PS: awesome tip!
So are growkits, but spores are easier to transport (in a syringe suspended in water, or on aluminium foil). Problem with growkits is that it takes a while to see whether you’ve got a good (or contaminated) one, and yield isn’t that high.
Main options:
- (Learning, qulity) Start from spores (syringe or dry): do this to learn a lot, and also to have something to eat afterwards. It was one of my most valuable projects ever. Spores go into petri dish, then search for Uncle Ben’s. Two months starting from zero.
- (Learning, quality, faster) Clone a living part: get your hands on mycelium or a fresh fruiting body (possibly also a sclerotium AKA truffle), which consists of mycelium as well (the »fruit« is the same material as the »tree« for fungi, I digress but this is so interesting). Put into agar petri dish, let it grow, and search for Uncle Ben’s. (I did this with store-bought King Oysters.) Roughly 2 weeks faster than the spore process because you’re skipping the selection-and-transfer phase, and thus also contamination risk.
- (No learning, genome+contamination gambling, fastest) Growkit: don’t have experience with this, but I’ve heard that they often don’t work because they’re contaminated. I have no practical experience here.
The yield is "not as big", right, but it's still more than you can reasonably consume. I don't quite remember, but I think three flushes yielded ~50g (dry) or so out of one small Growkit. Two big glass jars full.
I want to do it again out of enjoyment for the grow process alone. It's really fun watching these things grow!
You can also grow legal mushrooms like this, King Oysters in my case. It's a wonderful project teaching you a lot. Start to finish it's about 20 hours of work spanning 2 months.