Growing indoors or outdoors: the honest trade-off in a north-west European climate
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Almost every beginner asks the same question: should I grow indoors or outdoors? The answer depends on what you want, not on what is "better". Indoor growing is fast and controllable, outdoor growing is slow and abundant. And the north-west European climate, with its wet winters, changeable summers and heated houses, shifts the choice slightly compared to what websites from other parts of the world tell you.
Indoors: the grow kit on the kitchen table
Indoors you almost always work with a grow kit, a colonised block you only need to cut open and mist. The big advantage is that you ignore the season: in January and July you harvest exactly the same. You have results within two weeks and see something happen every day. Downside: a block gives two to four flushes and is then spent. It is a project of a few months, not a nursery.
The heated house has one enemy: central heating. From October to April, the air in an average living room is drier than the Sahara, which is exactly what a grow kit does not want. Put the block in the coolest room of the house and mist more often than you think necessary. In summer the problem reverses: a block in a warm attic at thirty degrees does nothing. The utility room, hallway or an unheated bedroom is the best spot nine times out of ten, all year round.
Outdoors: logs, beds and buckets
Outdoors you grow on logs, in a wood chip bed or in a bucket of straw. It takes longer, from months to a year and a half, and you do not control the weather. But once it is running, it produces year after year without you lifting a finger. A log inoculated in 2024 may still give mushrooms in 2030. That is a different kind of result from a block on the table.
Our weather is actually favourable for outdoor growing. Mild winters without weeks of hard frost, plenty of rain, and rarely extreme drought. The risks lie in the outliers: a hot, dry summer of the kind we have seen more often lately, when logs dry out if you are not paying attention, and a wet autumn in which slugs eat the harvest before you spot it. Both can be managed, see our piece on protecting the harvest.
The difference in a table
| Indoors | Outdoors | |
|---|---|---|
| First harvest | 1 to 3 weeks | 6 to 18 months |
| Harvest lifespan | 2 to 4 flushes, then spent | Years |
| Season | All year | Spring and autumn, winter for velvet shank |
| Work | Daily misting | One day of inoculating, then almost nothing |
| Risk | Drying out, too warm, green mould | Drought, slugs, patience |
| Species | Oyster, lion's mane, maitake, reishi | Anything that grows on wood, plus wine cap |
Which species go where?
Some species are clearly indoor species. The pink oyster is tropical and only works outdoors here during a warm summer month. Lion's mane can go on a log, but is more reliable and prettier indoors. Others are outdoor species at heart: shiitake on a log gives thicker, more flavourful caps than shiitake on a block, and velvet shank wants the winter cold you cannot provide indoors. The common oyster mushroom does well in both, which makes it the ideal first species for trying each.
What do we recommend?
The combination, in this order. Start indoors with a grow kit, so that within a month you know how a mushroom grows and how it tastes. At the same time, or the following February, inoculate one or two logs outdoors. By the time the logs get going, you will have worked through three or four kits indoors and know exactly what you like. Indoors is the school, outdoors is the nursery. Anyone who starts only outdoors never learns to wait, and anyone who stays only indoors misses the moment in October when a kilo suddenly hangs from a log you had almost forgotten.