Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

Mushrooms are everywhere. There used to be a subreddit of "weird mushrooms" like growing out of people's couches or in the bathroom, etc. In all cases, this is a sign of rot due to water intrusion.

You can grow mushrooms at home, it is fun. The only risk is that the mushrooms with high spore production are not great to have in a closed residence, especially oyster mushrooms which produce very high spore loads. There are vendors who produce cultures of sporeless oyster which can be used to grow oyster mushrooms indoors.

Outdoors, at least in most temperate areas, you are limited to things like shitake on logs or winecaps. The latter are incredibly easy to grow, and very good taste wise, but they are temperamental and basically grow on their own schedule, infrequently.

Nope. Edible mushrooms generally need similar conditions as mold/mildew/rot to grow, i.e. moisture, low light, and the right material -- though they tend to be pickier, and are less suited to human-adjacent conditions. So if you find mushrooms growing where they shouldn't, there's a much deeper moisture and mold issue.

Normally the risk of airborne spores taking over your growing material is much more likely than your (most of the time very selected and in no way adapted to the "normal" surroundings you try to grow them in) taking over your home. Keep in mind that almost all fungi like similar conditions and there are already loads of spores of fungi that are more adapted to your living conditions in the air.

I agree with the replies so far in that there isn't a major risk of the mushrooms spreading.

That said, it's not completely risk free and I think it's important for folks who decide to get into the hobby at least take a moment to think about it. If you have someone in the household that has respiratory issues, I think it would be worthwhile ensuring that you have good containment to prevent spores from circulating the home (or do it elsewhere). This is particularly true if you decide to scale up (which is natural once you have some success, it truly is fun).

Also the growing environment is subject to infection from whatever environmental molds/fungus/etc are around, so reasonable precautions should be taken when handling/disposing. Once you get your procedures down this is less of an issue but still something to keep in mind.

Personally I didn't do anything but very basic precautions and never had an issue.

I imagine it would require the bad spores to be carried with the good ones. Typically you get a slurry solution that you carry in distilled water, injecting your substrates. That would need to have the bad stuff in it as well.

There is always a risk of things like this. For example, to make my winecap bed, I had to get a bunch of woodchips. There is no way woodchips that one will buy in bulk are not contaminated with the spores of other wood-eating fungus.

What you learn is how to positively identify the mushrooms you intend to produce/eat. It doesn't take long. I've only had alien mushrooms show up once.

So the thing about mushrooms is you pretty much have to stick them in your mouth and chew for them to hurt you.

There are plants that can screw up your life if you touch them, but people sort of have the two threat levels flipped in their heads. The scariest thing a fungus can do to your insides is horrible, but an insect or animal can do the same but also you die screaming. So... be careful out there kids. And don't go to Australia.

Coffee grounds

Coco coir is very cheap and is what I use. If you want more of a project, you can make the inoculation jars and sterilize the grain yourself. That way you’ll be taking a spore/liquid culture syringe from a tiny blob of mycelium to a whole network of fruiting bodies. Doing that will also be much cheaper in the long run if you stick with the hobby

Mycelium has been shown to colonize some of the most unexpected substrates - cigarette butts [1], sawdust, you name it.

https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/good-practices...

Certain species do better in different substrates, but for the ones I've grown coco coir (also suggested by holly01) works great. There are some additional bits you can add to improve results but it starts there. You can hydrate it with hot water in a 5 gallon bucket. There's lots of tutorials on YouTube.

Depends on the species. For something easy to grow like oyster mushrooms, straw. Do decontaminate the straw. Cooking water or hydraulic lime water should work for that.

Winecap mushrooms are stupid simple to grow. I think it might have sailed into the sunset now but up until last year I had a colony over 20ft in diameter. They have a short fruiting life though. Works a bit better if you're a morning person.

It's a bit of trouble but not onerous. I'm temporarily relocated for about a year and haven't restarted b/c I don't have all the equipment here with me, but will likely restart here before long.

There are some sterile procedures you need to follow, pretty easy.

You need sterilized/pasteurized grain spawn and substrate. You can just buy those from a vendor (eg North Spore) to start. (Once you DIY it though it's much cheaper) Biggest challenge is getting

You need spores. You can order those online (syringes are the way to go to start). Once you know how to culture them you can easily get them anywhere. Put a mushroom cap on a piece of aluminum foil and let it sit for a week. Pick it up and there are your spores.

Takes 2-3 months end to end for any particular batch.

No. Think what egg cartons are made of.

Sounds like this might be your area of expertise. For the rest of us, take a shoebox. How much ballpark extra weight we talkin’ to have a livable planet? (Maybe the mushrooms would be ~2x as heavy as standard shoeboxes for example, to meet existing spec.)

Or how about for the glasses box they show on the site in OP, or a plastic sleeve like Americans sell Oreo cookies in. Anybody have any guesses?

Theoretically fungi can live off sawdust, don't need plenty of light or watering, etc, so they should be less expensive than corn.

OTOH corn is highly optimized over centuries of breeding, harvesting, and processing. Fungi, not nearly so, so by now they may be more expensive.

That's a URL bait!

Yeah same, I'm kinda sad now it's only packaging.

I thought it was going to be about robot mushroom harvesting and packing, a competitor to companies like 4AG and Mycionics.

The duality of man

Looking at the images, it looks less premium to me than the smoother mouled paper inserts I've seen on electronic products. You could be right on with the foam aspect though.

Molasses was cheap because it was the packing material for plate glass - which was only made in England. Place your plate glass in a barrel, fill it with molasses and you can ship it to North America. Just wash off the glass and you're good to go.

> This seems more like a replacement for Styrofoam rather than cardboard boxes

It seems rigid though, more akin to cardboard than soft styrofoam. I don't see anything about how dampening it is, but from the pictures I also assumed it was more like cardboard than styrofoam. Maybe the color is deceiving me though.

Dell (and IKEA, and others) source from Ecovative who have been working on this for a while: https://ecovative.com/

Not certainly. A LARGE number of fungi grow just fine without manure. I think this is a common misconception since agaricus bisporus (portobello, bella, white, cremini, button) need it to grow well, and it is the most commonly human-grown fungus by a long shot.

Sounds like a thing you could just make paper and cardboard out of directly...

Well, how is "Windows"?

A trademark sets your brand apart from competitors. If your competitors are other brands of mushrooms, then "Mushroom" is too broad. But if you're trying to distinguish yourself from other brands of packaging, it might work.

If it got litigated and I were the judge, I'd be concerned they were trying to abuse trademark to get patent-like protection. In the narrow packaging market, another mushroom packaging competitor would have trouble talking about its product without mentioning the word "mushroom" and drawing the ire of Mushroom™ lawyers.

Disclaimer: lawyer law blah blah

Yeah, I know it's just funny to see the coordinated effort across multiple sites.

So which company owns what, how about you read the homepage twice, and we can discuss the facts.