Upcoming online mushroom cultivation and soil health workshops through UBC’s Farm Community Series

https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/events/event/online-best-practices-for-restoring-and-growing-in-urban-soils-september-30-2020/

Wed, Sept 30 from 5:30-7:30pm $15 register through link above
This workshop will offer an introduction to soil contamination and degradation and go through how to test your soil, understand soil test results and restore health to degraded and/or contaminated garden soils. Best practices for growing food in healthful ways and addressing soil contamination using ecological, gardener-accessible methods will be offered.

https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/events/event/online-grow-your-own-mushrooms-for-food-and-medicine-indoor-balcony-patio/

Thurs, Oct 15 from 5:30-7pm $15 register through link above
This workshop will offer an overview of some of the many ways you can grow mushrooms indoors at your home, apartment or on a balcony; and highlight ways you can make use of household waste as a food source for your mushrooms. We will go through and demonstrate growing Oyster, Shiitake and Lions Mane mushrooms and offer instructions for doing it yourself.

https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/events/event/online-grow-your-own-mushrooms-outdoors-for-food-medicine-and-ecological-services-september-20-2020/

Tues, Oct 20 from 5:30-7:30pm $15 register through link above
This workshop is for people who want to grow mushrooms outdoors and highlights edible and medicinal mushrooms which can be grown in spaces you can’t otherwise grow in, or can be companion planted in your gardens and orchards to boost plant growth and build healthy soil ecosystems. We’ll talk through how to make a mushroom bed, mushroom pathways, logs, and companion plant within your veggie beds, and discuss the important role of mycorrhizal fungi in the garden, farm and orchard.

Upcoming Virtual Workshops on Mycorrhizal Fungi through Telluride Mushroom Festival

Honored to be among some pretty amazing presenters at Telluride Mushroom Festival this year! Upcoming talks:

Monday, August 10th- 4:15pm (PST): I can tell that we are going to be friends: Mycorrhizal Fungi in Sustainable Agriculture and Ecological Restoration (LIVE)

+ I have recorded workshops on:

It’s virtual this year, so y’all can attend from anywhere, and I think tix are around $75 for a full year of access to unlimited streaming of the recorded talks. There are some AWESOME ones there, like Cordyceps cultivation and molecular science with Will Padilla-Brown, medicinal mushrooms with Robert Rogers as well as mushroom ID, cultivation, remediation, cooking and art! Check out the program here: https://www.tellurideinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-TMF-Program-of-Events_FINAL-2.pdf

Fungi Farming Weekend Course – California

Skills for Low Tech Mushroom Cultivation

November 22 – 24th 2019 

@ Quail Springs Permaculture Farm, near Ojai, CA

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, home-scale methods for growing mushrooms for food, medicine and earth renewal. We will focus on less-sterile approaches to creating your own mushroom cultures (“spawn”), fruiting mushrooms for food and medicine, and working with fungi to build soil, boost your garden, and address soil and water contamination.

Throughout this mushroom cultivation course, you will learn about setting up cultivation space at home, gathering materials and equipment, and gain experiential hands-on skills to make liquid cultures, petri cultures, grain spawn, sawdust kits, and more. You will learn simple ways to grow and make mushroom medicine, grow mushrooms in your garden, digest household waste with fungi, and work with fungi for remediation. The course will involve a mix of lecture-style learning and a lot of hands-on indoor and outdoor skill building.

Please join us for the whole weekend. Saturday is a focus on growing mushrooms at home for food and medicine, Sunday is about starting and growing your own mushroom cultures.

Course fee: $350-500 sliding scale

Includes: Instruction, materials, catered farm-to-table meals, camping & facilities

Each participant will take away their own mushroom cultures (1 liquid culture, 1 Oyster or King Stropharia mushroom grow kit + 1 grain spawn jar) and a Mushroom Cultivation Manual to refer back to. Valued at $75-100.

Registration required. For more info, including a full course schedule, and to register visit registration and info here.

 

Update about services

Hello mushroom cultivators!

I want to thank you for your business over the years, and update you that I am no longer selling mushroom spawn, as I have moved to California for a PhD program in Environmental Science. Though I am no longer selling mushroom cultures, I will continue doing mycoremediation research, and offering education and workshops on topics related to mushroom cultivation, citizen science, remediation, permaculture and environmental toxicology.

Luckily, you can still get spawn in Victoria!

David Lyon is selling spawn, including spawn bags, grain spawn, liquid culture, and agar culture and potentially starter kits, buckets, woodchip patches or log installations.

Contact him at DLyonwood@gmail.com.

Skills for Low-Tech Mushroom Cultivation – Weekend Course in Victoria June 2 & 3rd

June 2 & 3rd from 10-5pm

Vic West Community Centre  *accessibility info to come.

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, home-scale methods for growing mushrooms for food, medicine and earth renewal. We will focus on less-sterile approaches to creating your own mushroom cultures (“spawn”), fruiting mushrooms for food and medicine, and working with fungi to build soil, boost your garden, and address soil and water contamination. Throughout this course, you will learn about setting up cultivation space at home, gathering materials and equipment, and gain experiential hands-on skills to make liquid cultures, petri cultures, grain spawn, sawdust kits, and more. You will learn simple ways to grow and make mushroom medicine, grow mushrooms in your garden, digest household waste with fungi, and work with fungi for remediation. The course will involve a mix of lecture-style learning and a lot of hands-on- both indoor and outdoor skill building.

Please join us for the whole weekend, but if you’d prefer, you can join for just one day. Saturday is about starting and maintaining your own mushroom cultures and building low-tech lab skills for culturing wild fungi for medicine and remediation. Sunday is a focus on growing mushrooms at home for food and medicine.

 

Each participant will take away their own mushroom cultures (1 liquid culture, 1 Oyster or King Stropharia mushroom grow kit + 1 grain spawn jar) and a Mushroom Cultivation Manual to refer back to.

Please join us for the whole weekend, but if you’d prefer, you can join for just one day. Saturday is a focus on growing mushrooms at home for food and medicine, Sunday is about starting and growing your own mushroom cultures.

 Saturday breakdown: Low-tech skills for growing your own mushroom ‘cultures/spawn/mycelium’

*this is intended for folks who have either taken the previous days’ course, and/or have some experience growing mushrooms and/or are interested in getting seriously into mushroom cultivation. If you’re unsure if this day is for you, please email me at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com 🙂 

10am-12:30pm: Approaches to Cultivation

This will introduce the cultivation lifecycle and detail approaches to cultivation (sterile and less-sterile), and then get hands-on in spawn production: we’ll prep the substrates (growing mediums) together- liquid culture, agar, grain, bulk substrates (straw, sawdust, woodchips).

12:30-1:15pm LUNCH

1:15-2pm Equipment + Materials: make a glove box, and go through a mushroom cultivation equipment and materials checklist.

2pm: Starting Cultures – cardboard, liquid culture + agar

 3pm break with medicinal mushroom tea

3:15pm: Making grain spawn + everyone inoculate a grain jar in the glove box

4:15pm: Sawdust kits + next steps: incubating, troubleshooting- what to do if it gets contaminated.

5pm: close

*everyone will leave with 1 liquid culture, 1 grain spawn jar, and a detailed mushroom cultivation manual to refer back to.

** if you’d like to build your own glove box after the workshop, please let me know by Thursday and I will purchase the materials needed and support you in building one after the day finishes (5-5:30pm). The materials cost about $100.

Sunday breakdown: Grow your own mushrooms for food and medicine
*this is intended for folks who want to grow mushrooms to eat and/or for medicine at home and/or in their farm or gardens who have little to no experience growing mushrooms.

10am- Intro to fungal ecology + overview of mushroom cultivation
11:30am- Mushroom companions to the garden 
Hands-on: make King Stropharia mushroom pathway at orchard
12:30-1:15pm: Lunch * bring a lunch or go to eat nearby. There are 2 cafes within walking distance (Cornerstone and the Parsonage) and a number of other little restaurants.
1:15-1:45pm- Growing mushrooms on logs + Mushroom logs demo
1:45pm- Growing Oyster mushrooms + everybody make their own 4 gallon grow kit to take home
2:30pm- Break with medicinal mushroom tea
3pm- Growing Lions Mane, Reishi, and Shiitake mushrooms overview + medicinal and nutritional properties + how to prepare for food and medicine
4pm- Other cool stuff you can do with Fungi – working with fungi to address household waste and build healthy soil (if time and interest allows: intro to Mycoremediation)
+ Q +A
5pm- finish

 Cost: $200-300 sliding scale *Please pre-register and purchase tickets here.

Contact Danielle for more information or to register alternate ways: diyfungivictoria@gmail.com

1 work trade available. Partial trades available, please contact me if cost is a barrier and you’d like to join.

<<>>

I am looking for 1-2 Victoria-based folks to help out with mushroom chores over the next few months. My proposed trade is for 20 hrs of work valued at $15/hr in exchange for a space in an upcoming weekend-long mushroom cultivation course (tentatively June 1-3rd) + spawn. Things I need help with include: gathering and prepping substrates (chopping straw, getting woodchips, prepping buckets and jars and cardboard), making airport lids and sterilizing needles/syringes for liquid culture, postering, organizing the cultivation space, and a bit of help with setup and takedown at the course. If you’re interested in learning to cultivate mushrooms for food, medicine and remediation, this will be a great supplement to the course as you’ll get embodied experience with the first key phases in mushroom cultivation. PM if you’re interested with a bit of info about yourself and why you’re interested, and your availability.

Liquid Culture Sale & Medicinal Mushroom tinctures for sale!

$10 for Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) and King Stropharia (Stropharia rugoso annulata) liquid cultures. Winter is a great time to grow out cultures for spring installation.

Also- support your immune system! $15 tinctures of Reishi I grew, and Turkey Tail, Red Belted polypore, Chaga and Artist Conk I harvested.

Order by emailing diyfungivictoria@gmail.com or messaging to the D.I.Y. Fungi Facebook. Include your address for shipping. Pickup or drop off is available for folks living in Victoria.

❤

 

 

Learn to grow mushrooms- Weekend course in Victoria November 25 +26

Skills for Low-Tech Mushroom Cultivation – Weekend Course

November 25 & 26 from 10-5pm

Fernwood Community Centre, 1240 Gladstone Ave.

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, home-scale methods for growing mushrooms for food, medicine and earth renewal. We will focus on less-sterile approaches to creating your own mushroom cultures (“spawn”), fruiting mushrooms for food and medicine, and working with fungi to build soil, boost your garden, and address soil and water contamination. Throughout this course, you will learn about setting up cultivation space at home, gathering materials and equipment, and gain experiential hands-on skills to make liquid cultures, petri cultures, grain spawn, sawdust kits, and more. You will learn simple ways to grow and make mushroom medicine, grow mushrooms in your garden, digest household waste with fungi, and work with fungi for remediation.

 

Each participant will take away their own mushroom cultures (1 liquid culture, 1 Oyster or King Stropharia mushroom grow kit + 1 grain spawn jar) and a Mushroom Cultivation Manual to refer back to.

Please join us for the whole weekend, but if you’d prefer, you can join for just one day. Saturday is a focus on growing mushrooms at home for food and medicine, Sunday is about starting and growing your own mushroom cultures.

 Saturday breakdown: Grow your own mushrooms for food and medicine
*this is intended for folks who want to grow mushrooms to eat and/or for medicine at home and/or in their farm or gardens who have little to no experience growing mushrooms.

10am- Intro to fungal ecology + overview of mushroom cultivation
11:30am- Mushroom companions to the garden 
Hands-on: make King Stropharia mushroom pathway at orchard
12:30-1:15pm: Lunch * bring a lunch or go to eat nearby. There are 2 cafes within walking distance (Cornerstone and the Parsonage) and a number of other little restaurants.
1:15-1:45pm- Growing mushrooms on logs + Mushroom logs demo
1:45pm- Growing Oyster mushrooms + everybody make their own 4 gallon grow kit to take home
2:30pm- Break with medicinal mushroom tea
3pm- Growing Lions Mane, Reishi, and Shiitake mushrooms overview + medicinal and nutritional properties + how to prepare for food and medicine
4pm- Other cool stuff you can do with Fungi – working with fungi to address household waste and build healthy soil (if time and interest allows: intro to Mycoremediation)
+ Q +A
5pm- finish

Sunday breakdown: Low-tech skills for growing your own mushroom ‘cultures/spawn/mycelium’

*this is intended for folks who have either taken the previous days’ course, and/or have some experience growing mushrooms and/or are interested in getting seriously into mushroom cultivation. If you’re unsure if this day is for you, please email me at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com 🙂 

10am-12:30pm: Approaches to Cultivation

This will introduce the cultivation lifecycle and detail approaches to cultivation (sterile and less-sterile), and then get hands-on in spawn production: we’ll prep the substrates (growing mediums) together- liquid culture, agar, grain, bulk substrates (straw, sawdust, woodchips).

12:30-1:15pm LUNCH

1:15-2pm Equipment + Materials: make a glove box, and go through a mushroom cultivation equipment and materials checklist.

2pm: Starting Cultures – cardboard, liquid culture + agar

 3pm break with medicinal mushroom tea

3:15pm: Making grain spawn + everyone inoculate a grain jar in the glove box

4:15pm: Sawdust kits + next steps: incubating, troubleshooting- what to do if it gets contaminated.

5pm: close

*everyone will leave with 1 liquid culture, 1 grain spawn jar, and a detailed mushroom cultivation manual to refer back to.

** if you’d like to build your own glove box after the workshop, please let me know by Thursday and I will purchase the materials needed and support you in building one after the day finishes (5-5:30pm). The materials cost about $100.

Cost: $200-275 sliding scale *Please pre-register and purchase tickets here: https://growmushroomsvictoria.brownpapertickets.com/

Contact Danielle for more information or to register alternate ways: diyfungivictoria@gmail.com

1 work trade available. Partial trades available, please contact me if cost is a barrier and you’d like to join.

Edible Mushroom Catalog Created for Edible East Bay Magazine

Vancouver- Mushroom Cultivation Course November 12th

Sunday, November 12th from 10-5pm

@ Stratchona Community Gardens, 759 Malkin Ave. Vancouver

Come to this day-long intensive to learn how you can grow nutritious, delicious and medicinal mushrooms where you live. We’ll overview basic fungal ecology- what you need to know to grow mushrooms successfully- and then delve into simple ways you can grow mushrooms in your home, garden and farm. We’ll focus on the easiest mushrooms to grow- Oyster, Garden Giant, Shiitake and Lions Mane- and go through their nutritional and medicinal properties and ways to grow them. Then we’ll get hands-on experience making mushroom logs and mushroom beds in a food forest garden, as well as offering tips for companion planting mushrooms within veggie beds and orchards, mushrooms and composting, and the important role of mycorhizal fungi in the garden and orchard.

Each partipant will make their own Oyster mushroom grow kit to take home. Participants will leave with two mushroom growing projects, detailed handouts, and an understanding other cool stuff they can do with their mushroom kits- from building healthy soil, exploring a small-scale myco-remediation project, to scaling up food and medicine production.

Cost: pay-what-are-able but please give generously between $95-$125. Registration required. Please reserve your spot by contacting Danielle at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com to purchase tickets.

 

Instructor bio: Danielle Stevenson is a fungi enthusiast living in Duncan, B.C., Canada, with a focus on community-based work towards food sovereignty and land regeneration. She launched D.I.Y. Fungi to offer education and mushroom cultures (a.ka. “spawn”) to empower folks to grow their own food and medicine. She also works on projects and research that address food and waste issues, soil contamination and toxic waste, and works on grassroots and municipal-scale bioremediation projects.

Nanaimo- Grow Mushrooms for Food & Medicine Workshop- November 5th

Hosted in partnership with Mid-Island Community Development Co-op

Sunday, November 5th from 10-5pm

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering simple, home-scale methods for growing mushrooms for food, medicine and soil renewal. We will focus on growing mushrooms for food and medicine, and working with fungi to build soil, boost your garden, and address soil and water contamination. Throughout this course, you will gain experience and hands-on skills to make grow and make mushroom medicine, grow mushrooms in your garden, digest household waste with fungi, and work with fungi for remediation.

Come to this day-long intensive to learn how you can grow nutritious, delicious and medicinal mushrooms where you live. We’ll overview basic fungal ecology- what you need to know to grow mushrooms successfully- and then delve into simple ways you can grow mushrooms in your home, garden and farm. We’ll focus on the easiest mushrooms to grow- Oyster, Garden Giant, Shiitake and Lions Mane- and go through their nutritional and medicinal properties and ways to grow them. Then we’ll get hands-on experience making mushroom logs and mushroom beds in a food forest garden, as well as offering tips for companion planting mushrooms within veggie beds and orchards, mushrooms and composting, and the important role of mycorhizal fungi in the garden and orchard.

Each partipant will make their own Oyster mushroom grow kit to take home. Participants will leave with two mushroom growing projects, detailed handouts, and an understanding other cool stuff they can do with their mushroom kits- from building healthy soil, exploring a small-scale myco-remediation project, to scaling up food and medicine production.

Cost: pay-what-are-able but please pay generously between $85-125.

Registration required. Please reserve your spot: buy a ticket here

or contact Danielle at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com to purchase tickets.