Oyster Mushroom BOOK Grow Kit - EAT YOUR WORDS
This brilliant DIY kit lets you take unwanted books and convert them into tasty, nutritious mushrooms, grown at home with your own fair hands.
Wild Oyster (Pleurotus) mushrooms grow on dead and dying trees, recycling the cellulose and lignin that trees are made of. In doing this they form a vital part of our nutrient cycle and ecosystem.
Since paper is just another, more processed form of wood from trees, Oyster mushrooms think it’s the most delicious food. By growing mushrooms from books, you are literally going to be eating your words.
The kit contains:
Grey Oyster mushroom spawn (100g) NB our Grey Oysters are a UK strain and can be grown outdoors after your books have finished fruiting
Grow tent to incubate and maintain humidity and airflow
Sticker to seal the grow tent
Full, clear instructions to help make every step simple
PLEASE NOTE - this kit contains live mycelium, so has a shelf life. You should aim to start growing within 3 weeks of receiving the kit, and the mycelium should be stored somewhere cool and dark until this point.
Further step-by-step details about how to grow the kit are provided below.
This kit makes a fantastic gift for those interested in growing their own food and children also love watching the magic unfold.
This brilliant DIY kit lets you take unwanted books and convert them into tasty, nutritious mushrooms, grown at home with your own fair hands.
Wild Oyster (Pleurotus) mushrooms grow on dead and dying trees, recycling the cellulose and lignin that trees are made of. In doing this they form a vital part of our nutrient cycle and ecosystem.
Since paper is just another, more processed form of wood from trees, Oyster mushrooms think it’s the most delicious food. By growing mushrooms from books, you are literally going to be eating your words.
The kit contains:
Grey Oyster mushroom spawn (100g) NB our Grey Oysters are a UK strain and can be grown outdoors after your books have finished fruiting
Grow tent to incubate and maintain humidity and airflow
Sticker to seal the grow tent
Full, clear instructions to help make every step simple
PLEASE NOTE - this kit contains live mycelium, so has a shelf life. You should aim to start growing within 3 weeks of receiving the kit, and the mycelium should be stored somewhere cool and dark until this point.
Further step-by-step details about how to grow the kit are provided below.
This kit makes a fantastic gift for those interested in growing their own food and children also love watching the magic unfold.
This brilliant DIY kit lets you take unwanted books and convert them into tasty, nutritious mushrooms, grown at home with your own fair hands.
Wild Oyster (Pleurotus) mushrooms grow on dead and dying trees, recycling the cellulose and lignin that trees are made of. In doing this they form a vital part of our nutrient cycle and ecosystem.
Since paper is just another, more processed form of wood from trees, Oyster mushrooms think it’s the most delicious food. By growing mushrooms from books, you are literally going to be eating your words.
The kit contains:
Grey Oyster mushroom spawn (100g) NB our Grey Oysters are a UK strain and can be grown outdoors after your books have finished fruiting
Grow tent to incubate and maintain humidity and airflow
Sticker to seal the grow tent
Full, clear instructions to help make every step simple
PLEASE NOTE - this kit contains live mycelium, so has a shelf life. You should aim to start growing within 3 weeks of receiving the kit, and the mycelium should be stored somewhere cool and dark until this point.
Further step-by-step details about how to grow the kit are provided below.
This kit makes a fantastic gift for those interested in growing their own food and children also love watching the magic unfold.
Full Growing Instructions
Instructions are included in the kit, but here is a little more info:
Mushrooms from Books? Pull the other one…..
This kit will let you take unwanted books and convert them into tasty, nutritious mushrooms, grown at home with your own fair hands. Wild Oyster (Pleurotus) mushrooms grow on dead or dying trees, recycling the cellulose and lignin that trees are made of. In doing so, they form a vital part of our nutrient cycle and ecosystem. Since paper is just another, more processed form of wood and Oyster mushrooms think it’s the most delicious food. By growing mushrooms from books, you are literally going to be eating your words.
What type of books do mushrooms like to read?
We would advise you to choose books that aren’t plastic-coated. Journals, catalogues and glossy magazines are out. We’d recommend you choose books that are under a decade old as these carry less mould spores than books that have sat on shelves for 25 years. However, you will still get some results from older books. Your chosen books must be able to fit in the grow tent provided in this kit, so - depending on how big the books are - you might use up to three. Thicker hardbacks are fine but will take longer to get established.Your mushrooms just need plenty of good paper to eat.
On Your Marks, Get Set…..Grow Mushrooms!
1/. Put your chosen books into a bucket or large bowl. Carefully fill the vessel with boiling water and weigh the books down so they are under thetwater. You could use another smaller bowl or vessel filled with water to keep your books immersed in the hot water (see photo). Boiling water will help pasteurise the books to an extent, which will help you grow a better crop and destroy any mould spores and help you grow a better crop.
2/. Leave the books under water for about 30 minutes. Then squeeze as much water from the books as possible. You can do this in a clean sink or on a work surface, and your aim is to finish with wet, but not dripping, books.
3/. Take your packet of grain spawn and massage it to break up the grain so that it can be spread into the books without clumps.
4/. N
ext, with clean hands, open the packet and spread the spawn throughout the books. Starting at the centre page of the first book, spread about a tablespoon of the spawn across the two open pages. Open a set of pages near the back, and once again near the front of each book, spreading another tablespoon or so across each pair of open pages.
5/. Your kit contains 100g of grain spawn, and roughly speaking, you should try to distribute perhaps four to six tablespoons of grain throughout each book, which should give you enough for a maximum of 3-4 paperback books.
6/. Pop the books into the grow tent provided, roll the top of the tent over twice and use one of the stickers provided to seal it up (see photo). Be careful not to cover the white fabric filter patch as this is how your mycelium will breathe as it grows on your books.
7/. Keep the bag somewhere away from direct sunlight at around 20°C. Keep an eye on it. After several days, you’ll begin to see the mycelium spreading as it colonises the pages (see photo)
The Magic begins to happen… you are growing your own Superfungi
8/. After about three weeks or so (depending on the temperature, what the mushrooms are reading whilst they grow and how big the books are), you will notice that the mycelium (the ‘root’ network of the mushrooms) has fully colonised the books. You will know this because the pages will have gone fully white and fluffy (see photo)
9/. It’s time to ‘fruit’ your Oysters! Now, pop the grow tent into the fridge for 24 hours to make the mycelium think autumn has arrived and shock it into fruiting.
10/. After taking the grow tent out of the fridge, your first step is to clean your hands! Then, after removing the sticker from the grow tent, take the colonised books out of the tent and place them on a clean plate
11/. With a spray bottle, give a good few - perhaps 8 or 10 - sprays onto your books, ensuring that the sides and tops of the books have been moistened, and place the upside down grow tent loosely over the books so that they are covered.
12/. Keep the books somewhere with daylight (but not direct sunlight) and away from drafts that might dry the books out. Ideally, you should remove the bag to give the books a spray in the morning and at night to keep the moisture level up. If you notice them looking dry, give them a spray, but don’t soak the bag!
13/. After 3 or 4 days you should start to see the beginnings of what is known as ‘pinning’, where tiny primordia, or baby mushrooms, form. These mini-mushrooms always form, but some will abort before becoming full fruits. Don’t worry, this is perfectly natural.
14/. You can now remove the grow tent and just keep spraying the books on their plate in the open air and watch them grow.
Harvest time!
15/. When the biggest mushroom in the flush is around 4 inches tall, you can pick that cluster by twisting it off the book. This can be added to your favourite meal.
You can expect 2-3 ‘flushes’ of mushrooms from your books. Keeping the books well-misted will encourage a bigger crop. If you don’t see anything new growing after a week or two, then you can submerge your books again in cold water for 12 hours, which should encourage them to fruit again. When you are satisfied that no more mushrooms are growing, you can compost the books or you can keep growing outside.
Next Steps and Recycling
All parts of the kit can be recycled:
The plastic grow tent can be recycled in your kerbside box if your local authority accepts plastic films, or it can be taken to your local shop or supermarket where most have plastic bag/film recycling facilities.
The cardboard box and paper instructions are widely recycled in kerbside collections.
The book itself can be added to your household compost bin or garden waste bin for kerbside collection, or added to your own compost heap if you have one.
BUT….if you have some outside space, the book can be used to grow yet more mushrooms.
To do this, simply find a cardboard box big enough to place the book(s) into. Firstly, soak the book underwater for an hour or so in cold water, then wrap it in a layer of damp cardboard in the box you’ve found for it (perhaps an old shoe box, without a lid, would be perfect). Now, having placed the book wrapped in damp carboard into the box, add a layer of straw or hardwood chips and then place somewhere damp and warm in your garden. If it’s kept moist, this should allow the mycelium to spread from the book to the card and then into the straw or wood chip., When fully colonised, you will see mushrooms beginning to fruit. You can keep adding more straw, card and wood chips to have your own mini-mushroom garden that just keeps giving you free food.