Growing your own mushrooms could cost up to 22 times¹ more than buying the same variety in a supermarket, a new report from Which? Gardening has found.

While home-grown vegetables are often tastier and cheaper than shop-bought varieties, the report found that when it comes to mushrooms, you might be better sticking to the supermarket.

Using the Bakker French Mushroom kit, researchers found that a 100g crop cost would have cost £10.41² to grow. But, when bought from the supermarket, 100g of French mushrooms cost only 47p³. This was also the case when the Yorkshire Mushroom Book Recycler Kit was used. 100g of Oyster mushrooms can be bought for £1 in supermarket³, while it would have cost £14.85² to grow the same amount – almost 15 times more expensive.

Even standard white mushrooms proved expensive and difficult to grow, with one researcher unable to produce any mushrooms. On average, it cost Which? Gardening £1.89² to produce 100g of crop using Unwin’s Mushroom Growing Kit – it would have cost just 26p³ to buy the same amount at the supermarket.