Each set includes detailed instructions, your mushroom culture, and a fungi word search. It’s a great project for anyone with a love of plants, or to do as part of a nature study, or simply because they are beautiful and fascinating. And they’re great for cooking with/eating or just looking at if you’re the non-mushroom-eating type.
This is a pretty flexible project age-wise and it can be an indoor project or outdoor project, you’ll need a bag of brown rice, rubbing alcohol, and some paper bandage tape. To grow larger buckets of mushrooms instead of small bags, we recommend using straw or aspen chips. There is enough culture in each kit to start 5 bags or 5 buckets of golden oyster mushrooms.
Hericium erinaceus (also called lion’s mane mushroom, mountain-priest mushroom, bearded tooth fungus, and bearded hedgehog) is an edible mushroom belonging to the tooth fungus group. Native to North America, Europe, and Asia, it can be identified by its long spines (longer than 1 centimetre or 1⁄2 inch), occurrence on hardwoods, and tendency to grow a single clump of dangling spines. The fruit bodies can be harvested for culinary use.
H. erinaceus can be mistaken for other species of Hericium, which grow across the same range. In the wild, these mushrooms are common during late summer and fall on hardwoods, particularly American beech and maple. Usually H. erinaceus is considered saprophytic, as it mostly feeds on dead trees. It can also be found on living trees, so may be a tree parasite.
Check out our guide on Farmer’s Almanac to learn about how easy it is to grow mushrooms at home! This guide is written specifically about growing oyster mushrooms, but the same techniques apply to Lions Mane – the straw bucket technique is a great way to grow lions mane! https://www.farmersalmanac.com/how-to-grow-delicious-oyster-mushrooms
