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There are a number of ways to start growing mushrooms with minimal supplies and a cheap setup. The most common way is to buy a spore syringe, which is a small container filled with mushroom spores in liquid. You may be wondering, can you grow mushrooms from store bought mushrooms?
There are a few things in nature you can re-grow from things you can buy at the store. For example, you can buy plant seeds at the store to grow at home. You can also buy a full-grown plant from the store and grow another plant using a cutting from that plant.
With mushrooms, the process is a bit different. See our explanation below.
The basics of the mushroom lifecycle
It’s important to first understand how mushrooms reproduce in nature to understand if you can grow mushrooms from store bought.
The Mushroom Lifecycle
In nature, the mushroom cycle starts with spores that blow in the wind and find their way into a tree or the soil, depending on which environment the mushrooms grows in. Then, the mushroom spores will begin to colonize the tree or soil. The colonization process can be slow, but eventually a white-webby looking growth will form. See this image here:
This material can often look like white mold, but it’s actually the appearance of mushrooms taking over a substrate (a substrate is the medium that a mushroom colonizes).
Once the colonization process is complete, and the mushroom mycelium has sufficiently taken over the material that it is growing in, the fruiting process can begin.
The fruiting process is when mushrooms grow out of the mycelium. This is the part of the mushroom cycle that most people know visually.
As the mushroom grows and gets to a mature fruiting stage, the cap of the mushroom grows large and will open the gills on the bottom of it and release spores again.
Once the mushrooms have released their spores, they will slowly begin to dry out and die. The mushroom mycelium may even fruit more mushrooms again to spread more spores.
This is the completed basics of the mushroom process.
We recommend reading more about the mushroom growing process on Wikipedia here.
Can you grow mushrooms from store bought mushrooms?
The short answer to this question is: Maybe.
Given the explanation we shared above, you will need to purchase mushrooms from the store that are at the stage of the fruiting cycle where they have spores inside the mushroom cap.
Many mushrooms sold at the store are at the pre-spore stage, which means they may have underdeveloped spores that can’t regrow mycelium.
Depending on the mushroom you are attempting to regrow, you can give it a shot and try to get spores out of the mushrooms you bought.
Doing this involves taking a mushroom spore print. This method is the best bet for trying to get mushroom spores out of the mushrooms you bought at the store.
Taking a spore print from mushrooms bought at the store
Here we will provide an explanation of the best method to try to get mushroom spores out of mushrooms from the store.
You will want to create a dry spore print using a popular method.
P.S We wrote a detailed guide in another post on how to take a mushroom spore print here.
This process includes the following steps:
- Cut off the cap from the mushroom stem immediately after purchase
- Open up the mushroom cap with your fingers and attempt to spread the gills out
- Take a small piece of white paper and place the opened mushroom cap onto the paper
- Cover the mushroom cap on the paper with a glass cup or jar to protect it
- Wait a day or two!
If you are successful, when you remove the glass cup from the mushroom cap and then remove the mushroom cap from the paper, you should see a round circle of mushroom spores on the paper.
This is what a successful mushroom spore print will look like:
Now that you have a mushroom spore print, you will want immediately use the spores to grow mushrooms by putting them in a mushroom substrate. You can also preserve the mushroom spore print for later by covering the spore print in foil and then putting in a plastic bag.
If you open up your glass jar and remove the cap and don’t see any spores, then your mushroom spore print was unsuccessful. Chances are, it was most likely harvested before the stage where spores are grown inside the gills of the mushroom. This means you cannot regrow mushrooms from that specific mushroom you bought.
Using your spore print can be hard if you aren’t already familiar with growing mushrooms to begin with. Check out our other guides on mushroom growing to get the basics. We have an article on how to grow mushrooms at home here.
Are there any other ways to grow mushrooms from fresh mushrooms?
Short answer: No.
All mushrooms of all types grow from mushroom spores. Mushroom spores are the equivalent of seeds in the world of growing plants. You need mushroom spores to grow mushrooms.
If you want to grow mushrooms that you can easily buy at the store, then your best bet is to try to find mushroom spore syringes for the mushroom you want to grow.
Mushroom spore syringes of all types are common on the internet on many different websites. This means that you should easily be able to find the type of mushroom you want to grow by looking online for the proper mushroom spore syringe.
It’s easy to buy oyster mushroom spores, button mushroom spores, and portabello mushroom spores on the internet.
We recommend using Amazon to shop for mushroom spore syringes. There is a wide range of highly-rated vendors selling spore syringes on Amazon.
More tips on taking spore prints from store-bought mushrooms
Keep in mind that not all mushrooms bought from the store can be regrown using this method. For example, mushrooms that fruit in the form of large clusters such as Chaga mushrooms cannot be easily be replicated using the spore printmethod.
For this reason, try to stick to mushrooms that grow in the conventional ‘cap and stem’ form if you want to replicate them by taking spore prints.
Additionally, not all mushrooms can be replicated in general. The spore print process simply may not work for some mushrooms, but we recommend trying.
The spore print method should work for basic mushrooms such as button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and more.
