plug dowel spawn, with a drill and wax. Agar and liquid culture is way after all that. I agree that the Stamets books are the absolute best for learning about cultivation. Mushroom people and Field and Forest are other good companies and Field and FOrest also has an informative cataolog for free.
John S
PDX OR

Once you have familiarized yourself with the cultivation of mycelium and aquired what supplies you did not already have, then make your purchase... Any pleurotus species would be a great starting point.

Wow. Thanks for the link. I just heard about this guy (Paul Stamets) over the weekend.

Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus Ostreatus) is an excellent beginner mushroom and they're excellent with chicken and pasta, etc...

They're also very inexpensive to grow and grow on numerous mediums: Straw, Maple, Oak, even Cardboard.

(My total investment has been about $20. $15 for the Oyster spawn and then $5 for 5 boxes of 1 gallon bags.

Here's some more explanation of how I grew some on cardboard:

Oyster mushrooms grown on shredded, sterilized cardboard (PHOTOS)

For Christmas I was given two mushroom growing kits -- logs infused (is that the right word?) with shitake mushroom spores.  I've kept them in my unheated basement; I hope that was a good idea.  

I'm in south central Pennsylvania.  I'm thinking it's not quite time to soak them?  But soon?  I read a post from Bryant Redhawk that said not to let your logs touch the ground.  Why is that important?  

Some species, like shiitake, aren't very aggressive, so if you leave them on the ground, they are more likely to get infused by a "weed" fungi that you didn't buy.  Most people leave them on pallets, so they aren't touching the ground.  That way they get rain falling on them and they don't dry out.  During the summer, we don't get rain, so I briefly soak (less than 1 minute) my logs so they don't dry out. I think you have a very different climate.   We don't get very cold here.

Some people will soak a log for 24 hours, then knock it, to force the mushrooms to start to come out when they are ready. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about.  I have inoculated many logs, but I have never bought a log kit, only a bag kit.

John S
PDX OR