Friday, September 29th from 7-9pm

& Saturday and Sunday, September 30 + October 1 from 10-5pm

Facilitated by Danielle Stevenson of D.I.Y. Fungi

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, low-sterility, 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.

This course is intended for anyone interested in getting to know the fungal kingdom a bit better; folks who want to grow their own protein-rich food; build soil; and/or beginners to mushroom cultivation; and folks who have tried before without success. We’ll focus on Oyster, Shiitake, Lions Mane and King Stropharia mushrooms as easy mushrooms to start out growing, and overview broader options as they relate to medicine and 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.

The course is a sliding scale of $225-300. RSVP required. Buy tickets here.

Instructor Bio: Danielle Stevenson is a fungi enthusiast living in Victoria, 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.

Click here for detailed course info.

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Victoria folks- check out this amazing mushroom walk put on by Radical Mycologist Willoughby Arevalo. I’ve been on his walks before and learned so much- he’s got a magical and fun way of sharing info on the medicinal, culinary, mycoremediation, ecological functions of fungi. Don’t miss it! Details:

Saturday, April 1, 2017 at Francis/King Park Regional Park, Munn Rd, Saanich, BC. 12-4pm

Led by Willoughby Arevalo, contributor to the book Radical Mycology by Peter McCoy and member of the Vancouver Mycological Society

A participatory, field-based workshop geared towards all levels of experience, covering:

Core Skills for Mushroom Identification
Mushroom Names and Meanings
Fungal Ecology and Biology
Culinary and Medicinal Applications
Ethical Harvesting Practices
Traditional & Contemporary Uses
Cultivation and Mycoremediation Potential
Participants will come to understand the roles that fungi play in symbiosis, succession and regeneration, and how we can ally with fungi to increase resilience in our living systems and communities.

$40-$60 sliding scale. Kids free or by donation. Space is limited. To register, please write to willoughbyarevalo@gmail.com

Hello friends, clients and mushroom lovers, I’m posting to let you know that I’m taking a break from offering spawn and mushroom cultures this winter and spring (2017) to focus on health and healing. Hopefully I’ll be back at it by the fall 🙂 Wishing you all the best. ❤ Danielle of D.I.Y. Fungi

Friday, October 21 from 7-9pm and Saturday and Sunday, October 22 + 23 from 10-5pm

$180-225 sliding scale (1 full work trade and 1 partial work trade available)

Space is limited, please register here

Or email diyfungivictoria@gmail.com to make other arrangements.

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, low-sterility, 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.

This course is intended for anyone interested in getting to know the fungal kingdom a bit better; folks who want to grow their own protein-rich food; build soil; and/or beginners to mushroom cultivation; and folks who have tried before without success. We’ll focus on Oyster, Shiitake, Lions Mane and King Stropharia mushrooms as easy mushrooms to start out growing, and overview broader options as they relate to medicine and remediation. Each participant will take away their own mushroom cultures (1 liquid culture, 1 Oyster or King Stropharia mushroom culture + 1 remediation or waste digester project) and a Mushroom Cultivation Manual to refer back to.

 Friday, October 21^st from 7-9pm: Intro to Fungal Ecology

This talk will cover what you need to know to begin a relationship with the fungal kingdom so to grow mushrooms for food, medicine and earth renewal. It will offer an understanding of fungal ecology- how some of our fave fungi live and thrive- important to getting started practicing the art and science of mushroom cultivation.

*Optional: 9-9:30pm Mushroom Medicine Circle- try a medicinal mushroom tincture!

 

Saturday, October 22^nd from 10-5pm:

10-12:30pm: Approaches to Cultivation: Substrates

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, bulk substrates.

12:30-1:30pm LUNCH potluck

1:30-2:30pm Equipment + Materials: make a glove box, and go through a mushroom cultivation equipment and materials checklist.

2:30-5pm: Approaches to Cultivation: Spawn + Growing Mushrooms

This follows from the morning session with hands-on, supported inoculations of the substrates we prepped, including liquid cultures- and a discussion of next steps: incubating, troubleshooting- what to do if it gets contaminated– and urban recycling for food + medicine growing. Everyone will make an Oyster mushroom grow kit to take home.

 

 

10-12:30pm: Outdoor mushroom cultivation

Hands on outdoor mushroom installations at a partner location including mushroom logs, mushroom beds and pathways, companion planting within veggie beds and orchards, mushrooms and composting, and the important role of mycorhizal fungi in the garden and orchard.

12:30-1:30pm LUNCH

1:30-2:30pm: Medicinal & Nutritional Mushrooms

We’ll explore the nutritional and medicinal properties of Reishi, Turkey Tail, Lions Mane, Maitake, Shiitake and other mushrooms, and how to prepare them in cooking, teas, broths, capsules and tinctures.

 3-5pm: Mycoremediation

We’ll discuss how fungi can break down chemical pollutants- including oil, pesticides, and even Agent Orange; suck up heavy metals and radiation; filter water; bust up asphalt; and initiate and support many lifecycles that ultimately regenerate ecosystems. We will talk through some specific applications including how to filter water and detoxify contaminated soil with fungi, and visit or view local mycoremediation projects.

 

 

Mushroom Cooking for the Wild at Heart

Friday, April 15 at 6:30 PM – 9:30 PM

@ Quadra Village Community Centre, 901 Kings Road, Victoria

In this live cooking show and tasting dinner, mycologist and kitchen wizard Willoughby Arevalo will demonstrate appropriate pairings of local wild and cultivated mushrooms with seasonal ingredients, allowing each type of mushroom to shine in preparations honoring their unique qualities. Willoughby looks beyond classic and typical recipes for the most popular mushrooms, to lesser known delicacies, medicinal treats and unexpected preparations.

$45-75 sliding scale, includes 7 course meal
(one partial work trade available, please check in with us)

Space is limited, please register with Danielle @ diyfungivictoria@gmail.com or call 250-891-4927.

Learning to Identify Mushrooms

Saturday, April 16^th from 10-11am

Quadra Village Community Centre, 901 Kings Rd.

This workshop intends to teach the core principles and skills of mushroom identification and ease the learning curve by clarifying broad concepts and offering tools to the beginner to intermediate mushroomer.

Topics include:
Understanding the Language of Mycology – Common and Scientific
Taxonomy: Macro to Micro, How Systems of Classification Change over Time
Mushroom Anatomy and Macroscopic Features – Discerning with all the Senses
Embodied Presence in the Mushroom Hunt
Recognizing Habitats and Reading Ecological Roles
Making and Reading Spore Prints
Using a Dichotomous Key
Stature Types, Major Groups and Species to Know
Seasonality and Geographical Occurance
The Mushroom Hunter’s Tools and Equipment
Ethical Harvesting Practices
Taking Field Notes
Resources for Further Study

Space is limited, please register with Danielle @ diyfungivictoria@gmail.com or call 250-891-4927.
Walking the Mycelial Web: An Ecologically Focused Mushroom Foray (with Willougby Arevalo)

Saturday, April 16^th from noon-4pm

@ Francis King Regional Park

A participatory, field-based workshop geared towards all levels of experience, covering:
Core Skills for Mushroom Identification
Mushroom Names and Meanings
Fungal Ecology
Culinary and Medicinal Applications
Ethical Harvesting Practices
Traditional & Contemporary Uses
Cultivation and Mycoremediation Potential

Participants will come to understand the roles that fungi play in symbiosis, succession and regeneration, and how we can ally with fungi to increase resilience in our living systems and communities.

This amazing foray is led by mycologist Willougby Arevalo, a mycologist, gardener, kitchen wizard and educator originally from Arcata, California, now based in Vancouver, BC. In addition to lifelong self-study, he studied mycology at Humboldt State University and learned mushroom cultivation experientially, working as lab tech at Mycality Mushrooms, a medium-scale farm. He grows mushrooms at home and in the garden, subsistence forages, and prepares food and medicine from the harvests. He is a member of the Radical Mycology Collective, a group dedicated to sharing open-source, accessible information on the easiest and most effective means for working with fungi to increase personal, societal and ecological resilience. He teaches extensively, having presented workshops at many festivals, courses and events around North America.

$40-60 sliding scale. Space is limited, please register with Danielle @ diyfungivictoria@gmail.com or call 250-891-4927.
Join us before the foray for a Mushroom Identification workshop!

Saturday, April 9^th from 10-5pm at Fernwood Community Centre, 1240 Gladstone Ave.

$85-100 sliding scale (1 work trade available)

Space is limited, please register by clicking here 🙂  

This course will introduce the art and science of mushroom cultivation by offering low-tech, low-sterility, 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 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.

This course is intended for anyone interested in getting to know the fungal kingdom a bit better; folks who want to grow their own protein-rich food; build soil; and/or beginners to mushroom cultivation; and folks who have tried before without success. We’ll focus on Oyster, Shiitake, Lions Mane and King Stropharia mushrooms as easy mushrooms to start out growing, and overview broader options. If there is interest and time, we can cover some simple ways to grow mushroom medicine, digest household waste with fungi, and train fungi for remediation.

It’ll be an intense day, come prepared to learn! Each participant will take away their own mushroom cultures and a Mushroom Cultivation Manual to refer back to.

10-12:30pm: Approaches to Cultivation: Substrates, Equipment + Materials

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, bulk substrates- make a glove box, and go through a mushroom cultivation equipment and materials checklist.

12:30-1pm LUNCH + Medicinal mushroom teas and broths

1:15-3:30: Approaches to Cultivation: Spawn + Growing Mushrooms

This follows from the morning session with hands-on, supported inoculations of the substrates we prepped, and a discussion of next steps: incubating, fruiting (growing mushrooms for food and medicine), ‘training’ for remediation, and troubleshooting- what to do if it gets contaminated?

3:45-5pm: Applied Mycology: outdoor cultivation, mycoremediation, simple homescale food + medicine production through urban recycling

Hey look at this Mushroom Cultivation Intensive Poster !

Come on down and get mushroom spawn and resources at Victoria Seedy Saturday  this Sat, Feb 20th from 10-4pm at the Victoria Conference Centre.

I’ll be there with King Stropharia, Shiitake, Oyster varieties (Blue, Phoenix, Pearl), Elm Oyster, and Lions Mane  in different sizes and forms (grow kits, mushroom plugs, and spawn) ranging from $10-30. Plus- a mycoremediation zine, and a Low-Tech Mushroom Cultivation manual! 

Want to learn more about the practice of low-tech mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation and urban recycling? This internship will give you hands-on experience in these areas. Depending on what you want to learn, your skill set, and what needs to get done, you’ll support spawn production and the research, development and maintenance of ongoing mycoremediation and bioremediation projects from soil remediation to specific contaminant breakdown.

What you’d really be doing: While the outcomes of this work are exciting and important, the actual work involves regularly cleaning buckets, building equipment from recycled materials, gathering from the city’s waste stream, flipping compost, chopping straw, making lids, and reading through scientific articles.

Is it your thing? If this all sounds like something you’d be happy to spend time doing with enthusiasm and humility, please be in touch! There are important tasks for folks of all abilities and backgrounds, and I’d like to encourage folks to apply whether or not you can dig, research, or have knowledge of mushroom cultivation.

Commitment: I’m looking for 1-4 folks who can commit to coming every 2 weeks to for a 4 hour work party, schedule to be figured out based on both of our schedules. It’d be great if you can commit for at least 1 month.

What you get: I commit to making sure that you learn about the processes of mushroom cultivation and remediation in a way that’s meaningful to you, and finding tasks that you don’t hate doing and support you in building skills you’d like to. Interns also get some mushroom spawn and access to my workshops.

If you’re interested: please send Danielle an email at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com with a little bit about why you’re interested and if there are any skills you can offer in particular (ie- patience, building, driving around picking things up, etc).