Why Samzwam is not the cheapest

No, Samzwam is not the cheapest. You can find grow kits, spawn and plugs that cost less than ours. What you get from us is a product that leaves as fresh as possible: we make everything ourselves, in our own nursery in Groningen, shortly before it ships. That is where the price difference comes from. Below is why we work this way.

Why does freshness matter for a grow kit, spawn or plugs?

Because you are buying mycelium, and mycelium is alive. A grow kit is best started within a week of arrival, or kept sealed in the fridge, and then for no longer than two weeks. Loose spawn is best used within a few weeks. Freshness counts for plugs too, even though they keep longer in the cold. Mycelium that has to wait too long does not sit still: it starts making mushrooms inside the bag, or it uses up the food that was meant for your harvest. With us that hardly ever happens, and a bag that has waited too long does not go to a customer: we use it for our own growing or give it away.

How do we make it?

Everything starts with a strain from our own library: a documented culture on a petri dish, whose growth and fruiting we know. From the dish the mycelium goes onto sterilised grain, and from the grain into the grow blocks and the dowels, which then colonise for weeks. Before packing, we smell and check every product. How that works for plugs is in how a plug is made; why we work with fixed strains is in our strain library.

Why do we ship some grow kits just a few days after making them?

For species with soft, less vigorous mycelium we do this on purpose. Such a block does not cope well with the shaking in transit: shipped fully colonised, it arrives as loose chunks of substrate. A fresh kit recovers after the journey and keeps colonising at your place before it makes mushrooms, so the mycelium becomes one solid whole.

Why does it sometimes say a product is still in production?

Because, unlike many other suppliers, we do not produce for the shelf: with us, a grow kit or bag of spawn never sits in a warehouse for months. We estimate how many orders will come in and make roughly that amount. If demand turns out higher than the estimate, a product is briefly out of stock. You can still order it: the product page says it is in production and the latest date we will ship it. That date is when it is ready, not when it comes out of a warehouse.

What is in it for you?

A block or bag that still has everything in it when it arrives. A manual per species, based on the strain sheet of exactly the strain you receive. And a grower you can ask what is going on if things go differently than you expected.