This was my moment.

I dragged a heavy dining chair across the kitchen, climbed up, and liberated a single frozen fish stick from the box in the freezer. Chair back in place, I crawled under the table and gnawed at my prize in secret. It wasn’t great (cold breading is an acquired taste) but I scraped it off with my teeth until only a pale, slightly soggy slab remained. Right on cue, Mom appeared.

If I’d had words to articulate back then, I might have said:
“Sometimes you say no to things I want, and I don’t like that. It’s 10 a.m. and I want fish sticks. Since you usually veto early fish sticks, I figured it was simpler not to ask.”

Clearly, I was still learning how the world worked.

I love questioning, testing, and seeking to understand my limits, and the world around me.

Electricity fascinated me endlessly. It delivered Saturday morning cartoons. It carried Kim Mitchell’s flanged guitar in “Go For a Soda,” and the heart-tugging harmonica in Sting’s “Fields of Gold.” It turned my mom’s oil diffuser into calm, lavendered air.

This invisible force flowed like a current through every favourite moment.

Well, mostly invisible, until a thunderstorm cracked open the sky, shook the windows in their frame, and made my heart skip. That, too apparently, was electricity. Incredible!

I’d press my face to the window screen, breathing in petrichor laced with the sharp metallic tang of mesh, warm rain pattering my waffled cheek and nose, waiting for lightning to flash overhead to try and see it.

But electricity’ greatest power? It cooked fish sticks.

I needed to understand how.

Through thorough surveys and questions, my parents taught me that electricity was dangerous: never stick anything in the wall sockets. Respect for danger kept my fingers and forks out.

But questions only took me so far. Real understanding required experiments.

Baking-soda-and-vinegar rockets were excellent for learning basic chemistry: fold baking soda into tissue, drop into film canister, add vinegar, snap lid, flip, run.

POP!

Construction-paper rocket fins and nose cone optional but recommended.

Other experiments were less appreciated.

I needed to know how the VCR worked. A cassette with dinosaurs on the cover when pushed into the video player showed dinosaurs on on the screen. Merlin and Arthur on the case? Merlin and Arthur on the TV. It was a clear pattern. But why? and to what end?

Would putting Hot Wheels cars, chalk, or Lego into the VHS slot produce corresponding images? Would I see my own eyes looking back at me through the open slot on the TV as through a camera was capturing everything that went in?

It did not.

It did, however, start producing alarming grinding and whirring noises and that temporarily paused our movie nights.

Some mornings brought fresh opportunity to run tests. Mom was resting on the couch again.

Go time.

Purpose of today’s experiment:

1. Unlock the electrical secrets of the toaster.

2. Achieve hot, crispy fish sticks.

3. Advance human knowledge.

Equipment

• Toaster

• Cup

• Faucet

• Outlet

Hypothesis
Bill Nye taught me water conducts electricity, that it acts like a bridge.

So, does that mean that more water = better electricity flow = better fish sticks?

Only one way to find out.

Procedure

1. Unplug toaster (safety first)

2. Fill cup with tap water

3. Pour equal amounts into both bread slots

4. Lower lever

5. Repeat steps 2-4 until I learn something

Observations
Nothing dramatic. Just brown, crummy water leaking everywhere, soaking my pants and the floor.

Mom walked in on me, perched on the counter, solemnly dumping cup after cup into the toaster, pressing the lever with determination, while dirty water cascaded off the edge.

I can imagine now what was going through her mind and the mess was probably secondary.

Discussion and Analysis
I hated getting in trouble, but science demanded risk. While I braced to get reamed out, Mom stayed gentle. She noted, impressed, that unplugging the toaster had been exceptionally smart.

Nice. Gold star for me.

She also offered a new deal: any future experiments, just ask her first. She’d help make them better and easier.

And to me, that sounded like the opposite of “no.”
Sign me up.

Conclusion
Soon afterward, I received the coolest gift ever: Electric Gadgets and Gizmos by Alan Bartholomew. It was a kids’ project book with included battery holder, wires, clips, switches, bulb, and motor. I built paper towel roll flashlights, buzzers, and pop bottle fans that could cool down both myself and extra hot fish sticks.

I loved this, my curiosity was unleashed. Hands-on circuitry taught me faster and deeper than any explanation could (and was notably safer than working with 120V AC power from wall sockets).

I’ve been seeking better alignment in work and life lately.

Dear friends keep reflecting the same thing lately: “You light up most when you’re tinkering and when you’re teaching.”

When I spend time in this experimenting flow state, time stops existing for me. When I’m teaching, I’m energized like nothing else for hours afterwards.

I want more days like that: experimenting, teaching, writing, and playing.
For me, this is play.
And I want to figure out how to make it into my work.

One of my current fascinations is learning how to turn waste cotton textiles into new materials using mushroom mycelium. I need to look into ways to fund these experiments so I can spend more time on them.

If you want to support or collaborate on this project, send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.

It’s another step towards getting out of my own way, a vote for who I want to become.

Stop taking things seriously. Breathe. Just start.

Then do it a thousand times.

Once again, I’m starting to write about my relationship with writing, rather than what I think I should be writing about.

The endless idea fragments bouncing around my head gets bogged down by my over-thinking and seeming inability to wrestle with an idea long enough to publish a piece.

I’ve been here before. Many times. I get stuck at the start, not writing about lessons learned as a mushroom cultivator and entrepreneur, but rather mashing my keyboard, willing in vain as my hands write some self-referential pity party.

I don’t think I’m actually helping anyone with this. I don’t have a plan or structure. I don’t know who I’, writing for or who would want to read this post. I’m mostly just fighting my own mind at this point.

Yet, as I let my fingers clickty-clack as they will, my mind quiets. Like taking my first few deep breaths of the day, forcing my mind to finish entire thoughts, one word at a time, slows the hamster wheel of my mind down. After a few minutes of babble-writing, I don’t feel so paralyzed or anxious.

I’m reminded of a grade 9 poetry project I had to do over Thanksgiving weekend. The assignment was to write a handful of poems, each one in a different form: a haiku, a limerick, a sonnet, free verse, acrostic, and maybe a few more.

I sat in my chair, stuck for days. Nothing seemed to ease this psychological block, and no poems were written. My family was downstairs eating thanksgiving dinner, and I forced myself to stay in my room to write these poems as they were due the next morning. The letters that managed to eek their way onto the page were quickly erased or torn out with the page, crumpled and pitched with malice towards the nearest wall. None of it good enough to even use as a starting point.

I kept getting angrier at myself and I remember snapping a few pencils in frustration.

Then something clicked, like a bad back suddenly popping back into place that floods the body with joy and warmth. I cranked out all of the poems in a matter of minutes. Words flowed onto the page like an unclogged sewer drain.

I wrote all my poems about how much I hated having to write these poems, about poetry as an art form, about being forced to be creative in such a way. It was honest, and it felt amazing to both write and read back to myself.

Looking back, I was clearly afraid of doing it wrong. Decent in science and math were there was clear write and wrong answers, I loathed the idea of being judged and graded for something I made, something that was supposed to be a reflection of some inner part of my self.

From what I understood about poetry at the time, I knew that “right” meant real. This felt real, and vulnerable, so this had to be right. I went down to enjoy the feast and turned in my work the next day.

I failed the assignment.

I had gotten low marks before, which crushed me. This was something else.

My teacher called me into the principals office, turned the graded page over and a huge, red ZERO adorned the upper right corner. She then proceeded to rip the sheet of paper in half. This was literally the worst-case scenario for me at the time. Not only that, I was made to redo it from scratch, and even got detention at lunch until I finished the assignment.

I numbly did what I was asked, putting as little of myself into those new poems as I could in silent protest. I lost a couple of lunch breaks.

In hindsight, as most things are, it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as I felt it to be in the moment. And yet, writing about what is true for me remains a challenge.

But I’ve come a long way. I’m maybe 20 minutes into writing this blog post at this point and I think grade 9 Shane would be pretty impressed.

My mood has shifted 180 degrees from the start. I feel lighter. I laugh at how dramatic I was 600 words ago. I often appreciate being reminded not to take things so seriously.

It makes me wonder: what if I put on a 10-minute timer and word-vomit onto my keyboard, just to unclog the gutters of my mind. Don’t edit it. Don’t publish it.

…

Ha. I just looked that up. Apparently it’s well-known writing exercise to get over writer’s block.

Great.

Glad I’m on the right track.

Anyways, I didn’t write what I wanted to write tonight, but that’s fine. I’m going to publish this anyways. It’s probably good practice for me to let go of what I create.

Plus, now I have a plan for my next writing session.

Blogs by the pound, baby.

Just for the record, those poems fucking slapped.

That’s what I thought too, until I took a spore print I can look at it under the microscope.

The first picture looks like these weird blobs, and look nothing like what I thought spores would be.

AsI turned the focus dial on the microscope, the shapes would morph and transform, as if I was seeing cross-sections of a much larger object.

I new microbiologists sometimes observe living microbes in water, so I decided to put a water drop on the spore and look at it again.

The second picture is what I saw next. Thousands of elongated spheres. Now that’s what I thought spores would look like! So what was going on in the first image?

What I learned was that spores stick to each other very well. So in the first image, I actually was seeing large towers made up of tens or hundreds of spores all sticking together.

When I added the water, the towers collapsed and the spores spread out evenly, occupying a thin layer of water.

That’s why it looks like there’s so many more in the second picture.

This is one of my favourite projects in classrooms and mycology clubs.

I love watching it blow kids and teacher’s minds when they first look into the microscope lens. For that, it makes an exciting capstone to any mycology module.

After learning about mycelium, inoculation, incubation, fruiting, we can eventually take a spore print and bring it into the microscope.

If you’ve been growing oyster mushrooms and suddenly noticed tiny black flies buzzing around or “worms” (actually larvae) munching on your blocks, you’re likely dealing with fungus gnats—aka sciarid flies or mushroom midges. Check out image 1.

Let’s break this problem down step by step so we can all keep our grows thriving.

What Are These Pesky Gnats? They’re small black flies (about the size of a fruit fly) with long antennae and grey wings. The real troublemakers are their larvae—white or orange maggots that hatch from eggs laid in your substrate. They love oyster mushrooms in particular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciaridae

Where Do They Come From? These guys sneak in from outside through doors, vents, or even on your tools/clothes. Once inside, they breed like crazy in damp spots, old substrate, or overwatered blocks.

The Damage They Cause. Larvae chow down on mycelium and baby mushrooms, leaving your oysters brown, leathery, holey, or withered. I’ve found completely beautiful flush of mushrooms, but inside is a brown sludge where they are breeding. Mycelium that is dealing with these gnats turn a browm-orange-yellow colour (see image 2).

Yields can drop big time, and they might spread mold or bacteria. Adults just add to the mess by contaminating everything.

How to Get Rid of Them (and Prevent Future Invasions)

1. Spot Them Early: Set up yellow sticky traps or UV light traps in your grow space—they’ll catch adults and alert you to issues.

2. Clean House: Sanitize everything! Pasteurize your substrate well (heat it to kill eggs), remove spent blocks far away, and seal up entry points with screens. Leave no stone unturned! They can be hiding in small creases where organic matter might collect.

3. Environmental Tweaks: Lower humidity a bit if you can (aim under 80%), boost airflow with fans, and don’t overwater. Dry conditions slow them down.

4. Deal with Infested Blocks: Toss all blocks you find midges in. Trust me, it’s not worth the hassle of trying to recover them. Better yet, purge your whole grow ASAP. This has happened to me about once every 3-ish years. I’ve found taking the loss and start fresh has always been the best course of action.

If/when this happens to you, don’t panic. Just take action and take the loss. It’s just part of learning mycology.

This is a cross post from my free Skool community. I teach people how to grow mushrooms for free. My goal is to support people feed themselves, their families and to teach youth how to work with fungi.

Join For Free

This means answering emails, getting on a phone call, asking for picture of their grow kit and troubleshooting with them.

I want them to succeed and my customers have seemed super appreciative of the effort.

It’s also helped me learn and fine tune my messaging and delivery. This process over the past 6 years has been a fascinating peek into how people, who are just getting into mycology, think about mycology.

It also takes a lot of time, and it’s more or less the same conversation again and again.

Since, I have a limit to how much support I can provide this way this 1-to-1 delivery has been hitting a ceiling.

So, I made an online community for the people I serve.

It’s very young, only 4 days old at the time of writing.

I’m actually watching my first video tutorial upload while I write this.

The first module I’m working on “The Mushroom Grow Kit Course” is a live learning and teaching experiment.

Last weekend, I was a local agriculture fair, working my mushroom booth.

I put out a sign for Free Mushroom Grow Kits:

In no time, I was give back-to-back mini-workshops to groups of people.

I provided the bag of hydrated sawdust and the mycelium. They did the inoculations themselves while I guided them along. Afterwards, we went through the instructions for caring.

Finally, I told them this: “You’re going to go home and questions will come up. They always do. Rather than have 30 email conversations explaining the same thing, here’s a link to a free course and community. I’m doing this experiment with you and will be posted far more detailed guides and tutorial videos than what we did here. Enjoy.“

Most of them seemed shocked at how much they were getting for free, and I admit, I felt proud watching their faces shift.

As much as I love growing mushrooms and feeding people, the window of contact, at least how I’ve done it, is very small. It’s transactional.

Teaching is the opposite, it’s relational. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this in a way that feels good for me and that excites me.

I keep trying to do the social media thing, but for me that’s been such a hard thing to stick with. I really don’t enjoy it.

But meeting people in person, shaking their hands, and then getting messy with some mycelium - that’s my jam. And now I get to continue hanging out with them in our own space, talking about exactly what we want to talk about.

So yeah, I’m so excited about this.

I’m not sure what shape this will take, in fact I’m banking on that shape emerging from the people that join, and what they want to learn.

I think I can best help a small range of people, from those who are trying a grow kit for the first time, families that want to grow from themselves, to those who want to start selling mushrooms.

In fact, I’ve had so many people come up to me at events and say they tried to grow a kit from Costco or other place. It didn’t work, they gave up, got discouraged. There wasn’t that support needed to do a new, weird thing like mycology.

I really do hope people who are in that boat find there way here.

Alright, I’m out of here. The first video has finished uploading! Woop woop!

Come check it out.

Here the link to the Mushroom Growing group. It’s completely free. I’d love to have you there.

1. Reduce sterilizing time (Increase throughput, decrease energy costs)

2. Improve packaging (Increase retail sales, reduce labour)

3. Improve environmental controls (Increase yield, decrease crop loss, increase predictability)

Optimize the Sterilization Process

Sterilization is a considerable time and resource expense in mushroom cultivation, but there are likely ways to cut down on the time it takes without compromising quality. Two years ago, I built an atmospheric steam sterilizer for my bulk substrate. It’s been working beautifully, with very little unexpected hiccups. We run it at 100C for 24 hours before letting it cool in the lab. Cool down usually takes a day, so at the very most, we can do 3 batches per week if we produce on weekends. 

I was flipping through The Mushroom Cultivator (Stamets and Chilton, 1983) when I saw a chart of sterilizing time for the bulk substrate. It showed that a substrate at 100C will sterilize in 10-12 hours. 

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure where I got 24 hrs from initially. That being said, if I can cut the steam time by up to a half, that would mean we can reduce the energy cost by 50%, increase margins and get all of the production done within the work week, or increase overall output by mixing and steaming batches on the weekend.

I’ve learned that making changes, even no-brainer ones like this, usually has unforeseen impacts. Therefore, I will gradually decrease the steam time by 2 hours for each batch until I lose it to contamination. Then, I’ll increase the steam time by 30 minutes for each batch until it’s successful.

This has the potential for a significant increase in production speed and overall throughput and a decrease in costs.

Elevate My Packaging Game

High-quality packaging doesn’t just protect the product—it speaks to your customers before they even open it. The look and feel of packaging can convey professionalism, care, and attention to detail. It’s the first interaction people have with your mushrooms, and if you can make it memorable, you’re more likely to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

What works at a farmers market doesn’t necessarily work in retail. It’s easy to sell something when I can converse with someone face to face. It’s much harder to sell that same product if I can’t talk to them and it’s sitting on shelves, surrounded by hundreds of other products, all vying for attention.

I used to print our labels out on my black-and-white toner printer. This was useful early on since I changed my labels fairly frequently as I got feedback, improved the product and learned what customers wanted. It was cheap, and I could make small batches. The downside is that the quality was literally and figuratively lacklustre and would start smudging when rubbed.

I’ve recently upgraded to using separate, high-quality coloured ink labels on all my dried mushroom products, and I’ve noticed a difference in how customers perceive the value. I’ve also started buying UPC barcodes for the product to make them retail-ready. At the time of writing this, I’m using one label for five products with five checkboxes, and I check one of them with a pen to show which product it actually is. While that’s a definite improvement over the previous, and it’s great for testing out new SKUs, it’s just a stepping stone.

I’m aiming to move my mushrooms from a local stand to a broader retail presence, which means I’ll be investing in pre-printed custom packaging in early 2025 as I get into the rhythm of outbound marketing to retail outlets. This has the added benefit of removing the work of printing the labels myself and hand-sticking them onto the pouches.

Fine-Tune Environmental Controls

Humidity control is crucial for consistent, high-quality yields. Soon, I’ll tighten up my humidity controls even further by reducing the range of humidity swings and insulating the framed room where I house my two grow tents. Right now, the AC unit sits outside the room, which leads to daily temperature fluctuations. By moving it inside and fully insulating the room, I’ll create a more stable environment that will make it easier to manage temperature and humidity.

Once the room is insulated, I'll also filter the air coming into this conditioning chamber to ensure a cleaner environment and reduce the risk of contamination. I'll also increase the air exchanges inside the grow tents themselves, which will improve circulation and keep the conditions inside them much more consistent. It’s a series of relatively simple upgrades, but they should make a big impact on stabilizing the environment and improving my overall yields.

One of the biggest issues is that the oyster mushrooms seem to like it more humid, but the lion’s mane do not. I’ll need a better way to set a tent for a particular species. An even better would be a humidity program that adjusts humidity levels throughout a grow. For example, pinning oyster mushrooms tends to happen well at 95+ RH%, but can cause bacterial botch a few days into its main growth period. To increase shelf-life, the mushrooms should be harvested an hour or so after the humidity system has been turned off.

My monitoring and control system is built on Home Assistant and accessible on my phone. I’ll be able to configure all of the control changes there.

Wrapping Up

By focusing on these small but impactful improvements, I’m moving closer to running a streamlined, profitable mushroom cultivation business. If you’re still in the hobby stage and wondering how to make that leap, identify areas where small changes can have a big impact. This process doesn’t end. You just keep getting better. Whether shaving hours off your sterilization process, upgrading your packaging, or dialling in your environmental controls, these steps can help turn your passion into a sustainable business.

Hey there 👋🏼 I’m Shane, the founder and owner of Heartwood Mushrooms, a small gourmet mushroom cultivator in northern Ontario, Canada. I’ve been growing mushrooms for over 12 years and as Heartwood for 8. This is The Cap with Shane O’Donnell, a blog and podcast documenting my journey into building a mushroom business from $0 to $250,000 per year.

It started as a hobby growing mushrooms, a handful at a time in my closet. Now, I own and operate a 1200 sqft facility built on an empty patch of grass. This is where I share what I’ve learned as someone who made the jump from hobby to business. I've faced the same challenges and uncertainties that you might be experiencing, and I'm here to share my experiences so that you can make your fungi fantasies come true too.

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“Why is the humidity sensor fucked again?!”

The read out on my humidity controller stuck at 100% for days. I figured it was a dud, I had just replaced it after all.

The thing is that it kept happening. I would spend 30 minutes setting up my station, carefully cutting away electrical insulation, soldering a new sensor on, then sealing it back up. Sure enough, that too would go to 100% and stay there.

The problem with that is:

1. I don’t get an accurate representation of the climate

2. The control, thinking the room is saturated, does not turn the humidifier on. The result: the grow room becomes bone dry.

Not cool.

I had been using inexpensive Inkbird humidity controllers for years, and for the most part, they did a really good job. But when they failed, it would take out my entire grow room. Sometimes, it would happen when I thought I could take a day or two away from the shop.

For over a year, I had replaced the humidity controller with a cycle timer. This would let me set the ON and OFF time for my humidifier. 4 minutes on, 5 minutes off for example. I could make small adjustments as necessary. This seemed to work well enough.

A while back, I started building out a monitoring and control system for my mushroom facility. Like most good things, it took a lot longer to set up than I estimated, but it started paying off almost immediately. I first implemented the sensor while I still had the humidifier on the cycle timer. I realized that I was running my grow room WAY to humid. It seemed like it was fine, but the readout was too high. I dropped it down and lo, the quality of the mushroom improved within the week.

Once I hooked it up to the humidifier, I was able to both get the data and control the humidity output. Every once in a while though, the old problem would return: The humidity would max out, drying out the grow room.

Now I can see it happened at a specific moment in time. Maybe I could play detective. What was the temperature doing?

Hmmm…. Right when the humidity when up, the temperature had dropped to ~16.7C.

As air gets cooler, it can hold less humidity. At some point, the air can’t hold the humidity anymore and it condenses. This is what the dew is on your lawn in the morning. It gets cool at night and the air can’t hold all that water anymore.

Huzzah!

I went into the control system and updated the code to preemptively decrease the humidity as the temperature drops, well before the dew point. Since then, I haven’t run into this issue.

It took me over 10 years of growing mushrooms to finally learn this. Learning this years ago would have saved me so much time, money and energy but alas, here we are.

It does, however, make me want to measure and collect as much data as possible about Heartwood’s operation. With good data, I’ll be able to make better decisions. Otherwise, I’m flying blind.

I’m going to continue to build out the monitoring system for the shop. On top of that, we are going to start manually tracking data about all stages of production, contamination rates, cleaning intervals, order and fulfillment times and overlaying that with revenue.

The truth is, I haven’t known my numbers. I feel embarrassed writing that, having been working on this business for 7+ years now. It took exactly as many 2x4’s to the head as it was necessary for me to learn how important measuring is.

I’ve been investing heavily into Heartwood’s equipment and infrastructure. That phase seems to be coming to an end, a few bits and bobs left. The next chapter will be data-driven, learning how to actually run this machine.

This is a series on how to make better plant pots out of fungi, written by me - a mushroom cultivator with a proclivity for experimenting and making messes trying to figure things out. ‘Better plant pots’ doesn’t tell you much, but for the purpose of this series it means ‘starting seedlings in containers that do not contain plastic, are not imported from thousands of kilometres away, don’t require dredging out peat bogs and degrade into the soil, adding nutrients along the way.’

Teaching people how to make these pots via written word is hard. I want to give you practical frameworks and recipes, but there is inevitably a lot nuance and some specialized equipment involved in mushroom cultivation, and fundamental techniques that can’t be skipped. To some degree I have to relinquish attachment to making a comprehensive mushroom cultivation course and hope that the reader will navigate their own way through mycology.

This post is a my first steps into working with the relatively new material, mycelium-based composites, or MBCs, on my journey to making useful objects with it. MBCs fibrous plant materials bound together by mushroom mycelium. I’m writing this for you should you want to follow along, and if you don’t, you’ll learning something new about the world of fungi.

“Why buy something for $20 when you can spend $80 and 15 hours of your time to accomplish the same thing?”

15 hours is probably a conservative estimate. Regardless, I’m pot committed (ha) now.

You see, I have a few plants at my home that I’ve needed to re-pot for way too long. One is in an old milk carton, another is in a broken-handled mug, others have just outgrown their container. You get the idea.

Anyways, I could go ALL the way to the hardware store and pick up a few pots and be done with it in a few hours, but that’s not how I roll.

It didn’t start with pots though.

Back in early December 2023, an industrial design student at OCADU approached me asking if I could help him make a mycelium-based prototype for his research projects, which you can check out here. It’s a type of modular flat-pack furniture made from MBCs. He did wonderful research and design work but the prototypes he made weren’t up to snuff, and asked if I was up to the challenge. The kicker: it had to be delivered in 6 weeks.

“I’m in.”

Later that day, I walk talking to my intrepid employee, Cynthia, about how to approach this project. I mentioned trying to find hemp or sunflower stalks locally and shredding them down, then inoculating them in the right shape. Cynthia casually says “Why not use the substrate after the mushrooms have grown? We just compost it out back.”

Well, shit. That sounds like fantastic idea.

All I need to do is learn how to make this stuff.

After reading a half-dozen academic papers on MBCs, I learned that there was 4 important elements to making them:

1. The material needs to be incubated 3 times

2. Add some wheat flower before the 2nd incubation

3. Density matters a lot. The more dense, the stronger the product

4. The mycelium needs to be deactivated in an oven or large dehydrator

Let’s unpack this three-stage incubation bit.

First incubation (~2 weeks): The base material, or substrate needs to be completely myceliated. We hydrate, sterilize and inoculate our material in special breathable, autoclavable bags. This step is standard as it’s what we do for normal mushroom production.

Second incubation (4 days): You have to break up the material, mix with some flour and pack into whatever shape or mold you want. At this point, you want to compress the substrate as much as possible to make it as dense as you can. The flour gives the mycelium enough energy to knit the mycelium together in the new shape.

Third incubation (4 days): Remove the object from the mold and place into a high humidity environment. This stimulate the organism to create protective layer of mycelium on the outside which helps keep the object together.

After these three steps, the mycelium needs to heated and dried. This makes the strength go up, and also prevents the organism from growing mushrooms in the future.

Most of the papers used Oyster or Reishi mushroom mycelium for their speed of growth and desirable strength properties.

OK, seems simple enough. Let’s make a mess.

I made a crude mold out of a flimsy wooden box you sometimes get strawberries in at a farmer’s market for the outside and a large Mason jar for the inside.

After mixing the substrate with some flour, I lined the wooden box with plastic wrap and laid down a layer of substrate. Then I set the jar on top and packed it into the space between the wooden box and the jar with more substrate.

I used a spoon to compress it as much as I could. I covered the substrate with the excess plastic wrap, trapping in moisture.

Next, I continued with the process I outlined above.

In short, these are the steps I followed to make the plant pot prototype:

1) Break up spent mushroom substrate, mix with flour at 3% by weight

2) Pack tightly into mould

3) Incubate 4 days

4) Remove from mould and place in high humidity environment

5) Incubate for 4 days

6) Deactivate mycelium by cooking in toaster oven at 250F for 4 hours.

The Result

It was more solid than I expected. Curing it really locked the mycelium and substrate together. I noticed some small cracks, maybe it dried too quickly. The top edge was also a bit crumbly. I think having a solid surface to press against would help prevent that. I also thing tuning the 3rd incubation to grow thicker mycelium outer layer will also help that.

I think the strength is fine for small objects like this, but I’ll need a different material for the OCADU prototype. To maintain MBC strength, the cellulose in the substrate must remain undigested. This means minimizing incubation time. The spent substrate not only has been incubated for weeks, but also also spent week actually growing mushrooms. By the time I’m using it to make MBC it’s lost a lot of it’s strength because it was digested and turned into mushrooms.

That will be the topic of Part 2 of this mini series.

It may seem like I’ve jumped around a bit with my goals. I lead with ‘a new way to grow vegetables’, then I talk about this non-food OCADU project, then I recap my process making indoor plant pots. What’s going on?

Great question.

I’m in a very exploratory phase right now so that means my mind is jumping around and making new connections. I need to get reps in and learn how to work with these materials and processes. I’m very project driven, so having a thing to work towards helps set the focus and constraints.

I have several aspirations with MBCs that are different branches to the same trunk. By that I mean a lot of the processes and equipment I use to achieve these goals will be the same. There is reusable overlap.

Here is my current version of my roadmap:

• [x] Make a prototype pot from spent substrate

• [ ] Deliver composite prototype for OCADU project on time

• [ ] Make commercial seedling pot from spent substrate

• [ ] Create a shipping packaging for our glass mushroom extract bottles

• [ ] Create sturdy indoor flower pots that can last 2 years at a minimum

• [ ] Create a garden planter box

• [ ] Create blocks/panels to make a dome, because domes are cool

These projects blend the worlds of mushroom cultivation, biology, material science and design, which stimulates my neurons in a pleasant way.

But I’m doing this because I believe it will help make our experience on Earth a bit better, reducing the amount of plastics, chemical processes and transportation required for us to grow food.

I don’t know where this is going yet, but I’m excited. I need to do customer research by talking to nurseries, greenhouses, and home gardeners. I’ve done some gardening over the past decade but not a whole lot (I’ve been hardcore mushrooming).

If you think this is a cool project and want to support me, share The Cap other with gardeners .

~ Shane

What to write about?

The things I "should" write tug at my mind like an anchor. Intro to mushroom cultivation, how to sterilize substrate, when to pick your mushrooms. Resistance to writing becomes louder. Many people have done it before. Professional content about those topics are available for free. Mine wouldn’t be as good.

And stop.

I have this other piece that I started writing a few months back. It's about my lab and how I ruined my expensive lab filters trying to clean them. Someone could learn from it. But I don’t know how to hook people in to it. Would it be interesting to the people I want to reach? I close the document, frustrated.

And stop.

Breathe.

Breathe again.

This mode of behaviour isn’t working for me. I’ve sat here, like this, in this state of stuck-ness so many times before. I’m so done with it.

What’s the pattern here? Feelings of inadequacy, I don't know what to write about. What it it’s not relevant? Even if I knew what to write about, who would want to read it? Even if I can write it, and it’s relevant to someone, what if it’s not catchy and it doesn’t get read?

Sound’s like a lot of What If’s.

I flash back to my 21st birthday. A chance meeting with a woman, I can’t remember her name, only met her the once. She saw I was hurting and armoured from my parent's still-fresh divorce. She wrote IF in capital letters across the top of a blank page. Downwards from those two letters, she wrote “Instant Failure”. She looked into me. “Every time you stop yourself from doing something that you want because of a What If, you have failed. Dead end. Take a breath and start again. Do that as many times as you need.”

Breathe.

OK, new tactic: what am I most excited about?

Well, I like writing and talking about what I'm learning, or building. I also don't mind talking about my fuck ups. I usually find them funny after the fact and I do learn a lot from them. I find talking about my fears helps me move past them.

Here is what I am currently learning about or working on:

• Rebuilding my steam generator: If something can go wrong, it will

• Using my mushroom compost to make mycelium composites and new products with

• My control system is acting up. Why is it doing that?

• Getting an organic certification for Heartwood Mushrooms

• Content creation, generating leads, building sales processes

• Medicinal mushroom extraction techniques

Amazing. I can write about those things. That feels exciting! Hell, it'll I can see writing about those things helping me learning it even faster.

I come back to the thought of “Who am I writing this for?”. I need to write for me first. I need to squeeze out my neurosis.

Now I’m curious, what’s going on underneath this fear? I sink into my body and a thought surfaces:

"I'll hide in my room and practice, when I come out I will be perfect and people will love me."

Tension around my belly releases. The indicator that I’ve found a limiting belief. Ok, that’s not serving me anymore. Thank you, and goodbye.

I’m currently on day 3 of writing every morning. This is the first day I’m posting my writing. I’d like to build this into my writing habit.

Atomic Habits by James Clear and Deep Work by Cal Newport have inspired me recently.

My current habit stack looks like this:

1. Wake up

2. Walk outside for 30 minutes

3. Make a coffee

4. Write for 75 minutes

This has been nice, but it doesn’t have the last part of Atomic Habits framework: Make it Satisfying. This corresponds to the reward part of closing the habit loop. I’ve been thinking about that, what does that look like for me in this case? Another coffee? Breakfast? None of those seem appealing enough.

But I know what it is now.

It’s the pride, joy and relief of posting the writing. The final step that I’ve been avoiding. So, moving forward, here is how I’m rewiring my brain to get excited about creating content:

1. Wake up

2. Walk outside for 30 minutes

3. Make a coffee

4. Write for 75 minutes

5. Publish my writing

My writing timer went off. How perfect!

See you tomorrow.

Building production systems is hard the first time around. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and found a lot of solutions. This is not about those lessons, instead it is a case for building a central, redundant control system for the entire physical building.

In short, the goals are

• Adjust growing and operation parameters

• Respond to events outside of desired ranges

• Amplify failure signals

One of the hardest part about growing mushrooms is learning how to build production systems. The reality is that parts break and often those parts have been single points of failure. I’ve lost more batches than I can count. The rate of entropy in a mushroom shop is high. Fans failing, leaking AC coolant lines, temperature sensors unplugging, water lines forgotten off and many more.

The equipment I’ve used to build my production systems over the past 7 years has been piecemeal and for the most part has done their jobs. When a critical piece fails, however, the impacts have been disastrous.

One time, the temperature sensor on my exhaust fan of the incubation room unplugged slightly and the room overheated. I lost everything in that room.

Another time, the exhaust fan in the grow room failed while I was away for a couple of days. This caused the grow room to go into positive pressure which means dirty, spore and mold-filled air to leak back into the rest of the shop.

Pipes coming apart, drains backing up, pressure cookers over pressuring. You get the idea. Let me explain how I’m going to solve this.

I’m going to use inexpensive components, open-source software, a 3D printer and some fumbling to create a central control system for the entire growing operation. Humans will be able to see, control and tweak all the growing parameters as needed. We will also get notified right away whenever something goes wrong.

The system will need to collect data about

• CO2

• Relative Humidity

• Temperature

• Air Quality

Data will be viewable via mobile app, or on-site with any device.

The operating system will be HomeAssistant OS (HAOS) running on a Raspberry Pi 4. This device is internet-facing and will communicate with a cluster of nodes on the local network.

Nodes will use Raspberry Pico microcontrollers to gather data from sensors and toggle equipment on and off to maintain a suitable growing environment. These nodes receive instructions from the Pi and can run those instructions even if communication between the Pi and any node fails. When connection is available, the node streams data back to the Pi, which in turn exposes data, like Grow room 1 Temperature, to the client through the dashboard.

The equipment I want to control includes

• Duct fans

• Humidifiers

• A/C Unit

• Pressure cookers

• Steam generator

• HEPA fans

Each room and each process will have it’s own settings and nuances to figure out. I will also be able to build and implement each room and process individually, building the a functioning system over time.

All the nodes rely on a common backbone, so this will be the first thing to implement.

The first milestones looks like this:

- Raspberry Pi 4 running HAOS at the shop
- Access dashboard locally and remotely
- Configure 1 node to blink an LED and read 1 temperature sensor
- Some snazzy cases to protect the gear

Let’s see how it goes.