I had a great talk today with Ryan Sansbury.
Ryan is one of the founders of LoGROcal, a sustainable mushroom farm outside of Austin, TX.
Ryan gave me some insight into the process of growing large volumes of mushrooms and the prospects for doing so as a local farm.
Here’s a quick summary.
- Compost. Coffee grounds from a local coffee shop and used hops from a local brewery are used as a growing medium.
- Spores. Ryan grows his mushroom spores in a clean room. He then inoculates the coffee/hops with the spores.
- Harvest. Two weeks later, Ryan harvests the mushrooms. He sells them to individuals and restaurants.
- Fertilizer. The parts of the mushrooms left over make an excellent fertilizer/compost/soil amendment. It can be sold.
That’s a very slick process. A process that maximized the potential value at every step.
To get his micro-farm to the next level, he’s selling DIY mushroom kits on Kickstarter.
These kits look like fun, particularly if you haven’t grown mushrooms before or you have kids. All you do is cut open the foil and two weeks later you can harvest the result.
Further, the material used to grow the mushrooms in the kit can be used to accelerate the growth of supportive fungus in your garden (they attach to the roots, to help the roots gather moisture and nutrients).
Get Resilient!
JOHN ROBB
PS: If you are a Resilient Strategies member, you’ll be able to access a recording of the call online. Ryan goes into lots of detail on the process of growing mushrooms at scale, and the economics of doing so as a local business.
 |
|
So, do the mushrooms taste like beer or coffee?
Not in the slightest! The larger a mushroom is allowed to grow, the more earthy it tastes, but that does not reflect the flavor of the substrate. Think about it, some of the best mushrooms are grown in poop…
It looks like it’s based on the CHIDO model out of the Blue Economy. A business partner & I were working on a similar model for Los Angeles (unfortunately, it failed before it got off the ground).
A fine model & one I’m proud at least to have touched for a second.
Now to inspire some other person in the San Fernando Valley to do it (we have a LOT of coffeehouses AND a brewery
)
The Blue Economy. Well. A new one for me, thank you.
This mushroom business… it reminds me of selling people blue colored vinegar water for 3 bucks in the store when you can make your own when you’re ready to clean windows, for pennies. The difference: no stupid “make-work” jobs, no fossil oil and other resources wasted on bottles and packaging and running machinery, no transportation over thousands of miles…
When you can get the spores in a letter, and innoculate your local logs. The old economy works by making people lazy and stupid, and then supplying stuff that should be free or nearly so, for bucks. And turning other people into wage-slaves to keep the racket going. The new economy? Let’s do better. Maybe that’s what the Blue Economy is about?
Did not mean suggest I have anything against local mushroom production, of course! Btw, morels are hard to grow, but there is a guy who sells trees inoculated with morel spores. Got a patent on it, though, for the time being.
morel-farms.com
Are the coffee grounds or hops leftovers, Im assuming that’s what you are using if you are getting material from a brewery, the best thing to use or can you use normal garden waste or even human waste?
The spent coffee grounds and spent beer grains are what is left after the brewing process. Mushrooms (especially oyster mushrooms) can grow in a wide variety of substrates. While I wouldn’t advise directly growing mushrooms in garden or human waste, if it has been vermicomposted first with red wiggler worms (or you can do it the old fashioned way if you like doing things the hard way) They would make excellent substrates!
Comments on this entry are closed.