No. Until we moved to Portugal a couple of years ago we had grown various mushrooms for sale on a small scale on the Black Isle for about 4 years. Spawn needs to be fresh to be viable. You could be lucky, but I doubt it. Some garden seed catalogues in the UK now offer small quantities of spawn of different species direct from the spawn producer eg The Organic Gardening Catalogue. Cost is immensely higher than buying a bulk quantity from say Sylvan Spawn or ???? XXXXX (I regret I forget the name of our "button mushroom" supplier in Yorkshire - impregnated compost in poly bags in minimum 1 tonne lots and marvelllously flavoured top quality mushrooms) but at least "direct from the producer" is more likely to give satisfactory results. Shiitake on logs is long-term but the easiest in our experience. Old McDonald.

So, to sum up, in high expectation of complete failure, I might as well shove the spawn on top of a bag of cowclap and erase it from my memory banks for ever? In view of the fact that I've already parted with good money for this useless item.

By the by, seeing as many seeds are only viable for a short time, how can it be ethical for seed merchants/garden centres to expect to be paid for an item which is no longer fit for it's purpose, albeit invisibly so? After all, you wouldn't buy a pork pie with just a little bit of mould on, or a car that would only start on one day per month, would you?

It's like B&Q selling obviously dead plants for half price! They're not just a little wilted and sorry for themselves, they're ex-plants! They only thing they'll grow is mould. Gee..what a bargain.

Alcina

Garden Nerd is trying to grow mould. Maybe use B&Q plants instead of all that manure!

I wouldn't worry too much about following the instructions to the letter. Get yourself the closest thing to manure you can find. Mix in some urea or ammonium nitrate and add gypsum or lime as specified in the instructions. All that is required is a very rich organic growing substrate and a suitable fruiting "crust". I'm sure you can see what I mean from the instructions. All the complexity is because mushroom growing has been refined to a fine precision of ingredients, time, temperature, light (or lack of it), and humidity.

I don't usually have much problem growing mould! Perhaps I should leave the mushroom spawn at the back of my fridge for a fortnight.

GN, Give it a go if you can do so at no further expense. The problems is that spawn is not in a dormant state the same as seeds and cannot be "stored" for future use. I really do suggest you try shiitake. Old McDonald.