Part of the process
Kit or ready block
A grow kit is a block of sawdust already colonized with one named species. You cut the bag, keep it humid and harvest in about one to three weeks. It is the fastest way to a first harvest and the simplest way to learn fruiting.
- First harvest from a kit
- about 1 to 3 weeks after opening
- First flush, 5 lb block
- about 0.5 to 2 lb
A kit is what a grower makes in stages 1 to 3, bought finished: a sawdust block colonized with oyster, lion's mane, shiitake or another named species. Boxed counter kits fruit through an X cut in the bag and need only misting. Larger 5 lb fruiting blocks give more mushrooms and do best in a humidity tent. The guides compare kits for lion's mane, oysters and beginners.
Kits are alive and have a shelf life. Suppliers ask you to start a block within about a week of arrival; refrigerated storage ranges from four weeks to six months depending on the seller, so the label decides. Pink oyster is the usual exception: some suppliers say never to chill it. A kit that waits too long often starts fruiting inside the bag.
Once the bag is open, a kit is simply at the fruiting stage: the same temperature, humidity and fresh air rules apply. Growing from scratch instead means buying spawn and preparing a substrate. That is more work, and it adds two to fourteen weeks, depending on the species, before the first mushrooms.
Common mistakes at this stage
- Leaving the kit in its shipping box for weeks before opening it.
- Refrigerating a pink oyster kit when the label says to keep it at room temperature.
- Expecting a counter kit to fruit in a dark cupboard: it needs daylight and moving air.