Mushroom hunting is cool and fun, but you know what’s not cool and fun? Having slugs or other mushroom hunters discover your secret spot. Or, worst of all, accidentally collecting the wrong kind of mushroom that could make you quite sick—or worse.
Ideally, you’d be able to grow your favorite kind of mushrooms safely in your own home or yard, whether that’s shiitakes, morels, or lion’s manes, just like you would vegetables. But like many gardening-adjacent pursuits, it’s not that simple. Mushrooms, like all fungi, need just three things to grow: spores, a food source, and a humid environment.
However, because mushrooms are incredibly sensitive to light, heat, and contamination, it doesn’t take much to create a prohibitive growing environment. And then there’s the question of whether it’s possible to simulate the critical symbiotic relationships that many mushrooms, especially more coveted ones like porcinis and chanterelles, must maintain with tree roots to thrive.
I am far from a mycology expert, but during the past year, I, a busy full-time-working parent, have engaged in five different attempts to grow mushrooms in my house and backyard: shiitakes on an inoculated log, oysters on a cardboard-enclosed fruiting block, wine caps in spawn buried in bark chips in my garden, oysters from grain spawn in a bucket, and oysters and lion’s manes in a monotub setup.
I laughed, I cried, I made an epic mess of chopped straw in my bathroom, and only two of the five methods succeeded. If you, too, are mushroom-curious and looking to grow your own, here’s what I did—and, in some cases, wish I had done differently.
Also, be sure to check out our guides to mushroom supplements (the functional kind), mushroom gummies, indoor gardening systems, and mushroom gifts.
Which Will Prevail?
Method 1: Mushroom Log
| Difficulty | 3/10 (Soak periodically and maintain humidity) |
| Aesthetics | 9/10 (It’s a log, but you must admit it’s a nice-looking log) |
| Success | 0/10 (So far, at least) |
There’s nothing more natural, simple, and affordable than a mushroom log. Many mushroom logs available for purchase are meant exclusively for outdoor use, as they’re just plain old logs with sealed holes full of colonized mushroom spawn. But this 12-inch-tall option from Williams Sonoma is meant for indoor display (though you can also place it outside if you’d prefer), with smooth waxed ends and a rustic metal tag printed with its creation date.
Soak it for 24 hours and—theoretically—you’ll have mushrooms pinning in about 30 days. Even though oyster mushrooms are the easiest variety to grow, for reasons known only to me at the time, I chose a shiitake log, which came with a piece of paper identifying it as a “younger log.” This means the spawn was still in the process of colonizing and should fruit seven to nine months from the date stamped on its tag, which was December 2025. I soaked the log in mid-May and again in early July, but I’m still waiting to see any pins. Williams Sonoma says the log is guaranteed to fruit, so it continues to sit on my dining room table, in a saucer full of water, tented with a plastic produce bag. Some green mold has started to appear on the top, but I remain optimistic, even though this is not my first shiitake mushroom log failure (I tried to grow one from a different brand some years ago, outside under a bush).
If you’d rather just use an existing log or logs outdoors on your property, buy spawn plugs for your preferred variety, drill holes for them, and seal the holes with wax. (You can buy the spawn plugs themselves, or in a kit with the wax and proper drill bit.) To learn which type of wood might be the best host for which kinds of mushrooms, North Spore has a helpful tutorial.
Method 2: Spray-and-Grow Box
| Difficulty | 4/10 (Requires daily spraying) |
| Aesthetics | 7/10 (Looks quite nice on a table or windowsill) |
| Success | 9/10 (Some mushrooms, but not a ton) |
If you’re brand-new to mushroom growing, don’t need large quantities, are happy to skip unusual varieties, and just want near-guaranteed success without fussing over grain spawn and humidistats, an oyster mushroom boxed kit is a good place to start. Oyster mushrooms are hardy; fast-growing; and easy to incorporate into cooking, with a mild flavor not unlike the white button mushrooms you see in the grocery store.
Two brands of boxed kits I've tried and liked are Back to the Roots and North Spore. The former comes with a dehydrated fruiting block. When you’re ready to use it, soak it for six to 10 hours, set it upright in a location with indirect light, and mist it regularly to keep up the humidity. After taking these steps, you should have a bumper crop of mushrooms within days.
North Spore’s blocks ($30) are shipped fresh, so they don’t need to be rehydrated and will produce flushes (the name for each mushroom “crop”) over and over again, but because the fresh block is more moist, it can attract fungus gnats. When I had this problem, North Spore recommended I add a few drops of dish soap, a tablespoon of vinegar, and a tablespoon of baking soda per cup of water, and spray the mixture on the block before the mushrooms fruit. Unfortunately, my fungus-gnat problem cropped up after the mushrooms had fruited, so it was messy and challenging to spray the block underneath them. If I were doing this over again with a fresh block, I would probably use a nonfungicide insecticide, like a dissolved mosquito dunk, and treat the block immediately upon opening.
If you know you don’t like oyster mushrooms, North Spore also offers a lion’s mane spray-and-grow kit for $35. I haven’t tried the fruiting block in a box, but I did try it in the Boomr Bin, below, and had great success.
Method 3: Sawdust Spawn Right in the Garden
| Difficulty | 6/10 (Crumble and mix in with wood chips in a shaded area) |
| Aesthetics | 5/10 (Neutral—it will look like your garden, with wood chips or straw) |
| Success | 2/10 (Mushrooms grew, just not the right ones) |
If you wish mushrooms just grew naturally in your yard and don’t want to deal with inoculating a log, there is an alternate path: Buy a bag of spawn, crumble it up, and sprinkle it over wood chips or a similar substrate upon which the developing fungus can feed. The wine cap mushroom is especially useful for this purpose, as its mycelium—a weblike fungus network that functions as a mushroom’s roots—will help break down the wood chips or substrate, improving soil texture and keeping weeds at bay naturally. (As a bonus, wine caps are edible.)
You can also do this right in your garden beds using straw, which acts as a natural mulch and food source for the fungus. Or you can do it on wood chips between garden beds. I tried the wood chip method with both wine cap and morel spawn (the latter from a different company), both of which arrived in vacuum-sealed blocks. I broke them up, crumbled them using my hands, and mixed them into the wood chips. However, my yard is lousy with squirrels; I’m in a constant battle to keep them away from my bird feeders, and they seem to have found a new way to aggravate me, digging up all the crumbled spawn and eating it before it could fruit. (I did, however, get a couple of Leratiomyces ceres, or chip cherry mushrooms, which are not edible.)
Method 4: Fruiting Blocks in a Monotub
| Difficulty | 5/10 (Though this depends on what you have in it) |
| Aesthetics | 4/10 (It looks like a science experiment) |
| Success | 10/10 (No notes—it works) |
The best setup I’ve tried, and the one I would absolutely use again, is a monotub fruiting chamber, which is basically a fancy name for a plastic bin with a lid. If you really want to do it up, you might consider an automated version, which is designed to balance CO2, oxygen, and humidity. You can make your own, but North Spore sells a prefab setup that can work with fruiting blocks (which is what I tried) or spawn. The tub holds either substrate (for adding spawn or cultures) or fruiting blocks, while a humidifier, a humidistat, air filters, and an adjustable fan can take care of the environment.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of maintenance other than making sure the humidifier is full and the hose is attached and angled properly. I have successfully grown four rounds of pink, blue, and yellow oyster mushrooms, and three rounds of lion’s mane, all from fruiting blocks in the Boomr Bin. At times, I’ve had more mushrooms than I knew what to do with. If you’re looking to grow on a larger scale to sell or trade, North Spore also makes an even larger five-rack fruiting chamber called the BoomRoom, though I have not personally tested this.
Method 5: Bucket Tek
| Difficulty | 9/10 (Straw should be pasteurized) |
| Aesthetics | 7/10 (Potentially) |
| Success | 0/10 (Complete failure) |
The “bucket tek” (or technique) is one of the most popular ways to grow mushrooms in large volumes. North Spore was born from its success in growing bucket mushrooms for restaurants near its home in Portland, Maine. Cofounder Matt McInnis recommends packing your bucket with chopped straw and grain spawn. The company sells a bucket tek starter kit—the MushBucket—which can produce high yields of oyster mushrooms. The kit comprises a package of chopped straw, a burlap bag, a strap, grain spawn, and a bucket with holes drilled into the sides through which the mushrooms can grow. (You can also buy refills of the straw and spawn for $40.)
The enclosed instructions give two options for preparing the straw, which you’ll stuff into the burlap bag: soak it in clean, cold water for a couple of hours and drip-dry overnight with the included strap, or boil the straw at a consistent 180 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour before proceeding with the drip-dry process. (I chose the former, as I found the burlap bag could only fit in a large cooler.) Afterward, alternate layers of straw with a thin layer of grain spawn until the bucket is full, then keep it in a humid place, and, finally, wait for it to colonize. I covered my bucket with an opaque garbage bag and kept it in an empty bathtub at room temperature for two weeks, but, sadly, the only colonization I saw was mold. If I did it again, I would pasteurize the straw and attempt the process outdoors, during the fall or spring.
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