All Posts

Having been growing mushrooms for almost ten months now, I have been taking a step back to critically examine my whole process. I have gotten a decent hold over the fruiting process and optimized the air flow, humidity, lighting, etc. I noted in a previous post that the temperature was one factor that I did not have a good control over due to having no powerful HVAC unit. In doing all of the above, I have gotten to about 100 - 120% BE with lions mane and maybe around 100% BE

Another attempt at pouring agar has yielded improvement but other problems. One difficulty with pouring agar is the trick of pouring it right before it congeals into a solid state. I was using a no-contact digital thermometer to read temps as I read optimal pouring was between 120 - and 130F, but it seemed to not read the fluid temperature in the glass jar very well. By pouring between those two temperatures, you avoid condensation on the agar plates, which can sometimes be a

Mushroom farming has been a continual exercise in patience and mistake spotting. In just the past few weeks, I realized that I had been making a series of mistakes - each large in and of themselves. I guess that it is not so easy just to quit your job and jump into another industry. While others have commended my bravery for starting this journey, I originally thought nothing of it thinking my choice to be mundane and easy - maybe others have a more realistic picture of what

Master’s Mix Compost: Turning Spent Mushroom Blocks into Garden Gold Master’s Mix is a substrate originally developed for growing...

The process by which fungus convert sawdust into mushroom fruiting bodies never ceases to amaze me. How the fungus converts what looks...

It has been nearly eight months since I spontaneously quit my accounting job to start a mushroom farm. In the very beginning, I ran some...

Main Building Blocks: Burner to heat up boiler Boiler to produce steam (30 - 50 gallons minimum) 300 gallon trough to hold blocks Tubing...

My initial plan was to grow both oyster mushrooms and lions mane as my starters and then to expand from there, but I have been having...

It has been over 7 months since I first started mushroom farming and I have yet to create a clean petri dish inoculation. So far, I have...

To get to a run rate of 300 lbs a week, one should be conservative and assume a BE of 100% and not 100 - 150% as is the case with more...

As of this present day, many successful mushroom businesses have been running for around or more than a decade. Some of these businesses...

One of my initial goals was to do my own grain spawn in house - alas six months has passed and I have yet to get there. The bottle neck...

Frustrated that my oyster mushrooms' second flushes were not generating as intended, this prompted a deep dive into the reasoning. A high...

I continue to reflect upon second flushes and how to coax them out of the block after the first main flush. Interestingly, after taking...

Just organizing some more thoughts on generating a better second flush. In the previous article, I had come up with ways to help the...

Over the past months, I noticed that my oyster mushroom yields were not as bountiful as they should have been. Under optimal conditions,...

I had my first restaurant delivery a few days ago and delivered 5 lbs to a Korean restaurant nearby where I live. In addition to that, I...

Yesterday, I sterilized an agar medium and 10, 90mm glass petri dishes for the first time. I am finally getting started with trying to...

I recently started to dry and grind the lions mane mushroom into powder and I have been quite pleased with the results. The method I use...

As the summer develops, things are starting to heat up - I am currently selling at two weekday farmers markets at about ~$100/market so...