Spring 2021 (Updated)
Top 5 Mushroom Kits and Mushroom Grow Kit Review Magic
Last Place (5th)
The MycoGarden from University Scientific
The Good:
Incubates during colonization phase. Solid Company, Dome allows to see everything closely, looks cool. Good humidity levels, 90% obtained. Decent beginner kit overall.
The bad:
Tricky to setup. Customer service was very hard to get in touch with. Only 3 PF style cakes, Small, no humidity gauge included, had to use one from another kit. Cheap looking buckets, not like the picture at all.
Results: 1 oz dry after 3 flushes and adding 3 more cakes from our favorite shroomy strain
Overall Star rating ** (2 Stars)
$129.00 + Shipping
Fourth Place:
The Self-Automated Kit from Mushbox.
The Good:
Easy to setup, Incubates during colonization phase. The biggest online vendor good humidity levels, 95% obtained. Decent customer support, took 34 hours to respond to an email. Jars came sterile, humidifier works very well. Instructions were good. Overall a good starter kit.
The bad:
We expected more for the price. This kit would be a good buy at $99.00. Expensive for what you get, We got different equipment than what was pictured. (this is common among shroom kit vendors as we found out) The heater was little tough to adjust, took alot of time to tweak. Nothing was really bad, but nothing was really good. Just a standard kit with no frills. Results of 12 jars were 3.2 dry oz from our favorite shroomy strain.
Overall star rating: ** 1/2 (2.5 stars)
http://mushbox.ca" rel="noopener" target="_blank">www.mushbox.com
$179.00 + Shipping
3rd Place:
HydroShroom
www.universityscientific.com
The Good:
New on the "shroom kit" market is the Hydro Shroom kit. This made it our way thanks to many people asking us to test this new kit out. the kit comes with hydroton instead of perlite. We set everything up, per the directions worked great. Heater was adequate, air pump and light were decent and the jars or cakes they use are the same as others we've tested in the past, good but not great. After colonizing the cakes for 4 weeks, we removed them and placed directly on the hydroton. After a week we did notice the mycellium growing into the hydroton slightly, but not like the picture. The overall results were good for 6 jars, very comparable to their Mycogarden results we got last year.
The bad:
First thing we noticed, as everything with University Scientific is how the pictures they use on their site always look much better than when actually seeing the kit in person. The kit is pretty small in comparison to others we've tested. With that said, Unfortunetly the overall yield was almost the same (+1.2 grams) as their Mycogarden kit. The hydroshroom is very nifty idea, and does work and provide good moisture to the cakes, but after testing other kits and using the traditional dunking methods in between flushes the overall results were not as good. If you want to try something new, then this kit is it, otherwise we would suggest shopping around.
Overall star rating: *** (3 Stars)
$109.00 + Shipping
2nd Place: Midwest Grow Kits Review
Mega Mushroom Grow and Incubator Kit
The Good:
Midwest Grow Kits Mega Kit is very easy to setup, Incubates during colonization phase. Tons of room to grow, we received a 66 Quart container! Very good humidity levels, 95-97% obtained. Great jars. Probably the best we have tested. Very knowledgeable customer support. Jars came sterile, hydroponic style humidifier is simple (uses hydroton) but actually works very well. Jars were excellent, very fast colonization times compared to Mushbox and University Scientific. Uses a single chamber with an under-tank heater which is less messy with no water to add to bottom chamber like other kits. Some were saying this whole setup may be an over-kill, but it all worked great! Our total results (posted in our blog) were some of the highest we have seen. Free shipping on a 28 pound box also made this a great buy. We also picked up a new storage device that they sell called the Hygrolid it holds about 18 ounces of dried mushrooms in our test. In our substrate jar testing and spawn bag testing Midwest Grow Kits scored very high in overall yield and quantity.
The bad:
This kit took a little tweaking to get the temperature right during incubation. We added a towel in between the heating pad and chamber to lower the temps. Even on the Low setting of the heater we were getting temps of 78- 80 degrees. We are in Arizona so Im sure thats another reason, this kit would be great for anyone growing in a colder environment like a basement, attic or in the colder months of the rest of the USA. The temp adjusting was much easier once we added the perlite and water for the fruiting stage.
The Digital Thermometer & Air pump were a different brand but seems to work just fine. Midwest Grow Kits overall was good experience with their customer support which actually had people that knew their stuff! The fastest way to reach them was calling them directly or using their live chat. We spoke to someone right away when we called. When we emailed they responded the next day.
Overall star rating: **** (4 stars)
$137.00 + free Shipping
1st Place:
Mrcashop's Deluxe 3G Mushroom Grow Kit
The good:
This is the king of all setups. After spending what seems to be a small fortune we placed our order. Since this kit comes from the UK, shipping took about 14 days. When it arrived it came with very good instructions but required a lot of assembly. Every part needed to be carefully clamped together, was time consuming but fairly easy. The filtration system works amazing. Heat and humidity is controlled with a digital heat pump and humidifier. This is just an amazing professional setup! If you have the time, space and money this kit is king! Great professional setup for the enthusiast where budget is no concern.
The bad:
Well, obviously the price is steep. No substrate is included. We ordered 24 Half pint jars from Midwest Grow Kits and 6 Spawn bags. We also ordered WBS Grain Jars from Out-Grow to fill the extra room. So if money is no object and you want the best possible environment for your shrooms this is is!
This is the king of all mushroom grow kits!
Overall star rating **** 1/2 (4.5 stars)
$699.00 + Free shipping
