Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? I have a bit of a green thumb (sometimes), but one thing I’ve never tried was growing my own mushrooms. Of course, living in a NYC apartment, I’m not exactly sure how to get started, but my experiments with a few pepper plants are doing well so far. Granted, I’ve been too busy and yes, lazy to look up the hows and whys and mushroom varieties, but thanks to the fine folks at Back to the Roots, it looks as if I can knock one more thing off my bucket list.

The Oakland-based company has whipped up a really cool Urban Mushroom kit that will let you grow up to 1.5 pounds of tasty oyster mushrooms in a short amount of time. All you need is a sunny window, a spritz of water a day (and a mushroom kit, of course) and soon, you’ll be harvesting and saving money on store bought mushroom of indeterminate age. The cool and weird thing here… the growing medium in recycled coffee grounds! For a mere $19.95 (plus shipping, but buy TWO kits and shipping is FREE), you can either grow these yourself or give someone quite a unique gift. Guess I’ll go order a kit and keep you posted on what happens. Hmmmm… I wonder if these guys have Enoki or a few other varieties?