How to bring down the cost of home grown mushrooms

I love eating mushrooms and would love to become self-sufficient with mushrooms, but it feels cost-prohibitive. White mushrooms are available for $1.58 at Walmart for 8 oz. and the fanciest mushrooms they carry are $3.48 for 2 portabella caps. I know it will not be a direct comparison because home-grown is always so much better, but that's as close as I can get.

It seems like the easiest mushroom to grow at home is oyster which can be done in a free-$4 5-gallon bucket and free woodchips. The problem is spawn. North Spore wants $30 plus shipping for grain spawn which seems typical.

For those growing mushrooms, does that amount of spawn pay for itself? Is it possible to let some of the mushrooms make spores and start the next batch, like seed saving?

Thanks from a mushroom-eater who's only grown tabletop kits.

You may want to take a look on a mushroom sub-reddit like https://new.reddit.com/r/MushroomGrowers/. There is loads of information about how to 'harvest' spores, how to grow etc. /r/mycology/ is a good one as well.

Here is a Permies thread that you may find enlightening. Non serile cultivation of mushrooms.

Elizabeth,

You have asked a great question and I have a two-part answer for you.  Firstly, you can possibly break even or better by growing mushrooms at home using the buckets-and-woodchips technique, but for $30, I would grow a whole lot of buckets as just one package of spawn will be enough to treat a lot of buckets of wood chips (Note: The greater the spawn-to-chips ratio, the faster you will get mushrooms, so consider this before setting up 20 5-gallon buckets!).  Secondly, yes, you can utilize the spores, but you can also utilize the left over chips which will be new spawn from which to start off a new round of chips.  Done properly (and this may take a few tries to get right), you can have an indefinite supply of mushrooms if you have a continuous supply of wood chips.

I have one other thought though.  You mentioned button mushrooms and portabella mushrooms.  Personally I would not grow either as those are just too easy to get locally.  There are other varieties that are very tasty, and offer a variety of benefits, but don't store or transport well so they don't get sold in stores.  But that does not mean that they are not a great mushroom.  If you are just getting started, consider the Wine Cap (a super-easy mushroom to grow--maybe the easiest) and the Oyster mushroom (almost as easy but maybe tastier).  I have grown my share of Wine Caps and now I would like to try my hand at growing Oyster and Lion's Mane mushrooms.  

Basically, if you want one of these more exotic types of mushrooms, you are going to have to grow them yourself because you almost can't buy them.


Eric