Bay of Fungi Gourmet Mushrooms lets you grow your own at home

A Sackville-area company has a new product they hope will change the way some people buy their mushrooms.

Bay of Fungi Gourmet Mushrooms is marketing the Grow Your Own Gourmet Mushrooms kit.

You buy the bag, keep it out of direct sunlight, follow the instructions, and get ready to eat your homegrown mushrooms.

"It's a specialized bag, with a filter patch, so the mushrooms themselves can continue to breath while they are sort of in transit," said Ashley Broderick, one of three partners in the company.

"When folks receive this, what they'll do is pull is pull back this perforated tab, they'll cut an X in the bag and then the air and the light will trigger the mushrooms themselves to grow," she explained. "So within about 10 to 14 days of opening and cutting then you should have your own mushrooms."

So far more than a hundred kits have been pre-ordered online, featured blue oyster and shiitake mushrooms.

It's the latest move for the growing company, and the three owners pride themselves on making the business as do-it-yourself as possible.

New growing facility

To that end, they've spent the past six months building an off-the-grid growing facility themselves for the rest of their mushroom business.

"Anyone who's ever built anything probably knows it takes at least twice as long and is almost twice as expensive as you would expect," said Gavin Hardy, another owner.

"So it is a pretty big under taking but it's been great, yeah. It's been really fun, I've learned a lot every day, it's a bit of a challenge that way, but it's been really rewarding."

Next to that is the lab, where the third partner, Nick Thompson, puts his biology degree to work.

The equipment there is either homemade or recycled.

"We need a facility to work with the cultures in a clean environment, so we obtained this biological cabinet that scientists used to use, we picked up from the government for a couple of hundred bucks," said Thompson.

Grown on forestry by-products

Even the material they grow the mushrooms on is repurposed, from a surprising source.

"We can buy forestry by-products like saw dust and wood chips and grow mushrooms directly on it," said Thompson.

So far, demand has outstripped what the young company has been able to produce, but they hope the new facility can help them catch up.

"With this space we're hoping to grow between 150 and 200 pounds a week, which is vastly more than we can grow now." said Hardy.

The company has now reached the point where all three can dedicate themselves to working full-time. Mushroom cultivation, it seems, is a growth industry.