16 ms·

Smart mushroom growing device for beginners

194 points by memorable 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
Usually when you grow mushrooms you do it in two steps. First you grow out the mycelium on a growth medium such as grains, then you spread out the mycelium and cover it with some casing material, say peat moss, and fruit it under different environmental conditions. A typical mushroom lab has two areas built out (say with plastic sheets) to maintain the conditions for these two phases. Looks like their machine creates conditions to fruit mycelium blocks that they send to you in the mail. It's a big plus that it works with mycelium blocks you make yourself.
- Gustomaximus 4y ago
  Seems so. From step 1 on the website: "Choose from our precolonized mushroom blocks and press start"
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I had been considering setting up my own small lab to grow and do experiments for ... reasons. I think that this is a great way to get started and should greatly simplify the process.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    Back when we did it we had a fruiting tent that was maybe 20 times the volume of that thing. Of course the project took up a whole room in the house.
  - markvdb 4y ago
    You've just demystified a large potential demand source for this thing to me.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      Pleasure to help. With this device, all one needs is some grains (I have an uncle who has a relevant subreddit), and spores, which are legally obtainable!
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    I don't think it makes sense to spend $300 on a tiny tub given how easy it is to do this stuff with jars or Ikea tubs. You'll probably want a lot of tubs anyway.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Plastic storage tubs from IKEA or similar works out cheaper, and higher volume. Its pretty hard to fuck up as well.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      Perhaps, but then I will also need instruments to measure humidity, airflow, temperature and so on and a means of controlling parameters.
- anewpersonality 4y ago
  No no no.. for Lion's Mane, you want only the mycelium. How do you grow it in liquid such that 100% of the mycelium is available? Growing on grain ruins the cost-efficiency of the product.
  - flutas 4y ago
    There's a reason Ben's Original (Uncle Ben's) is big in the mushroom community. - Pre sterilized - Cost effective - Easy to monitor
    - np_tedious 4y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/unclebens https://old.reddit.com/r/unclebens Such genius simplicity. I've grown once in mason jars with rice flour, and once in uncle Ben's. Ben was such an improvement
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I am only familiar with eating of the fruiting body. Are you saying that the fruiting body is useless, or am I misunderstanding you? The eating of the fruiting body has a very long history and some literature. Do you have any more information.?
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      The fruiting body of hericium mushrooms like lion's mane do not contain Erinacine A, which is generally recognized to be the most beneficial component of lions mane. That compound is present only in the mycelium. The fruiting body does contain Hericenones, which are also thought to have some health benefits, just not the nervous system repair benefits that Erinacine A provides.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Thanks!
thepangolino 4y ago
wallaBBB 4y ago
OK, so the real question - which ones from the list are psilocybin mushrooms?
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  None. However, it is generally legal to acquire cube[ensis] spores. From there all you need is sterile grains to setup a block, which should be easy if you enjoy rice.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  I believe one would get the DIY block and inoculate with psilocybe cubensis
  - dymk 4y ago
    If you're going through the effort to DIY a block, you have no need for a machine like this
eterpstra 4y ago
For the section on growing your own "special" mushrooms, they have a young guy in a baja hoodie watching the "magic" happen and winking at the camera. Pretty sure they're targeting a very specific audience here. Solid marketing.
- WaitWaitWha 4y ago
  :) The three-picture sequence on the front page, under the heading "Easier than You think; 3 easy steps", the last picture shows the grown mushrooms in a round container, while the device is cuboid throughout the other pictures.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  It is certainly working.
- Alex3917 4y ago
  > Pretty sure they're targeting a very specific audience here. Probably accurate. Growing edible mushrooms on such a small scale doesn't make any sense given that they are 90% water, and so shrink ~90% when you cook them. This would be like buying an AeroGarden that can grow only a single leaf of parsley. E.g. it takes at least 10 lbs of lions mane to make crab cakes for two people, whereas I doubt this thing is going to produce more than half a pound.
  - scoot 4y ago
    That would be dried mushrooms. No thanks!
  - skyyler 4y ago
    What makes you think it takes 10lbs of lions mane to make two servings of crab cakes? This recipe uses 6oz and claims to make four: https://steamykitchen.com/192632-lions-mane-crab-cake-recipe.html https://steamykitchen.com/192632-lions-mane-crab-cake-recipe...
yellow_lead 4y ago
I had a feeling it was a kickstarter (well, indiegogo). Hope it works out, but I'm wary to put money into any of these.
hesdeadjim 4y ago
Clever device. I was wondering how they’d sterilize between harvests, but with the presence of a UV light I assume they run a sterilization cycle of some kind. While I don’t partake, a quick and clean path growing magic mushrooms would be nice for the community. The existing teks out there still have plenty of room for contamination.
- loriverkutya 4y ago
  Contamination mostly happening in the inoculation phase and this is just a fruiting chamber, does not help with that. You can also do the whole fruiting phase in a plastic bag with the help of a water spray.
hellohowareu 4y ago
This is a super cool device. Kudos to the founders & company. It's a very cute little mushroom box setup. And it's inspiring that products like this exist, simply because they look great and make me think "Hey, with enough sweat, marketing, and capital I can create a product too!" To get started, low tech: All ya need is: Pressure cooker, wheat grains, jar, mycelium, a sterile plastic bag or bin, and the right mix of fresh sterile air & humidity.
DrinkWater 4y ago
I never tried to grow my own mushrooms, but the hardest part seems to be the actual growing of the mycelium with all the involved cleanliness, usage of needles, autoclaves and so on, right? The actual "container", which keeps the right amount of light and humidity and air circulation, can be build and maintained fairly easily. At least that's why i got from reading a little bit about this.
- jayphen 4y ago
  Indeed, the hardest part is inoculating without introducing contaminants that will out-compete the mycelium (typically trich). However, this is relatively simple and cheap to do at home — especially using a technique called uncle Ben’s tek. As it happens, pre-packaged rice is the perfect sterile environment for mycelium growth. Once successfully inoculated, it’s basically a matter of mixing the mycelium with substrate (wood chips or coir depending on the strain) in a container with a lid that allows minimal airflow (a plastic tub for example) and waiting. The process is really quite simple, and I’ve harvested kilograms of mushrooms with an initial outlay of around $30. Once you have mushrooms, you have spores, and the recurring cost is only substrate (and uncle Ben’s bags or grains, jars, pressure cooker if you want to sterilise them yourself).
- citruscomputing 4y ago
  Yeah, 1000%. I've grown almost half the species they list. The hard (and fun) part is agar work to clean up the culture, sterilizing the grain, and keeping it sterile as you inoculate it, knowing when a bag has gone bad, etc. Fruiting it is easy in comparison. Like, cut some slits in the bag and mist it, with a trash bag over it if you want to be fancy. Mushroom stand at former local farmers market sold said blocks direct to consumer, and they'll give you a hell of a lot more than these ones. I do have my own fruiting chamber, but it's not necessary. The main advantage of this thing (which is no small feat!) is that it looks pretty, unlike a mottled plastic bag, potentially with another bag over it. I can absolutely see a place for it as a fun, living table piece that gives you food. Also once you buy this thing you have an incentive to keep buying their blocks. I have never been impressed with "smart" fruiting chambers -- they just play up how ~hard~ growing mushrooms is and then do the easy part for you and claim it's solved. Call me when a chamber like this can detect mold better than my nose and eyes. THAT I'll shell out money for. It sucks to have mold sporulate, contaminating everything, before you know it's happened. Mushrooms want to grow! And once you've gotten to the point where they're the only thing growing, you're golden. Also, none of this is that hard if you read and learn! The mushrooms will tell you exactly where you went wrong, and there's TONS of info out there to get the hobby grower started. I highly suggest Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, and reading up on The Shroomery (lot of good stuff in the gourmet forum, some stuff that's common between gourmet and magic, like agar or grain prep is in the other cultivation forum).
kosyblysk666 4y ago
overpriced garbage
N-Krause 4y ago
Seems like we're giving the site a hard time, archive.org URL from earlier today: https://web.archive.org/web/20220711140012/https://shrooly.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220711140012/https://shrooly.c...
pline 4y ago
as a home mushroom cultivator I can tell you that this device is pretty much the Juicero of the mushroom world. from what i'm reading this device accomplishes nothing that one can't do with a homemade monotub composed of a 32 quart storage tote, a spray bottle and some polyfill. if you are interested in growing edible gourmet mushrooms look up a local mushroom farm in your area, most of them sell blocks that you can fruit at home.
- TheBlerch 4y ago
  Could you recommend any types of mushrooms you'd recommend for home cultivation and online sources for blocks? Already grow vegetables and it would be great to add mushrooms to the mix. Also are there any communities you'd recommend that share good advice?
  - pline 4y ago
    lions mane and oyster are both great for home cultivation. if you look for a local mushroom farm in your area you can likely buy blocks from them. I've purchased blocks from Fat Moon Farms and had good success with them growing several pounds of mushrooms from a single block. https://fatmoonmushrooms.com/ https://fatmoonmushrooms.com/ there are a variety of mushroom/mycology related subreddits and Southwest Mushrooms on youtube has alot of informative well produced video content https://www.youtube.com/c/SouthwestMushrooms https://www.youtube.com/c/SouthwestMushrooms
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    I have found that pink oysters are absolutely impossible to fail to grow in a wide variety of conditions, very robust to storage and handling, and very good to eat. They are very hearty little mushrooms (or big mushrooms sometimes!) I honestly have no idea why pink oysters are not sold in grocery stores or used in more dishes, they are very cheap to grow and add interesting color.
- anewpersonality 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
buzzwords 4y ago
Ok, I know nothing about mushrooms and how they grow. But this looks like another Juicero situation.
- weego 4y ago
  $12 a block? The pod thing is only capable of what appears to be a portion, so yeah: It's a fungus juicero.
  - alphalima 4y ago
    Typically, a block (made by the methods outlined elsewhere ITT) will give you 3-4 flushes before it's spent. I can only assume these blocks are similar. Not defence of the product, definitely not for me, removes the fun part of mushroom growing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
1970-01-01 4y ago
$282 + $12/pod to grow fungus. Assuming you're going to use it legally, you won't have a positive ROI.
VectorLock 4y ago
All things must be made Blades and Razors.
jmlucjav 4y ago
I just harvested my first mushrooms ever yesterday. This was not some fancy lab stuff, just put the mycelium in some got a couple of sq meters in my garden (dried leaves and such), keep it moist, and got a nice harvest. Like this guy does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERv85b9krI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERv85b9krI
feynmanalgo 4y ago
I'm surprised people are consuming special mushrooms so frequently that they would even consider a special gadget for this purpose.
- 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
  It's like growing zucchini, sure you won't eat it all but why not?
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  I assume it's for friends.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  If you want to eat anything other than agaricus it's hard to buy them fresh because most mushrooms don't ship and handle well. You can get them from farmer's markets in medium and largeish cities but if you don't have those your options are sad broken and dried out grocery store stock, if that. Consider also that for things like stroganoff, wellington, or other duxelle-ish dishes it takes quite a lot of mushroom to make the end product, since mushrooms are mostly water and will be 'sweated' of that water.
bsedlm 4y ago
the fact that the frontpage animation is a cartoon (computer graphics rendering) of what they intend to do, and not a well produced timelapse makes me doubt their entire project.
- belval 4y ago
  As with all indiegogo/kickstarters, a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted. However, the video does showcase what seems to be a working devices growing various mushrooms.
yboris 4y ago
Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/ r/unclebens is a beginner-friendly community to share the "Ready Rice" technique, a simple and beginner-friendly method for cultivating mushrooms without a pressure cooker
CuriouslyC 4y ago
Growing mushrooms is stupid easy, the only challenging part is keeping things sterile during inoculation and before the mycelium is established. Moisture content of the substrate is important as well but that's pretty easy to get right. You can set up a monotub using a storage bin, just line it with a trash bag, toss in some damp hot water sterilized coco coir and mix your fully colonized grain spawn, then cover the bin loosely so there is some airflow and keep it in a closet that you've cleaned thoroughly. Once set up they require almost no maintenance until they start to flush. Once you've got pins showing you can improve your flushes by spraying and fanning, but even without that you will probably get 1-2 flushes of decent size.
- basch 4y ago
  I agree, but this reads as "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" The keurigification/dropboxification and the ability of companies like instantpot/ninja to clone and resell old ideas but slightly better cant be understated. People like easy pods and start buttons.
hinkley 4y ago
As someone who watch too much This Old House as a child, and lives in the PNW, if you live in a particularly humid part of the world I would strongly suggest you keep your mushroom experiments outside. There are some non-zero risks around having saprophytic mushrooms producing spores inside or immediately outside of your house. I need to replace the framing around my back door and add a roof over it due to water damage, which I can tell because there's baby turkey tail about 4 inches up from the sill.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  Are t there spores literally everywhere all the time though?
  - hinkley 4y ago
    When identifying a mushroom you collect a spore print, which generally involves finding a young mushroom and sitting it on a piece of paper. The color of the spores can often distinguish between lookalikes. Doing a spore print, it can be a bit of a surprise how much a single mushroom can produce. Teaspoons of sugar versus the entire bowl makes for a very different coffee experience.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
This thing looks way too small. If you grow edible mushrooms this probably won't even be enough for one meal and if you grow magic mushrooms the yield will be pretty low too.
JoeyBananas 4y ago
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?? Magic mushrooms!!!
throwatrip 4y ago
This is a fruiting chamber, not a mushroom growing device. Fruiting is by far the most trivial part of mushroom growing. You still need to sterilize a growth media, innoculate it with spores or mycelium, grow it out without contamination, and mix into a substrate long before it enters this device. Or buy their overpriced pre-packaged, pre-grown substrates. As a fruiting chamber, it does nothing that a $2 plastic Sterilite shoebox cannot do. They already self-regulate humidity and CO2 when set up correctly. Use your favorite search engine and look for Shoebox Tek. I've seen a few mentions of Uncle Ben's pre-cooked rice Tek on here. Using UB for mushroom cultivation is the mycological equivalent of programming in Visual Basic or writing a database in Excel. It's a technique for uneducated new users which is technically inferior, and in the long run way more expensive, than learning to do it the correct way. But it uses components that users have easy access to, so it is irrationally popular. I've tried my own hand at automating fruiting chambers, using a RasPi with CO2/humidity/temperature sensors (Sensiron SCD30), misters, and fans. Nothing but a pain, didn't increase yields, too much data leads to too much tinkering and tweaking. The best thing you can do for a mushroom grow is to leave it alone.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  >This is a fruiting chamber, not a mushroom growing device. Fruiting is by far the most trivial part of mushroom growing. You've hit on exactly the value being provided here - they are handling the culture, inoculation, spawning, and colonization stages and selling you an expensive box to put the result in. Sometimes people just want a quick fun activity and they don't want to research it beforehand. This product fills that need - send them money, they send you a mushroom growing experience.
  - system2 4y ago
    $300 fancy plastic box for humidity and heat control. And shrooms sold separately. Some rich family will get it for their kids to use it once.
    - jachee 4y ago
      A humidor is also a box that controls humidity and heat. How much do people pay for those (and cigars sold separately)? If there’s a market for that, why not this?
alangibson 4y ago
Strong Juicero vibes. I produced some very fine, eh, shiitake mushrooms in a closet from a mycelium bought over the internet from, eh, Hamsterdam using only a desk lamp and a spray bottle.
charlie0 4y ago
I don't see anything about this being usable without an app. If that's the case, no deal.
- traverseda 4y ago
  It says so on the Kickstarter page.
larrywright 4y ago
Since it’s on HN, I just assumed this was for growing the psychedelic kind.
- pennaMan 4y ago
  I'm sure golden teachers thrive in that thing :)
dymk 4y ago
I know close to nothing about growing mushrooms, aside from doing those kits once or twice where they grow out of the sides of the bag. I couldn't stand the marketing vid. Looks like a scam. "Harvest at home with zero effort" I highly doubt it's _zero_ effort "Gives you the highest quality food without GMO, chemicals, or waste..." the _biggest_ eyeroll ever "Just order our ready to go blocks" so much for no waste I'll stick with the $10 bag you cut holes in the side of
giantg2 4y ago
Or build this for yourself - bins to help contain humidity, a pump with irrigation tube, old gallon jug as a reservoir, and a timer to spray them a couple times a day. https://i.postimg.cc/qBtCZJPR/20220502-161435.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/qBtCZJPR/20220502-161435.jpg
herdymerzbow 4y ago
Seems that the value this device provides is creating a clearing house for more experienced mushroomers to share info with interested noobs on how to bypas it and do it in a cardboard box. Perhaps it's not what the founders of the company intended, but it's a value add nonetheless.
vlark 4y ago
It seems what this device is especially good at is separating fools from their money.
SCLeo 4y ago
To be honest, I didn't even know people can grow mushrooms in their homes.

194 points by memorable 4y ago

Usually when you grow mushrooms you do it in two steps. First you grow out the mycelium on a growth medium such as grains, then you spread out the mycelium and cover it with some casing material, say peat moss, and fruit it under different environmental conditions. A typical mushroom lab has two areas built out (say with plastic sheets) to maintain the conditions for these two phases. Looks like their machine creates conditions to fruit mycelium blocks that they send to you in the mail. It's a big plus that it works with mycelium blocks you make yourself.

Gustomaximus 4y ago
Seems so. From step 1 on the website: "Choose from our precolonized mushroom blocks and press start"
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I had been considering setting up my own small lab to grow and do experiments for ... reasons. I think that this is a great way to get started and should greatly simplify the process.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Back when we did it we had a fruiting tent that was maybe 20 times the volume of that thing. Of course the project took up a whole room in the house.
- markvdb 4y ago
  You've just demystified a large potential demand source for this thing to me.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Pleasure to help. With this device, all one needs is some grains (I have an uncle who has a relevant subreddit), and spores, which are legally obtainable!
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  I don't think it makes sense to spend $300 on a tiny tub given how easy it is to do this stuff with jars or Ikea tubs. You'll probably want a lot of tubs anyway.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  Plastic storage tubs from IKEA or similar works out cheaper, and higher volume. Its pretty hard to fuck up as well.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Perhaps, but then I will also need instruments to measure humidity, airflow, temperature and so on and a means of controlling parameters.
anewpersonality 4y ago
No no no.. for Lion's Mane, you want only the mycelium. How do you grow it in liquid such that 100% of the mycelium is available? Growing on grain ruins the cost-efficiency of the product.
- flutas 4y ago
  There's a reason Ben's Original (Uncle Ben's) is big in the mushroom community. - Pre sterilized - Cost effective - Easy to monitor
  - np_tedious 4y ago
    https://old.reddit.com/r/unclebens https://old.reddit.com/r/unclebens Such genius simplicity. I've grown once in mason jars with rice flour, and once in uncle Ben's. Ben was such an improvement
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I am only familiar with eating of the fruiting body. Are you saying that the fruiting body is useless, or am I misunderstanding you? The eating of the fruiting body has a very long history and some literature. Do you have any more information.?
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    The fruiting body of hericium mushrooms like lion's mane do not contain Erinacine A, which is generally recognized to be the most beneficial component of lions mane. That compound is present only in the mycelium. The fruiting body does contain Hericenones, which are also thought to have some health benefits, just not the nervous system repair benefits that Erinacine A provides.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Thanks!

thepangolino 4y ago

wallaBBB 4y ago

OK, so the real question - which ones from the list are psilocybin mushrooms?

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
None. However, it is generally legal to acquire cube[ensis] spores. From there all you need is sterile grains to setup a block, which should be easy if you enjoy rice.
libraryatnight 4y ago
I believe one would get the DIY block and inoculate with psilocybe cubensis
- dymk 4y ago
  If you're going through the effort to DIY a block, you have no need for a machine like this

eterpstra 4y ago

For the section on growing your own "special" mushrooms, they have a young guy in a baja hoodie watching the "magic" happen and winking at the camera. Pretty sure they're targeting a very specific audience here. Solid marketing.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago
:) The three-picture sequence on the front page, under the heading "Easier than You think; 3 easy steps", the last picture shows the grown mushrooms in a round container, while the device is cuboid throughout the other pictures.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
It is certainly working.
Alex3917 4y ago
> Pretty sure they're targeting a very specific audience here. Probably accurate. Growing edible mushrooms on such a small scale doesn't make any sense given that they are 90% water, and so shrink ~90% when you cook them. This would be like buying an AeroGarden that can grow only a single leaf of parsley. E.g. it takes at least 10 lbs of lions mane to make crab cakes for two people, whereas I doubt this thing is going to produce more than half a pound.
- scoot 4y ago
  That would be dried mushrooms. No thanks!
- skyyler 4y ago
  What makes you think it takes 10lbs of lions mane to make two servings of crab cakes? This recipe uses 6oz and claims to make four: https://steamykitchen.com/192632-lions-mane-crab-cake-recipe.html https://steamykitchen.com/192632-lions-mane-crab-cake-recipe...

yellow_lead 4y ago

I had a feeling it was a kickstarter (well, indiegogo). Hope it works out, but I'm wary to put money into any of these.

hesdeadjim 4y ago

Clever device. I was wondering how they’d sterilize between harvests, but with the presence of a UV light I assume they run a sterilization cycle of some kind. While I don’t partake, a quick and clean path growing magic mushrooms would be nice for the community. The existing teks out there still have plenty of room for contamination.

loriverkutya 4y ago
Contamination mostly happening in the inoculation phase and this is just a fruiting chamber, does not help with that. You can also do the whole fruiting phase in a plastic bag with the help of a water spray.

hellohowareu 4y ago

This is a super cool device. Kudos to the founders & company. It's a very cute little mushroom box setup. And it's inspiring that products like this exist, simply because they look great and make me think "Hey, with enough sweat, marketing, and capital I can create a product too!" To get started, low tech: All ya need is: Pressure cooker, wheat grains, jar, mycelium, a sterile plastic bag or bin, and the right mix of fresh sterile air & humidity.

DrinkWater 4y ago

I never tried to grow my own mushrooms, but the hardest part seems to be the actual growing of the mycelium with all the involved cleanliness, usage of needles, autoclaves and so on, right? The actual "container", which keeps the right amount of light and humidity and air circulation, can be build and maintained fairly easily. At least that's why i got from reading a little bit about this.

jayphen 4y ago
Indeed, the hardest part is inoculating without introducing contaminants that will out-compete the mycelium (typically trich). However, this is relatively simple and cheap to do at home — especially using a technique called uncle Ben’s tek. As it happens, pre-packaged rice is the perfect sterile environment for mycelium growth. Once successfully inoculated, it’s basically a matter of mixing the mycelium with substrate (wood chips or coir depending on the strain) in a container with a lid that allows minimal airflow (a plastic tub for example) and waiting. The process is really quite simple, and I’ve harvested kilograms of mushrooms with an initial outlay of around $30. Once you have mushrooms, you have spores, and the recurring cost is only substrate (and uncle Ben’s bags or grains, jars, pressure cooker if you want to sterilise them yourself).
citruscomputing 4y ago
Yeah, 1000%. I've grown almost half the species they list. The hard (and fun) part is agar work to clean up the culture, sterilizing the grain, and keeping it sterile as you inoculate it, knowing when a bag has gone bad, etc. Fruiting it is easy in comparison. Like, cut some slits in the bag and mist it, with a trash bag over it if you want to be fancy. Mushroom stand at former local farmers market sold said blocks direct to consumer, and they'll give you a hell of a lot more than these ones. I do have my own fruiting chamber, but it's not necessary. The main advantage of this thing (which is no small feat!) is that it looks pretty, unlike a mottled plastic bag, potentially with another bag over it. I can absolutely see a place for it as a fun, living table piece that gives you food. Also once you buy this thing you have an incentive to keep buying their blocks. I have never been impressed with "smart" fruiting chambers -- they just play up how ~hard~ growing mushrooms is and then do the easy part for you and claim it's solved. Call me when a chamber like this can detect mold better than my nose and eyes. THAT I'll shell out money for. It sucks to have mold sporulate, contaminating everything, before you know it's happened. Mushrooms want to grow! And once you've gotten to the point where they're the only thing growing, you're golden. Also, none of this is that hard if you read and learn! The mushrooms will tell you exactly where you went wrong, and there's TONS of info out there to get the hobby grower started. I highly suggest Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, and reading up on The Shroomery (lot of good stuff in the gourmet forum, some stuff that's common between gourmet and magic, like agar or grain prep is in the other cultivation forum).

kosyblysk666 4y ago

overpriced garbage

N-Krause 4y ago

Seems like we're giving the site a hard time, archive.org URL from earlier today: https://web.archive.org/web/20220711140012/https://shrooly.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220711140012/https://shrooly.c...

pline 4y ago

as a home mushroom cultivator I can tell you that this device is pretty much the Juicero of the mushroom world. from what i'm reading this device accomplishes nothing that one can't do with a homemade monotub composed of a 32 quart storage tote, a spray bottle and some polyfill. if you are interested in growing edible gourmet mushrooms look up a local mushroom farm in your area, most of them sell blocks that you can fruit at home.

TheBlerch 4y ago
Could you recommend any types of mushrooms you'd recommend for home cultivation and online sources for blocks? Already grow vegetables and it would be great to add mushrooms to the mix. Also are there any communities you'd recommend that share good advice?
- pline 4y ago
  lions mane and oyster are both great for home cultivation. if you look for a local mushroom farm in your area you can likely buy blocks from them. I've purchased blocks from Fat Moon Farms and had good success with them growing several pounds of mushrooms from a single block. https://fatmoonmushrooms.com/ https://fatmoonmushrooms.com/ there are a variety of mushroom/mycology related subreddits and Southwest Mushrooms on youtube has alot of informative well produced video content https://www.youtube.com/c/SouthwestMushrooms https://www.youtube.com/c/SouthwestMushrooms
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  I have found that pink oysters are absolutely impossible to fail to grow in a wide variety of conditions, very robust to storage and handling, and very good to eat. They are very hearty little mushrooms (or big mushrooms sometimes!) I honestly have no idea why pink oysters are not sold in grocery stores or used in more dishes, they are very cheap to grow and add interesting color.
anewpersonality 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

buzzwords 4y ago

Ok, I know nothing about mushrooms and how they grow. But this looks like another Juicero situation.

weego 4y ago
$12 a block? The pod thing is only capable of what appears to be a portion, so yeah: It's a fungus juicero.
- alphalima 4y ago
  Typically, a block (made by the methods outlined elsewhere ITT) will give you 3-4 flushes before it's spent. I can only assume these blocks are similar. Not defence of the product, definitely not for me, removes the fun part of mushroom growing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

1970-01-01 4y ago

$282 + $12/pod to grow fungus. Assuming you're going to use it legally, you won't have a positive ROI.

VectorLock 4y ago

All things must be made Blades and Razors.

jmlucjav 4y ago

I just harvested my first mushrooms ever yesterday. This was not some fancy lab stuff, just put the mycelium in some got a couple of sq meters in my garden (dried leaves and such), keep it moist, and got a nice harvest. Like this guy does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERv85b9krI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TERv85b9krI

feynmanalgo 4y ago

I'm surprised people are consuming special mushrooms so frequently that they would even consider a special gadget for this purpose.

1234letshaveatw 4y ago
It's like growing zucchini, sure you won't eat it all but why not?
spaetzleesser 4y ago
I assume it's for friends.
idiotsecant 4y ago
If you want to eat anything other than agaricus it's hard to buy them fresh because most mushrooms don't ship and handle well. You can get them from farmer's markets in medium and largeish cities but if you don't have those your options are sad broken and dried out grocery store stock, if that. Consider also that for things like stroganoff, wellington, or other duxelle-ish dishes it takes quite a lot of mushroom to make the end product, since mushrooms are mostly water and will be 'sweated' of that water.

bsedlm 4y ago

the fact that the frontpage animation is a cartoon (computer graphics rendering) of what they intend to do, and not a well produced timelapse makes me doubt their entire project.

belval 4y ago
As with all indiegogo/kickstarters, a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted. However, the video does showcase what seems to be a working devices growing various mushrooms.

yboris 4y ago

Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/ r/unclebens is a beginner-friendly community to share the "Ready Rice" technique, a simple and beginner-friendly method for cultivating mushrooms without a pressure cooker

CuriouslyC 4y ago

Growing mushrooms is stupid easy, the only challenging part is keeping things sterile during inoculation and before the mycelium is established. Moisture content of the substrate is important as well but that's pretty easy to get right. You can set up a monotub using a storage bin, just line it with a trash bag, toss in some damp hot water sterilized coco coir and mix your fully colonized grain spawn, then cover the bin loosely so there is some airflow and keep it in a closet that you've cleaned thoroughly. Once set up they require almost no maintenance until they start to flush. Once you've got pins showing you can improve your flushes by spraying and fanning, but even without that you will probably get 1-2 flushes of decent size.

basch 4y ago
I agree, but this reads as "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" The keurigification/dropboxification and the ability of companies like instantpot/ninja to clone and resell old ideas but slightly better cant be understated. People like easy pods and start buttons.

hinkley 4y ago

As someone who watch too much This Old House as a child, and lives in the PNW, if you live in a particularly humid part of the world I would strongly suggest you keep your mushroom experiments outside. There are some non-zero risks around having saprophytic mushrooms producing spores inside or immediately outside of your house. I need to replace the framing around my back door and add a roof over it due to water damage, which I can tell because there's baby turkey tail about 4 inches up from the sill.

bilsbie 4y ago
Are t there spores literally everywhere all the time though?
- hinkley 4y ago
  When identifying a mushroom you collect a spore print, which generally involves finding a young mushroom and sitting it on a piece of paper. The color of the spores can often distinguish between lookalikes. Doing a spore print, it can be a bit of a surprise how much a single mushroom can produce. Teaspoons of sugar versus the entire bowl makes for a very different coffee experience.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

This thing looks way too small. If you grow edible mushrooms this probably won't even be enough for one meal and if you grow magic mushrooms the yield will be pretty low too.

JoeyBananas 4y ago

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?? Magic mushrooms!!!

throwatrip 4y ago

This is a fruiting chamber, not a mushroom growing device. Fruiting is by far the most trivial part of mushroom growing. You still need to sterilize a growth media, innoculate it with spores or mycelium, grow it out without contamination, and mix into a substrate long before it enters this device. Or buy their overpriced pre-packaged, pre-grown substrates. As a fruiting chamber, it does nothing that a $2 plastic Sterilite shoebox cannot do. They already self-regulate humidity and CO2 when set up correctly. Use your favorite search engine and look for Shoebox Tek. I've seen a few mentions of Uncle Ben's pre-cooked rice Tek on here. Using UB for mushroom cultivation is the mycological equivalent of programming in Visual Basic or writing a database in Excel. It's a technique for uneducated new users which is technically inferior, and in the long run way more expensive, than learning to do it the correct way. But it uses components that users have easy access to, so it is irrationally popular. I've tried my own hand at automating fruiting chambers, using a RasPi with CO2/humidity/temperature sensors (Sensiron SCD30), misters, and fans. Nothing but a pain, didn't increase yields, too much data leads to too much tinkering and tweaking. The best thing you can do for a mushroom grow is to leave it alone.

idiotsecant 4y ago
>This is a fruiting chamber, not a mushroom growing device. Fruiting is by far the most trivial part of mushroom growing. You've hit on exactly the value being provided here - they are handling the culture, inoculation, spawning, and colonization stages and selling you an expensive box to put the result in. Sometimes people just want a quick fun activity and they don't want to research it beforehand. This product fills that need - send them money, they send you a mushroom growing experience.
- system2 4y ago
  $300 fancy plastic box for humidity and heat control. And shrooms sold separately. Some rich family will get it for their kids to use it once.
  - jachee 4y ago
    A humidor is also a box that controls humidity and heat. How much do people pay for those (and cigars sold separately)? If there’s a market for that, why not this?

alangibson 4y ago

Strong Juicero vibes. I produced some very fine, eh, shiitake mushrooms in a closet from a mycelium bought over the internet from, eh, Hamsterdam using only a desk lamp and a spray bottle.

charlie0 4y ago

I don't see anything about this being usable without an app. If that's the case, no deal.

traverseda 4y ago
It says so on the Kickstarter page.

larrywright 4y ago

Since it’s on HN, I just assumed this was for growing the psychedelic kind.

pennaMan 4y ago
I'm sure golden teachers thrive in that thing :)

dymk 4y ago

I know close to nothing about growing mushrooms, aside from doing those kits once or twice where they grow out of the sides of the bag. I couldn't stand the marketing vid. Looks like a scam. "Harvest at home with zero effort" I highly doubt it's _zero_ effort "Gives you the highest quality food without GMO, chemicals, or waste..." the _biggest_ eyeroll ever "Just order our ready to go blocks" so much for no waste I'll stick with the $10 bag you cut holes in the side of

giantg2 4y ago

Or build this for yourself - bins to help contain humidity, a pump with irrigation tube, old gallon jug as a reservoir, and a timer to spray them a couple times a day. https://i.postimg.cc/qBtCZJPR/20220502-161435.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/qBtCZJPR/20220502-161435.jpg

herdymerzbow 4y ago

Seems that the value this device provides is creating a clearing house for more experienced mushroomers to share info with interested noobs on how to bypas it and do it in a cardboard box. Perhaps it's not what the founders of the company intended, but it's a value add nonetheless.

vlark 4y ago

It seems what this device is especially good at is separating fools from their money.

SCLeo 4y ago

To be honest, I didn't even know people can grow mushrooms in their homes.