Learn, calculate and equip your grow
Free cultivation resources for legal gourmet and culinary mushrooms — practical guides, calculators that show their formulas, equipment notes and UK suppliers. No signup needed for any of it.
Uncle Spore’s Basic Grow Guide
A no-nonsense beginner’s guide to growing edible mushrooms. Start simple, understand the organism and build a process that works.
OpenUncle Spore’s Beginner Shopping List
The 20 things you actually need for the beginner method — sterilisation first, gadgets last. Tick items off as you go.
Some buttons are paid links, clearly labelled.
OpenMushroom strains
Compare ten legal gourmet and functional fungi by substrate, difficulty and fruiting conditions.
OpenLearn
Beginner guides, cultivation explainers and troubleshooting for gourmet mushroom growing.
OpenTools & Calculators
Substrate hydration, spawn ratio, biological efficiency, contamination checker, Master's Mix and equipment checklist, plus fruiting air exchange.
OpenGear
Cultivation equipment recommendations for sterile work, fruiting, jars and bags, drying and labelling.
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OpenUK Suppliers
A non-affiliate directory of UK sources for cultures, spawn, substrate, kits and supplies.
OpenNew to growing? Try these first
- Beginner's guideStart to finish, from choosing a route to drying your harvest.
- Substrate selectorWhat should I grow this species on? Pick a species and grow style.
- Master's Mix calculatorBatch maths for supplemented hardwood substrate.
- Contamination checkerCautious triage for a grow that looks wrong.
- Substrate hydration calculatorWork out how much water your dry substrate needs.
- Equipment checklistWhat you actually need before your first grow.
What's here
This resources hub brings together everything you need outside of the grow tracker itself: step-by-step guides in Learn, detailed mushroom strain profiles, calculators that show their formulas rather than hiding a black box, an equipment shortlist in Gear, and a non-affiliate UK supplier directory. If you run a blog, club or supplier site, you can also embed our calculators for free.
Where to start
New to growing? Read the beginner's guide to growing mushrooms at home in the UK first, then use the substrate selector to work out what to grow your chosen species on before you buy anything.
Planning your first bulk grow? Run your numbers through the substrate hydration calculator to get water content right, the spawn ratio calculator to size your spawn correctly, and the Master's Mix calculator if you're using supplemented hardwood substrate. Once you've harvested, the biological efficiency calculator tells you how your yield compares to the substrate weight you started with.
Something look wrong? Start with the contamination checker for cautious triage, and check the equipment recommendations in Gear or source clean supplies from our UK supplier directory if the cause turns out to be your substrate, spawn or sterile technique.
Hyphae Fidelity is a free grow tracker for cultures, grain, substrate, inoculations, fruiting and harvests — so the numbers in these calculators can come from your own logs instead of guesswork.