Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/07/no-not-really-a-kit-to-gro.html
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I’m not sure why someone would buy this. Maybe as a “prank” to put the seeds in someone’s yard and wait for it to grow
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Yes. What could go wrong?
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I’d assume the gag is to replace the look alike plant with actual pot seeds. A ready made pot growing solution that toatally not for pot you guys.
Rather a lot like those hydroponic “tomato growing” kits that are quite obviously not for tomatoes.
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Its kind of amusing how obvious that shit is. Before pot was legal in Vegas you could find physical hydroponic stores that would primarily offer tomato growing kits. There was one that was near me where the logo to the store was a tomato lol, so obvious.
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Giant Ragweed looks like it to the untrained eye. IT has the jagged edges, but is actually one large leaf vs a compound leaf.
Yeah its very weird. Like hydroponic shops near me, And the online ones I’ve seen will have two nearly identical kits. Ones got tomato cages and a particular set of chemicals. And the other doesn’t have tomato cages and a different set of chemicals. But both are “for tomatoes” and cost the same.
I ran into a similar issue when I was looking into growing culinary mushrooms a lot of the info out there and some of the materials are wound up in stuff meant for growing psychedelics.
I used to grow Cleome in my yard, before I moved to a condo. It has beautiful flowers and thrives in South Carolina’s heat. One caveat: it creates lots of seeds and if planted in the ground, the next spring and for a couple years after, cleomes will be sprouting up where you least expect it.
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My father grows them. They spread pretty badly and seem to have a negative effect on my mother’s vegetable garden.
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I’ve actually always wanted to grow mushrooms. Not the psychedelic kind, the culinary type. Seemed like it’d require a bit more skill and know-how to do correctly and i got a bit intimidated and never tried. I also looked into what it’d take to have a decorative mushroom garden because i find them quite fascinating but i’ve never worked up the nerve to try.
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Growing them in buckets and bags of wood chips is finicky. I didn’t have much success. Logs are much easier, And I’d suggest sticking to that. In doors requires careful climate control, And you need to control the spores because some of them can cause breathing problems. Anything grown in soil is difficult. And anything mycorrhizal is largely impossible. And that includes a lot of the really cool looking classic toad stool shaped ones.
I don’t know how a decorative mushroom garden would work. You need to keep them shielded from the sun. And a lot of them are fairly short lived. But there are no end of cool looking inedible/“medicinal” but non psychedelic varieties people seem to grow.
I’d look into wine caps apparently easy to grow in a bed of wood chips, And anything you can grow on a log.
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I’ve seen some of the easy mushroom growing bag kits you can get online these days. They seem pretty straightforward and easy, some day i will get around to trying that. Ideally i’d like to try the log, but since i live in an apartment i feel a bit awkward going that far lol.
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Yeah the kits have all the difficult stuff taken care of regards contamination control. The small cardboard box kits you get at the garden center work well but they don’t produce much. The larger ones from mushroom hobbiests will grow far more but are very unattractive if decorative is your goal. I suppose you could load them into a container or box of some kind just like the buckets with little trouble.
But the indoor thing is weird. You have to control temperature and airflow and constantly mist the things. It’s fun but I rapidly switched streams to outdoors where weather and sprinklers take care of most of it.
Eta: I got most of my stuff here
There’s a bunch of other respectable vendors of culinary and other mushrooms out there. Pretty easy to track down the ones worth buying from. I’ve had issues with getting the wrong product deliveried from nearly every site I’ve tried though.
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Ideally i’d like a basement or be able to rent a house so i have a bit more space to play with as far as this kind of stuff goes. Might try the bagged mushroom kits though, might as well start somewhere.
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The small cube kits would probably be your best best. Pretty cheap, produce a lot. Lots of options. Oysters and shiitakes are easiest. Some of the places sell small logs as indoor kits.
I’ve seen people stick them in planters, boxes or what have with small holes all over the side. Apparently a lot of varieties produce larger prettier mushrooms if forced to grow through restricted openings. And it let’s you hide what looks like a block of moldy poop.
Eta: oh and blocks of sawdust or straw spawn for many varieties can be grown as large kits, by the same methods. Which can broaden the number of varieties available. The “planting season” for mushrooms is kind of weird. Some Starts around now or in a few months, some spring through early summer, some year round. so kits from the growers seem hard to find around now. And around now is when you prep logs, cut them and age them for a few months. They seem to produce spawn for sale timed for outdoor growing. And in small batches so if there’s a specific variety your looking for just keep watching the various vendors. A lot of them publish charts and schedules of availability.
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I heard a radio ad for hydroponic supplies in Toronto. They actually had a guy in the background chuckling when the announcer said, “You know, for you people who like to grow your own vegetables” .
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Sure, the main audience might be for something else… but lots of people I know frequent the local hydro stores to grow actual veggies. Right now, I’ve have several extremely hot pepper plants thriving in my basement. Say hello to the Carolina Reaper…
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For sure, i’m currently growing 2 small habanero/bell pepper hybrids. I’m also trying to grow a passion fruit vine cutting, and i’m trying to sprout a bunch of rocoto pepper seeds and some aji dulce peppers (think sweet habaneros without heat, these i’m trying to grow as a favor for my mom who loves them and can’t find anywhere and has been unssucessful in growing from seeds).
Ideally i’d like to get more grow lights and planters, currently been ok just using one but will have to upgrade real soon. Since i live in an apartment i’ve needed flexibility from my setup, amusingly i hit on using an adjustable mic stand to clamp my grow light onto and its worked great. Been considering getting a second one
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Yay! Hey kids get a NO KNOCK raid with genuine FLASH BANG grenades with no benefit! *
*family pets will be shot on sight
Just be careful indoors, i wrecked a bathroom growing oyster mushrooms. had to be gutted walls and all.
Oysters are quite easy, shiitakes are only easy if you live in a place where you can drop a log outdoors and the climate will grow them for you, in many places shiitakes are very difficult and have to be cultivated indoors.
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