Victoria: Skills for Low-Tech Mushroom Cultivation Weekend Course
The full weekend course is a sliding scale of $200-$275. You can join for just one day for $100.
RSVP required. Buy tickets here.
Skills for Low-Tech Mushroom Cultivation Course details
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 J
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.
D.I.Y. Fungi 
[…] More info here. […]
Hi there!
I have a few people who are very interested in this workshop. I live outside of Rockwood, ON and was not able to attend on Aug 19. Do you do private workshops? If so, how many people are allowed to participate and how much?
If not, any way you can film/do an online tutorial and charge for access to it?
Hi Nicole, I do private workshops indeed! If you’d like to email me at diyfungivictoria@gmail.com to get the ball rolling we can discuss your needs and what I typically offer, you can look at my list of workshop offerings to get an idea (as well as pricing range, I ask for teaching fees + materials/mushroom culture costs), and I can tailor to meet your groups’ interests. My family lives in Ontario so I am back regularly- I will be back in December and could book a private workshop then, or, we could arrange an Online tutorial. Looking forward to meeting you!
Hello, are you doing any workshops this January?
Hi Madeline, thanks for your interest! I do not have any workshops planned for this January. I am busy in school at the moment 🙂 I am always available for mushroom consults/private workshops via Skype if that interests you, please send me a message. Thank you and all the best, Danielle