The veg that doesn’t leave “mushroom” for success

31 October 2008

Growing your own mushrooms could cost up to 22 times* more than buying the same variety in a supermarket, a new report from Which? Gardening has found.

While home-grown vegetables are often tastier and cheaper than shop-bought varieties, the report found that when it comes to mushrooms, you might be better sticking to the supermarket.

Using the Bakker French Mushroom kit, researchers found that a 100g crop cost would have cost £10.41** to grow. But, when bought from the supermarket, 100g of French mushrooms cost only 47p***. This was also the case when the Yorkshire Mushroom Book Recycler Kit was used. 100g of Oyster mushrooms can be bought for £1 in supermarket***, while it would have cost £14.85** to grow the same amount – almost 15 times more expensive.

Even standard white mushrooms proved expensive and difficult to grow, with one researcher unable to produce any mushrooms. On average, it cost Which? Gardening £1.89** to produce 100g of crop using Unwin’s Mushroom Growing Kit – it would have cost just 26p*** to buy the same amount at the supermarket.

Further to this, all the testers at Which? found the kits tricky and time-consuming to use, and many of the kits only produced small crops.

Ceri Thomas, editor of Which? Gardening, says:

“Usually growing your own food means you are rewarded with tasty crops at a fraction of the cost of the supermarket. But this is definitely not the case with mushrooms.

“Many of our researchers found that growing mushrooms was a real chore, and didn’t produce anywhere near as many as expected. When it comes to mushrooms, I’d definitely leave the growing to the professionals!”

-Ends-

Notes to Editor

In January 2008, Which? Gardening ordered eight different types of mushroom kit and each was tested by five different people. Each tester recorded how easy and enjoyable their kit was to use, as well as the weight and quality of their crop. Which? Gardening then compared how much it would cost to produce 100g of the mushrooms using the kits with how much 100g of mushrooms would cost in the supermarket.

*100g Bakker French Mushroom Kit

** Price based on the average cost of growing 100g of mushrooms using a kit in Which? Gardening trials

***Based on the average cost of 100g of mushrooms from four leading supermarkets.