Mushrooms: Next big thing in environmentally-friendly packaging, construction?
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Do you think this would be a workable symbiosis?
What would be interesting is the combination of vertical mushroom grows and vertical hydro culture.
Imagine a tube/tower of mycelium, but also allowing the cannabis to grw out of the tube/tower... and having the root systems intertwined, but the problem therein is that the diff in the mycelium being perennial as opposed to the cannabis being annual...
Aside: Mushrooms are perennial but the mycelium doesn't always die away. And some are selfish in not so mutualistic ways too.
This is of course extremely beneficial and required for a closed ecosystem, but the symbiotic relationship isn't as direct as mycorrhizal fungi and is really part of a much more complex network of soil organisms that all need to be at play. Simply introducing a saprophytic fungi to your soil will probably not result in any benefits to your indoor cannabis garden.
Some Eukaryotes are also reported to my mycellial connection with the plant (i.e. merge with the plants) some sort of forest underweb sort of thing, but I think that would be very difficult to reproduce insitu. Eukaryotes are amazing but also so diverse they defy classification.
I'd be interested in hearing more and figuring out how to work more on this topic.
(I think many mushrooms are pretty happy fruiting at ~70F room temperature, as is cannabis. Is it that the grow lights fight the humidity needs of the mushrooms? Or do the species of mushrooms you're using have different temperature needs? Or the cannabis grows faster as temperature increases?
I've only worked with shiitake and oyster, and got poor results with one lions mane attempt so... definitely not an expert)
Maybe plastic with holes for each stem could be used to insulate the aerial airspace from the root airspace and then a small heatpump could make that 10F differential with relatively low power cost.
I wonder what the baseline is btwn the two ;
How dependent on heat is the "fruitful" nature of the plant vs the subsitance livability of the plant?
i.e.
Min temp for survival vs min temp to fruit and the balance between... What is the coldest one can keep a plant while maintaining max fruiting output?
Just hear me out ;
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What if the human genome code diffs based on pro-longed temp differentials in host biology (meaning if the in-utero mother was in a prolonged colder climate, which altered the passed on DNA)
So"cooking" dna is a real thing, May one be able to "calcify" information into DNA based on temp? Science fiction galore!
so ... I suppose if you live in a place .. like Merica 70F/21c (or are you Liberian?) .. anyway, that 70F is 'golden temperature band' conducive to growing most anything. YES both species could co-exist without a lot of complication, neither will thrive, but neither will probably die. 70F - I think that's like Vista, CA. has the ideal 'most stable' temperature in the US. .. but real-estate is super expensive, so to have that you must live in a nice place, with good weather and blabla, "it's not farm-land", .. also if you need something you probably just order it from Amazon and it shows up a day later.
RE: Cannabis 'optimal yield' .. i.e. we both get the 'same' genetics, from the same bank, which of us could grow a better plant? The environmental conditions + light + soil motility (or hydro) all contribute to phenotype expression, not just life cycle, .. over the life, the air-flow rate for transpiration, light fluence, all those must be in balance -- MOST cannabis per it's name 'weed' is quite hardy, but you'll get different phenotype expression, if you have poor ventilation, o2 build-up (low co2), that can shock/stress the plant, it won't be as dense (i.e. if you are sea level vs. growing on a mountain) .. if you start changing it's environment you'll see the plant changes a lot, also using hormones, other approaches there are a lot of ways to boost yield (also, NEVER for example put Flower/Rose grow accelerate on your cannabis, it becomes cancer causing toxic when smoked! and this is why 'dark market' cannabis is so dangerous). Some cannabis growers buy industrial Co2 tanks and pipe that into their greenhouses, especially in places where they are limited to how many plants they can legally grow in a space, -- so it's known to use co2 helps to turn over bigger crops faster (the co2 comes from petroleum, and it makes me sick to think they're just dumping it into the atmosphere). I've seen growers using co2 do as many as ~6 full cycles per year (sort of like raising chickens indoors using lights).. so I wanted an organic source of Co2 from either brewing yeast and/or mushrooms! (NOTE: this is NOT cost competitive, petroleum based co2 is basically free)
Because .. MOST growers, most farmers in general are pretty lazy, and "don't mess with it" since plants have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to exist on earth in the present climate. Most* 'farmers' aren't scientists, they are inclined to let nature be nature and give up control of existential co-factors, beyond water, fertilizer, greenhouse structure. This is really easy, probably 'best' if you live in ideal climate zone, nature takes care of most of this for you -- I grew up in San Diego, CA. aside from water, the SoCal weather is extremely conducive to growing .. always 70F. US Farmers are often religious, and in this case, the religion is necessary because all they can do is pray for good weather, and (so I've been told) that seems to be working so far!
Alas, I do not live in Merica anymore, .. I'm an Expat! I (intentionally) live someplace else, and having left the US my prayers are no longer answered. I left the US because I don't want to live in an anocracy (failed democracy), and at this point, perhaps in my lifetime the US will collapse into civil war, and the subsequent religious state that would emerge, it's not someplace I want to live. I mostly blame Regan, but I do miss the weather in San Diego. Alas, I digress. My point is: praying for crops only seems to work in America, mostly where there is already good weather & therefore better churches.
Now, something most American's don't realize is that MOST of the people on the planet Earth, they live in a place where the weather is already unpleasant (I assume, because god hates non-Americas), and also mostly attributed to America, the non-American weather is only going to get worse (more extreme). Our ecosystem of plants & fungi - stuff that used to grow -- the truth is it already doesn't grow as well as it did for our grand-parents, and in the future, well who knows, .. indoor growing 'sheltered farming', controlling temperature, when it's all ~70F US (i.e. Los Angeles), farming there isn't hard, maybe the soil is bad,whaha, add some lime to break up your clay, then keep dumping yer high nitrogen fertilizer till it gets into your lakes & rivers .. or at least until we hit peak phosphorous and you can't buy/afford fertilizer .. that's maybe ~10-20 years but alas, I digress. American's don't realize how much easier agriculture is IN AMERICA (it's really got excellent climate, overall for it's size) .. again, this is attributed mostly to prayer & good weather from all the farmers praying.
But for me -- I presently live in a place that is known for it's extreme temperature & humidity, not uncommon to have a 10(c) flux in an hour, etc. We aren't religious here, or at least not extremely religious like America, and everybody gets to vote (or they pay a fine), and all the votes get counted, and everybody is really respectful to each-other despite being secular.
HOWEVER neither species we've discussed is presently legal where I am .. so as an foreigner, the punishments for being caught would be extremely unpleasant, bordering on "life destroying" (and ultimately I would be sent BACK to America). So everything must be stealth, covert, blabla, and it's even illegal to touch electrical wire unless I'm a licensed electrician out of over-zealous concern for fire. .. hint: as an immigrant, I'm not licensed to do anything. FML.
With agriculture being a biological process, it's innately a markov chain, each action, any discrete failure, impacts the rest of the chain, the organism gets stressed, it doesn't grow as well, maybe it fruits early, or not at all.
The /optimal/ growing conditions for cannabis & fungi are known to be different. Once the HVAC systems are interconnected between two systems, the number of variables which can grow horribly wrong, and where balancing one impacts the other. Add more factors, such as experimenting with different cultivation cycles & processes, etc. the combined system(s) doesn't lend itself to micro-scale 'experimentation', .. interconnecting the two systems in a way they can co-exist, in theory, simple, in practice, not as simple. In practice you need a lot of sensors, automation, climate buffer zones, and/or patience & dealing with disappointment.
fwiw - I am trying to figure out how to micro-scale & automate the control systems. So if anybody says "yeah, this is easy" please show me how. I am designing a system I would like to take to Mars colony (not interested in the moon) and I basically don't see how NASA or SpaceX can build a sustainable mars colony without using fungi/Eukaryotes.
Finally -- for those who made it to the bottom of this post. Fwiw mushrooms, i.e. oyster, reshi, can supposedly grow EXTREMELY FAST, like ~20x faster than 'normal' using high voltage stimulus, or potentially similar effects using cold-plasma) .. papers & studies, also look up 'fairy rings' where mushrooms grow in a circle after a lightning strike -- (this has been 'anecdotally' known for thousands of years).
A tourist is a person who shows up, stays at a hotel, frequently via the air-port or cruise ship. They don't really embrace the local culture aside from sight-seeing tourist type activities.
A Digital Nomad (DN) is almost like a tourist who lives in a country on a tourist visa - they don't open bank accounts, get national identity cards etc. They might rent an AirBNB and "live" in a country for a month or three at a time. It's not a vacation, it's a work/life 'hack', so they're in a foreign country but working (usually) in their host country. They are working in their host country living in another country.
Expat (Expatriate) is a "tax status", it refers to the money transfer .. somebody who is working abroad BUT is .. in their life-planning horizon expecting to return to their home, - they are like an indefinite tourist, they live & work in a host country, so not on vacation (has a job, place to live, permission to stay & work) .. but it's not actually indefinite. The host country doesn't expect them to stay forever and might even require them to leave periodically. An expat is I think always working or earning income in the host country, but ultimately sending the money back home country.
An immigrant is somebody who has left a place, and is going to stay at the new country indefinitely, they do not make any plans to return home (except to visit family), and perhaps they might want to bring their family to the new country. Their work status is irrelevant, they may not even have permission to work. An immigrant should have long term permission to stay in a country or they are considered a refugee, and may be expected leave, which is why being a refugee sucks so much. (I used to say I was an intellectual refugee from the US, but now that I understand how fucked life is for actual refugees I don't make that joke anymore)
Immigrants by my definition, the new place is their home, refugees are 'forced immigrants' from circumstances. Immigrants want to stay embrace the culture, social behaviors, blabla whereas an Expat is probably going to maintain more social identity & long term concern over how things are going "back home", also maintaining some identity or property, whereas an immigrant frequently would (at least in my mind) sell property, move assets to the new country/currency. Refugees on the other hand, they are staying in a country because it's unsafe to return.
I started as a DN, and now on the expat => immigrant spectrum.
You don't mention the huge, state-managed infrastructure needed to bring water to those places(which seem to be close to exhausting their supply.) I don't think it's climate that's made American agriculture so productive.
Backstory when I was on design team for UCSF... I met a gene designer who built a system of being able to funnel genes to stem cells in a method of allowing said genes to express based on what prteins exposed to...
The idea being "ne may produce X gene to stem cell, and thus may determine how this stem cell will express"
Meaning :what do we feed a stem cell as far as proteins are concerned, in order to make these stem cell express as [kidney] or - [insert-organ-cell-type-here]
i think the delivery mechanism for stem cell tech is sufficiently complex that it is reserved only for explicitly necessary procedures and regrettably by present day medical definitions that is 'urgently life threatening' so the idea of growing another kidney or whatever, unlikely. besides, it'll probably be easier to grow meat kidneys outside the body and then surgically implant them.
As for the safe part, the concentration of plastics in the nutrient solution might be a tad higher, but the plant will only pick up a small fraction or none of it so there aren't any big health concerns on that front.
That’s entirely dependent on the species.
Oysters can be grown entirely on non-supplemented sawdust. Supplements can be just wheat bran or soy hulls, and maybe gypsum or CaCO3. That’s a short ingredient list and easily sourced from your local Tractor Supply.
> Growing the mycelium really fast and efficiently requires quite a bit of energy input (heating, humidity controls, airflow…)
Given the impact of climate change, it's not really worth saving a little bit of oil to make the plastic (which, since it's not biodegradable, will probably not contribute to increasing greenhouse gasses) if you have to burn more oil, which will produce CO2, to make the mushroom-based packaging.
In other words, avoiding plastic is the whole point here.
That is, using coal power to make make energy-intensive mushroom-based packaging is probably ecologically net-negative, but if you can use solar or geothermal power it might not be.
- Disposable autoclavable bags
- Spawn (either grain or some form of sugar water)
- Disposable lab equipment (scalpels, petri dishes, parafilm, syringes, etc). Some of this doesn't need to be disposable but then you spend more energy cleaning and sterilizing it.
- All the energy that goes into sterilization, humidification, etc.
- Yes, no way around spawn or lab equipment.
- Humidification is relatively low energy. Even a regular consumer-grade humidifier will be enough for an amateur grow operation. And even for larger humidifiers, the water and energy requirement is minimal.
- You can pasteurize substrate with zero-energy methods like cold pasteurization (via calcium hydroxide) or composting (industry standard right now, basically what all commercial button mushroom farms do).
- Sterilization of spawn is indeed high energy, but using electric desktop autoclaves (AA has a few models) significantly reduces energy use. They are used quite rarely commercially, though.
Just grow mushrooms for food and make packaging from other green materials.
Or you can buy them pre-made in blocks if you want to skip inoculation, sterilization, etc https://www.woodlandjewel.com/shop
Seems like creating an environment that certain funguses like but others don't is pretty tricky, and mostly relies on giving your chosen fungus a head start unless you can maintain perfect sterility.
(didnt have HEPA filtered air blowing, that sounds like a good idea)
And I hope by “glovebox” you mean a still-air box, because gloves attached to the box actually increase the contamination rate due to the box sucking in air when you move your hands.
Put all my equipment inside, stuck my arms in to more or less plug the holes, then sprayed a bunch of rubbing alcohol all over the inside, then got to work. The ergonomics were horrible, my back got tired, and I'm pretty sure my arms didn't plug the holes very well and I assume they effectively were pumping air through the system by the end of it as I got sloppier.
Definitely will do something better on any future attempts, haha
Many of the commercial kits will grow mold after a few flushes too. Many will only guarantee a first flush. One trick I've heard of is leaving the block in an area with a lot of freash air movement after each flush, even placing them outside.
Excited to try growing stropharia wine caps soon! PNW is great climate for having a bunch of wood chips on top of garden beds anyways :D
Yeah, all fungi like pretty much the same environment, so that's impossible but mushrooms need much more oxygen to grow. So it's important to have a lot of fresh air and a lot of humidity. Mycelium actually produces antifungal substances so it quite literally fights for domination of the substrate with others. The "trick" in any grow is to get as many flushes as possible until the mycelium gets too weak to protect itself. Keep in mind that the substrate is metabolised so it becomes less rich in nutrients over time, and mycelium is sitting in its own "piss" so to speak. So at some point it cannot fight other fungi anymore and substrate gets moldy. Even then, you usually have one type of mold winning over. It's pretty random what type of mold you'll get. I think it might be equally hard to grow one chosen type of mold as one type of mushroom...
That said, just a dead air box/bag/room with lysol aerosol disinfectant (ethanol) for the trapped air and 70% isopropyl alcohol for surfaces is fairly effective. I'd be careful with fumes. I have a basic respirator like a 3M 5xxx or something.
I also tried a combination flowhood/glove box type thing. It works well if you have a new filter or leave it on. Otherwise, I think contamination just gets blown off of the filter once you do turn it on again.
I didn't mean for it to even go this deep. You don't need to actually culture the mushroom from scratch. You can buy syringes with liquid culture. Then just squirt it through the bag with sterilized grain spawn (pressure cooker can sterilize). Then transfers to the fruiting substrate can be done in a moderately cleaned room without any special devices using the aerosol and wipe alcohol with inoculation 10-20%. This is surprising effective, even for contamination prone stuff like lions mane (which I can never seem to culture from spores myself).
The Ethnomycology of Ugly Landscaping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHRgY8fZNv4
Late Night at the Mushroom Lab:
He’s also had a few mushroom guys on his podcast now, for instance ep. 97: How do fungi bang (and evolve)? Fungal reproduction is…weird.
This is all well and good, but how do they manage to have a trademark on the word “mushroom”?
And it seems that because the packaging is the mycelium and not actually mushrooms, that they can use "Mushroom". Interesting.
https://secureyourtrademark.com/can-you-trademark/common-wor...
They would have difficulty enforcing the trademark against other uses of mushroom, and attempts to do so could result in their trademark being voided on breadth grounds.
A wide variety of packaging can be made from cardboard & cardstock with a simple steel rule die. If custom shapes are needed, then compressed fiber like fast-food drink trays are an option. There are starch-based packing peanuts that can replace polystyrene peanuts. There's a lot more room for innovation beyond what we already have too, I think Amazon's paper mailers are a good example.
However, there are, IMO, currently significant environmental downsides to indoor mushroom cultivation. Mushrooms are having a "moment" and there is a gold rush to throw them at everything under the sun.
There’s exceptions, of course. Reishi mycelium is extremely hard. A student once created a canoe out of Reishi mycelium and successfully paddled it around. Hobbyists who grow Reishi at home often complain how it is nearly impossible to scoop Reishi mycelium out of the jars they grow in. But I digress, the vast majority of species have soft mycelium.
All the mycelium packing material examples I have seen involve a variation of packing a mold with myceliated substrate (usually sawdust) and then when the myclieum finishes colonizing the sawdust you dry it out to lock in the form.
Even dried mycelium is much more airy then sawdust. Plus, using sawdust as a packing material will leave a mess when the customer unboxes their product. It’ll also cover the product itself. Mycelium will at least stay in one piece.
In fact, mycelium composts faster since it contains more nutrients than cardboard. Leftover mycelium is nutritious enough to be used as fertilizer for growing other crops.
Mushrooms are not plants. They don't photosynthesize and fix carbon dioxide from the air. Growing mushrooms is still carbon positive. It's important to understand that this is an organism that respires, so these generic claims about a carbon benefit need much more analysis to understand whether there is in fact a benefit at scale.
You could, in theory, make a wolffia farm (Wolffia being the fastest growing plant on the planet and very carbon hungry to boot) and feed the wolffia to mushrooms to convert them into building, clothing, and packing materials and thus create a cycle of utilitarian carbon sequestration
https://www.cshl.edu/how-to-bury-carbon-let-plants-do-the-di...
https://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/04/mushrooms-could-be-key-...
They can't sequester any more carbon than was in the feed stock. And when you're trying to sell a biodegradable thing (which I think is laudable), this would have a minimal net effect on carbon for a material that is readily disposed and biodegrades within a few weeks. The benefits of reducing plastic waste, landfill, and pollution are obvious. The carbon benefits are less clear. Paper packaging from pulp waste comes directly from a photosynthetic resource, and may be found to be equivalent materials. So the argument for mushrooms as an intermediate seems like it needs more explanation -- to me anyway. Obviously, a bioplastic that never degrades is a far better carbon sink than a material that degrades readily, but then you are generating waste that must be stored somewhere indefinitely. Not a problem for a building material, but obviously not great for packaging. But I don't see how a building material made from mushrooms could ever sequester more carbon than, you know, wood.
Also, while Wolffia is human and livestock edible, to make it safe for consumption would require precise control over the growth media to prevent unhealthy buildup of contaminants whereas using it as feed for self-growing building materials, clothing materials, and packaging materials is a viable alternative.
It would require little by way of energy, be a carbon-negative process practically from the start, help supplant a more dangerous industry (plastics and foams) with a safer one, and the waste products would be compostable organics.
Further, Wolffia prefers mildly acidic, highly carbonated water for optimal growth, so you could boost production by percolating carbon-heavy air into the water, and for secondary utility you could also grow fish in the vats to provide additional fertilizer for the Wolffia while also farming a secondary source of income, or failing that you could incorporate these farms into wastewater cleanup plants, allowing them to help provide clean drinking water for cities while also absorbing carbon out of the air, locking that carbon into static pieces, and then growing useful materials from them all in one fell swoop.
So, yeah, wood has its uses and is a great carbon sink, but for sheer quantity and speed Wolffia and mushrooms have it beat.
There is a problem though, and that is getting Wolffia to grow in a farm is a difficult process that we do not have mastered. It can be done but it takes time and skill to get started, and would require maintenance above and beyond traditional farm work, but if that problem were solved then it would be a good thing all around.
When I tried to go back from this page it presented me with "articles to check before you go" which is infuriating.
Design a thing for a purpose, people will use that thing for a different purpose. Those new purposes are not always benign.