Winter Wishes - Back To The Roots Mushroom Garden Review

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Thanks for joining us for our second annual “Winter Wishes” Gift Guide! We’ve put together some great gift ideas this year and have some awesome prizes to give away too! This event will run through the New Year, so make sure to check back often to see what’s new! Our gift guide page has all of our gifts by category, which you can see by clicking the image above.

The Back to the Roots’ Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden is a gift that recycles and gives back at the same time. The soil inside the mushroom garden is 100% completely recycled coffee grounds, and the mushrooms take about 10 days to grow. You can grow up to 4 harvests – but the giving starts after your first! When someone takes a photo with their kit and posts it on Facebook, Back to the Roots will donate a mushroom garden and sustainability curriculum to a classroom of the person’s choice.

I have the absolute perfect gift idea for a child in your life that is both educational and fun while priced perfectly. It is the grow your own mushroom kit from Back to the Roots. It is exactly as it sounds. You grow mushrooms in a box on your kitchen counter and your kids can watch them grow. When they are done growing you can use the mushrooms in a recipe and eat them. It is like having your own little garden right in your kitchen.

Here is a time Lapse Video to see it in action. Go ahead and watch it as it is only 20 seconds and totally cool to see.

Backstory:
Back to the Roots was founded by Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley in 2009. Two months away from graduation, and heading into the corporate world of investment banking & consulting, they came across the idea during a class lecture of being able to potentially grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages & fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex’s fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of tasty oyster mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. With that one bucket, some initial interest from Whole Foods & Chez Panisse and a $5,000 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor for social innovation, they decided to forget the corporate route, and instead, become full-time urban mushroom farmers!

I have a brown thumb. It seems I can’t grow anything but I can grow mushrooms! Here are some pictures of how mine is growing so far.

My first tip is to have some patience! Mine took over 14 days to start growing. The good news is once it starts growing it grows really quick. Big Sis loves to get up in the morning to check out how much it has grown. The box includes 2 sides so once you are done growing your mushrooms and harvest it then just start all over again on the other side. The set even includes a small mister to use. It is packaged absolutely perfect!?

Here is the bonus at the end:

The kit also has tomato, basil, and sweet onion seeds embedded in its plantable cardboard box. Once families are done growing their mushrooms, they can plant the box. Thus, there will be no waste left from the kit because the box can be planted and the mushroom/coffee compost can be used as a fertilizer for the new garden.

How cool is that! Once you are done watching these mushrooms grow then the gift keeps on giving with seeds embedded in the box. Just wow!

Educational, interesting, fun, easy, and priced at under $20. This is the perfect gift for kids to enjoy this holiday season. Big Sis is really enjoying hers!

Connect:

You can connect with Back to the Roots on Facebook, Pinterest and/or @bttrventures on Twitter!

Gift It!

You can buy a Mushroom kit on their website for $19.95 and if you order 2 kits you get free shipping.

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Winter Wishes – Back To The Roots Mushroom Garden Review

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