Research into natural healing remedies following an accident turned up lion’s mane, eventually growing into a business
Mushrooms are delicate. The conditions for growing any species of mushroom have to be just right to get a decent harvest.
Recreating this environment in an indoor setting can have benefits and challenges but Jack Martin has achieved this and has made a thriving business out of growing several varieties of mushrooms in his indoor farm.
Woodland Mushrooms started out of a personal need. After a terrible motocross accident, Martin found himself bed ridden and potentially with permanent brain damage. Research into natural healing remedies led him to lion’s mane mushrooms. Finding that the commercially available varieties were often of suspect quality, Martin learned to grow his own.
The classroom was a horse stall in his grandmother’s barn.
“I just started growing my own lion’s mane and then learning how to extract it, make tinctures, use the lion’s mane to make fancy food, vegan meat replacement recipes (with) lion’s mane,” Martin said.
Self-taught by trial and error, and through extensive research, Martin built his own equipment for the job.
Martin said people planning to grow mushrooms can learn from someone with experience, or by reading books.
“It’s a lot of dirty work and a lot of physical work, but there’s also a back end to it, and that’s the science part. There’s a whole microbiology aspect and labs, cell culturing and sterile technique. Mushroom farming is a produce farm. It’s got a very unique growing method.”
Most mushrooms produced in Alberta are button mushrooms. The more exotic varieties are imported from Ontario, the United States and Asia.
“There’s a very large demand for (locally produced) mushrooms…,” he said and few people are taking up the opportunity.
After getting the hang of growing lion’s mane, Martin then tried out a few other varieties.
After succeeding with growing those, Martin reached out to local restaurants and golf clubs.
“Then once I had enough demand, I got a warehouse, in the northeast side of Edmonton,” he said.
Martin grows with pasteurized hardwood and carries out all the lab work himself.
“I make my own grain bonds, so I grow them in a traditional style. … I bag up the substrate, pasteurize it, inoculate, incubate it, and then I bring it to my fruiting chamber.”
Woodland Mushrooms has been gaining popularity in Edmonton’s local food industry, producing mushroom varieties like lion’s mane, blue oyster, white oyster, king oyster and pioppino.
His mushrooms, sold in fresh, dry, tincture and powdered forms, can be found at several Edmonton farmers markets and locally owned grocery stores and are also sold to restaurants.
Martin said he has a major challenge finding full-time help.
Today, Martin produces about 200 pounds of mushrooms a week.
“I have no idea how big it could get, but I know that I could be producing a lot of mushrooms. Potentially 1,000 to 2,000 lb. a week… is what I think that I could sustainably produce and sell,” he said.
For those who want to dabble in growing on a small scale at home, Woodland Mushrooms offer growing kits.
“You can harvest off them quite a few times. You can do a big harvest indoors, a second smaller harvest indoors. After that, you can take it outdoors and… get a whole new life off it. If you put it in your garden…, inoculate an outdoor pile of woodchips, use it as a mulch in your garden bed, you’ll get a third harvest out of it, which is even bigger. It gets a second life if you put it outside….”
Martin said he can answer most common questions people have about medicinal mushrooms.
The healing he found in lion’s mane helped him regain a sense of independence, he said, and he picked up an entrepreneurial spirit along the way.
