Cultivating Fungi & relationships
Let’s help each other grow!
When you want to truly know someone, observe them. When you truly want to love someone, help them grow.
While the science & art of mushroom cultivation can seem intimidating and complex, we make it approachable by focusing on the process; we want to help others feel confident & empowered to grow fungal food & medicine!
We have been intentionally cultivating fungi for almost 20 years, in our gardens & in the lab, from the forest to the farm.
Because of the enormous diversity of fungi, there are so many ways to be in relationship with them and they teach us so much in the process!
Fungi are incredibly intelligent & complex organisms that expand our definitions of what is possible & defy many of the human-derived narratives regarding reproduction, growth, sex, gender, form, function, differentiation & beyond.
When we work with mushrooms, we are participating with their cycle of life in an ongoing process of listening & learning as we practice our skills, patience & devotion.
Cultivation is not something we achieve, but a practice we must grow. As we cultivate them, they cultivate us.
Current offerings:
We are available for in-person and virtual/phone consultations as well as hands-on implementation. Some of the following offerings fluctuate with seasonal mushroom rhythms and the procurement of necessary materials.
Mushroom Cultivation
Shiitake fruiting from our logs at Moon Fruit Mushroom Farm
This consultation is for folks wanting to grow mycelium and/or mushrooms for personal use or to start a business, indoors or outdoors.
We focus on gourmet, medicinal and native species on logs, ground-based beds/patches and in re-usable or biodegradable cultivation containers such as five-gallon buckets, burlap sacs, laundry baskets, or anything else you can think of; the possibilities are seemingly endless!
There are great ways to incorporate mushrooms in the garden or landscape while building healthy, biologically active soil.
Some commonly cultivated species that we work with include, but are not limited to: shiitake, bioregionally appropriate oyster species, lion’s mane, multiple reishi species, turkey tail, king Stropharia, rosy polypore & more…
Cultivation Projects Galley:
Ryath teaching at Moon Fruit Mushroom Farm
Cloning & Culturing
Have you ever found delicious or interesting mushrooms in the wild and wished you could cultivate them? Well, you can send us mushrooms and/or spore prints to clone or germinate on your behalf, or teach you how to do it yourself! This is best done with saprotrophic species, but please reach out with whatever cultivation areas/species interest you.
This multi-step process can seem intimidating at first, but having solid laboratory skills is exceptionally helpful; we almost always have agar and petri dishes/jars prepped and are regularly tinkering in our flowhood-equipped lab spaces.
Skills involved: aseptic techniques, working with laminar flow hoods, making agar & pouring plates, sterile tissue cloning, culture transfers, sterilization & pasteurization processes, starting/storing culture libraries, etc! We can perform these tasks or consult with you on starting your own mycological libraries.
Mycoremediation
Mycoremediation is a form of bioremediation in which we ally with fungi to help decontaminate the environment & catalyze ecological regeneration. Whether increasing the filtration capacity of a grey water system or restoring balance to degraded soils, fungi are key elements in facilitating systemic and holistic healing to the lands and waters with which we live.
Observed again & again in a diverse array of situations, fungi have robust chemical capacities using non-specific, extracellular enzymatic complexes to break down some of our most harmful & persistent human-made pollutants.
Taye has been researching & implementing mycoremediation techniques in various contexts for five years. She has executed various research projects and experimental designs with CoRenewal and Bay Area Applied Mycology, two non-profit organizations focused on applied mycology and bioremediation.
She has led mycoremediation initiatives and implementations on large/small scales ad feels incredibly passionate about illuminating the healing power of fungi for our inner and outer landscapes.
These offerings are site- and context-specific, as are all bioremediation consultations/installations. Most of the installations are based on limited resources and people-power for small-scale or at-home projects. However, we are happy to consult on larger sites & projects.
Please share with us about your specific issue(s) & intentions using the contact form below.
Oysters on cigarette butts & toilet paper
Taye partnering with Stropharia rugosoannulata to remove pathogenic bacteria from garden bed soil.
Inoculating straw wattles with native Pleurotus to remediate toxins from burned homes in the CZU Lighting Complex burn scar.
For all inquiries, pricing and further details, please read the statements below and fill out the form at the bottom of the page.
We offer an initial & free 30 minute consultation over the phone, email, or a virtual meeting to get a sense of your projects, intentions & desires. Any work, research, etc. afterwards is priced on a case-by-case basis which varies with scale, complexity, travel distance, labor, cost of materials & your unique situation. We are willing to commute to local sites or discuss reciprocity for longer-distance traveling. We want to make growing mushrooms & any remediation projects accessible/affordable based on your personal conditions & circumstances.