We’re growing fans here in the Midwife and Life house, we have our own allotment and we try and keep up with the gardening. I love that my children know where food comes from (on the whole). There are lots of growing kits around and I’ve seen mushroom growing logs before and tried them (no success), so a kit in a box that quickly grows oyster mushrooms no less, was right up our street. It’s from Grocycle, a relatively new company (started in 2011) that’s based in Devon, UK. The kits re-use old coffee waste, which is genius. They’re now launching a children’s GroKids kit, which comes with a workbook with a character – Fun Gus (pun intended).
What’s in the GroKids Mushroom Kit
A pack of dried oyster mushrooms to enjoy straight away, with a recipe idea, we had mushroom burger as a suggestion. I liked the sound of that but my husband said there was no meat in it so he wasn’t interested! We did cook them in a risotto though. In the workbook there’s information on the mushroom life cycle in a simple graph form, a growth log where they can draw pictures, a crossword and a cut and colour sheet of Fun Gus.
You soak the bag of compost, which amazingly contains the waste from 100 cups of coffee, overnight, then put it back in the box. It said wait for 7 days before they appear but it was day 2 when we started seeing little tiny mushroom shoots appear. It was very exciting. I took a photo a day until we were ready to harvest, they grew so fast they changed within a day. I shared it on my Facebook feed and people were fascinated. Here’s a time lapse video of the mushrooms in action:
Our thoughts on the GroKids Mushroom Kit
We enjoyed our kit and I’d definitely recommend getting one as a present for someone, or for your family as an educational tool and for the delicious mushrooms! The workbook is a useful aid to the learning experience. My children loved seeing them appear and found it interesting. I was skeptical that it would work but I kept spraying with water and it was foolproof for even me, who kills houseplants! You can use it more than once too, another one or two cycles are possible.
Disclosure: We were gifted the GroKids Kit in return for my open and honest review. All opinions are my own.
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