Disadvantages of Growing Mushrooms Indoors

With a commercial mushroom kit, you can grow your own mushrooms in the comfort of your home. The kits include everything you need and easy-to-follow instructions. Once you finish with the kit, you can move on, to growing mushrooms outside or growing multiple varieties in your kitchen. Before you start growing those mushrooms, learn more about the disadvantages of growing them at home.

In the wild, mushrooms constantly grow and repopulate. You may have noticed a grouping of mushrooms on an old wood board or plank in your yard, or even on shady tree roots. As long as the mushrooms have a cool, damp and dark place to grow, the mushrooms continue to repopulate. When you grow the mushrooms inside your house, you only have access to a limited supply. The grow-your-own mushroom kits usually give you a few weeks of mushrooms. Once the mushrooms stop growing, you can either add the leftovers to your compost heap or simply throw it away. While growing the mushrooms is cheaper than buying them, you may find that it costs more to repeatedly buy the kits, especially if you eat mushrooms frequently. Also, unless you buy multiple kits, you may have access to a limited variety of mushrooms.

Mushrooms have an extremely strong smell that may remind you of a musty room or rotting wood. Mushrooms typically require a dark space to grow, such as in a bottom cabinet or under the sink. Unfortunately the smell becomes fairly intense as the mushrooms grow and it worsens over time. This smell is a major disadvantage of growing inside because the smell can permeate your home. The smell can even become so strong that you have to remove the mushrooms from your home and completely deodorize the space, as the pervasive scent clings to furniture and fabrics.

One disadvantage to growing mushrooms inside is that you need to constantly regulate the temperature. Mushrooms need a temperature of 60 to 80 degrees F to grow properly, depending on the type. You need to maintain a consistent temperature because if it's too cool, the mushrooms won't grow and if it's too hot, the heat may kill them. Mushroom kits sometimes suggest using a heating pad to regulate the temperature, but even then, you may experience problems with the surrounding areas being too hot or too cold.