To grow mushrooms at home you can buy the spores or you can buy kits containing spores and sterilised compost. Mushroom kits typically contain: grow box, mushroom compost – pre sown with spawn, casing material and full instructions.

Mushroom-lovers seeking to beat the credit crunch by growing their own should think again – it could cost more. Growing your own mushrooms can cost up to 22 times more than just buying them in a supermarket, according to Which? Gardening. The magazine put a number of kits to the test and found that all of them proved more expensive than buying the same quantity of mushrooms from a supermarket.

As of the 18th of July 2005 fresh magic mushrooms, truffles and grow kits officially became class ‘A’ drugs and shops are no longer be able to sell them.