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OfflineTmethylM
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Registered: 07/16/12
Posts: 16,431
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
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Need Pro Tips
    #24525905 - 08/02/17 08:38 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Hey GMM,
A friend of mine recently offered to finance/invest in a commercial gourmet and medicinal growing operation with me.
I've always wanted to do this because it's something I love, I could never come up with the funds though.
I have no problem growing any species of mushroom of course, and I have 10 years of growing experience involving 10+ species,
I'm more looking for advice from anyone who has done a large commercial grow or sells mushrooms locally.
I'm in Florida and I'll likely be growing both edible and medicinal mushrooms.

What are some things I should look out for?

Is there anything unexpected I could encounter in a larger grow?

How hard is it to sell locally? Where are the best places to sell.

What certifications or permits need to be obtained?

How difficult is it to obtain an organic certification?

Any special equipment I could use other than a few large PCs, pasteurizer, large dehydrator, flow hood, fridge(for storing edibles)?



Anything you'd like to add is appreciated.


Thanks. :heart:


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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Offlinedrake89
Mushroom Magnate
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Registered: 06/26/11
Posts: 4,168
Loc: TN
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Tmethyl]
    #24525912 - 08/02/17 08:41 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

If you want to message me we could schedule a consultation call :mushroom2:


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Fiery Fungi (like us on faeboo)


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InvisibleEdiblesOnly
on a roller coaster

Registered: 12/27/12
Posts: 646
Loc: Mexico
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: drake89]
    #24525948 - 08/02/17 08:59 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

If u do this please do a log of some sorts and keep us updated. This is something that I would love to do as well. I might start out at the local farmers market to get the ball rolling.


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Franks pellet tek for edibles


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OfflineSpotter
Making you all look good


Registered: 05/25/17
Posts: 712
Loc: True North Flag
Last seen: 2 months, 2 days
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: drake89]
    #24525968 - 08/02/17 09:07 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

I've been watching a couple  mushroom farm youtube webcasts. Check out What the Fungus it's near me in Canada but there are common themes and comment from others in the south.

A warmer climate webcast is this one Myers Mushrooms

Hope it helps

Spotter


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Its all about the Hericium erinaceus yo.
Spotters Resume


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Invisiblewildernessjunkie
Reshitivest
I'm a teapot

Registered: 06/13/10
Posts: 8,118
Loc: HTTP 404 Not Found
Trusted Cultivator
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Spotter]
    #24526575 - 08/03/17 03:08 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

You need to talk with drake89 and Gr0wer.


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OfflineTravelAgency
The ongoing "wow"


Registered: 12/25/10
Posts: 4,431
Last seen: 11 months, 21 days
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: wildernessjunkie]
    #24526965 - 08/03/17 08:39 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

That's awesome T! Congrats!

:threadmonitor:


--------------------





Indoor Greenhouse Build 
          Mid Size Mushroom Farm


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OfflineFerather
Mycological
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Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
Loc: United Kingdom Flag
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: TravelAgency]
    #24526993 - 08/03/17 08:57 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Good luck dude.

:thumbup:


--------------------
                   

Growing mushrooms, general guide and information (Ferather's Journal), https://ibb.co/rG3rML2

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27857366#27857366

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Invisibleflyontoast
Farming food; farming time
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Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Tmethyl]
    #24528003 - 08/03/17 05:25 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

I've got a small scale certified organic farm, we do both veggies and oysters (for now). Most of my experience is in veggies, but it's a similar game when it comes to moving product.
You gotta start with lots of market research so that you have an appropriately scaled operation for your outlets. The easiest place for anyone to get started is farmer's markets. Visit as many of the farmer's markets you can within 45min of your place (and maybe up to an 1.5 hours if it is a well known market). See if there are other mushroom vendors and most importantly compare prices between markets. Literally write down the prices of a few popular farmer's market items like bread, salad mix, tomatoes (and mushrooms if available) both the highest and lowest, and be there at the beginning and end of the market to see if the highest priced items actually sell out. Those prices will give you an idea of the income of the people that shop there and what they are willing to pay. We have been to 4 different markets all within 30min of each other on different days and 2 of the markets can't afford, or are not interest in, paying $15CAD/lbs, where the other two markets we sell out and people can't believe how good a deal they are getting relative to the quality. We also sell organic veggies, and that seems to be helping our marketing image: the mushrooms make us look like really unique farmers that have our shit together (we don't yet!), and our great quality veggies make mushroom-illiterate customers assume our mushrooms are of similar quality (which, usually they are, we avoid taking ugly/old product to market). Keep in mind that people buy with their eyes, so display is probably 80% of the value of your product. They also need to see abundance, the old saying is "stack it high and watch it fly". So if you want to sell $500 at the market, bring $600-700 worth (and trade what's left over with the other vendors!). So if you have a sad display and only $100 worth of product on the table, it'll be hard to be taken seriously.

If you have quality mushrooms, chefs are another easy outlet. If the cost of a plate is over $40 per person, and especially if they advertise "local food", they should be happy to pay you quite a bit, especially if your quality is better that their current supplier (or if you are the only local supplier!) I don't know what the tourist season is like in your area of Florida, but many chefs may only have seasonal needs.

I'm in Canada, so can't speak much to USDA certification process, but we just had our inspector on our farm yesterday. We currently have to have CERTIFIED organic straw and hulls freighted to our farm from pretty far away. I asked if we could use non-certified but not sprayed local straw and he said no, if certified organic straw is available ANYWHERE in Canada I have to use it. But he added that we should argue that with the certifying body, which I will this month because the cost of freighting around straw is MORE than the cost of straw itself. But from what I've read by Drake, it sounds shit simply to get US organic certified. There's just a lot of paper work involved in tracking your inputs, outputs, products, recipes, etc., for organic certification. We're also discovering that most of our customers trust us when we say we have organic practices and nobody looks at/notices our certificate. So we might not certify next year, but that's again a "market research" thing. Our chefs don't care either (but some may ask to visit the farm). It's matters more to wholesalers.

If you know local veggies farmers, they are a good resource because they are/have done this same research. You can also talk to the farmer market manager when you visit, they usually have their own table/tent. If you want to start small but need more outlets, perhaps there's even a marketing co-op you can get with, join a local CSA program (many veg farmers will include local cheeses and meats from another farm every second week or something), or services like Blue Apron.

Anyway, the moral is: before you spend $5,000 on autoclaves or $10,000 on a custom pasteurizer because "that's what you need to sell over $100,000 a year" or some shit like that, make sure you have outlets lined up and scale appropriately (with room to grow obviously).
Best of luck, please share your progress/builds with us!


--------------------
:mushroom: My trade list :mushroom:
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us  :skol:


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OfflineGr0wer
always improving
Male


Registered: 09/16/03
Posts: 6,056
Loc: El Paso, TX Flag
Last seen: 5 years, 10 months
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: flyontoast]
    #24528915 - 08/04/17 12:13 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

some of your questions need to be answered with some phone calls to your local agricultural agency and some visits or calls to local chef owned or locally owned hot restaurants. What state are you in? I wouldn't waste time getting organic cert, its already hard enough and i cant see you charging much more per lb for the cert. Its not like mushrooms are a sprayed or fertilized product. 


Edited by Gr0wer (08/04/17 12:14 AM)


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Offlinedrake89
Mushroom Magnate
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Registered: 06/26/11
Posts: 4,168
Loc: TN
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Gr0wer]
    #24530741 - 08/04/17 06:58 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

^^^they are actually sprayed pretty often, some of the sprays are bacterial but most are chemicals for bugs or mold. You can spray dilute bleach up to 48hrs prior to harvest.  They even put fly chemicals in the substrate sometimes.


--------------------
Fiery Fungi (like us on faeboo)


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OfflineFerather
Mycological
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Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
Loc: United Kingdom Flag
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: drake89]
    #24531845 - 08/05/17 08:22 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

How does the organic cert work when materials such as potassium or lime are in-organic?
Also if I isolate some amazing genetics, using a lab is that then GM mushies?


--------------------
                   

Growing mushrooms, general guide and information (Ferather's Journal), https://ibb.co/rG3rML2

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27857366#27857366

DTS DCH Driver for Realtek [DTS:X] - Unlocked and reprogrammed.


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InvisibleMr. Bojangles
Breathe In
I'm a teapot User Gallery


Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 1,937
Loc: The Dirty
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24532649 - 08/05/17 01:58 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Some things I learned doing this a few years ago:

-Farmers markets can be very political.  If there is already one or two mushroom vendors at a market the odds of you being accepted diminish.  Find markets that don't have mushroom vendors and apply to all of them as soon as you can.  The ones I'm familiar with require acceptance and some a deposit.

-Do you know anyone who works in the restaurant/hospitality business?  Market to them.  If you can generate a consistent supply of high quality produce, they will usually but it!

-Market your waste.  As you're learning to optimize your economies of scale any extra income can really help.  There were local farmers/gardeners who love mushroom compost and are willing to pay.  Community gardens are great to give away some compost too...when people inquire at the garden, they'll likely point them in your direction for more (and you can charge them).

-Check your local regulations; you'll likely need a business permit (and a business...LLCs are easy enough to set up) and possibly an agriculture permit.  It differs A LOT by area. 

My farm ran into two main problems that you should probably solve, or at least have a good idea of how you will deal with it:

-Bulk pasteurization.  You can pasteurize in a bunch of smaller chambers but that gets to be a pain.  Larger chambers are hard to maintain temperature at all points.  We went the large chamber route, we retrofitted one of these with two heating elements on the bottom:



Results were hit-or-miss.  If we stirred a lot then we got pretty low contamination rates, but stirring a lot is not always feasible.  In hindsight maybe heating elements at different locales in the plastic and maybe some sort of temperature tuning device would have solved our problems.  It is something you should put time into because on a commercial scale you want as close to zero contams as possible.

-Grow room insulation.  I won't say where but we were in a very hot climate, growing inside.  When the owner of the farm was growing in his basement temperature control wasn't much of a problem...when we moved to a warehouse, it was a HUGE problem.  You need to think about low-cost, sustainable insulation solutions and really focus on the grow room environment.  Automation is key (duh!).  But summertime temperatures really got us during June-August.

If you're looking into USDA certification, make sure you're not using GMO substrates and use organic pest-control measures.  Neem oil is nice for some pests but having several layers of containment before you get to the grow room is a very good way at minimizing pests.


--------------------
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

Francois-Marie Arouet


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OfflineFerather
Mycological
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Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
Loc: United Kingdom Flag
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Mr. Bojangles]
    #24532684 - 08/05/17 02:09 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Oh I see, so USDA means organically assembled unmodified materials, regardless of composition?


--------------------
                   

Growing mushrooms, general guide and information (Ferather's Journal), https://ibb.co/rG3rML2

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27857366#27857366

DTS DCH Driver for Realtek [DTS:X] - Unlocked and reprogrammed.


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Invisibleflyontoast
Farming food; farming time
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Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24532737 - 08/05/17 02:32 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Ferather said:
Oh I see, so USDA means organically assembled unmodified materials, regardless of composition?



Not sure about USDA, but in Canada you can't use any synthetic or "chemical" inputs, and no GMO inputs. For N,P,K there are always mined sources or animal bi-product fertilizers (bone meal, feather meal) available on the market and they are usually OMRI certified. I've also discovered, like any bureaucracy, a lot of it comes down to which pencil pusher (inspector) you are dealing with and their level of competence and lenience. There is a long check list of things you have to do before being allowed to use a non-certified organic input. For something like treated fence posts, some inspectors are just so incompetent that they don't even know what treated wood looks like and can be standing in a barn of treated wood and not notice... And, the easiest way to get away with using non-certified, or even chemical or GMO inputs, is to lose the recipes. The inspector can't know you applied chicken manure from a local CAFO farm if it's already in the soil and you don't put the recipe in the file you hand to your inspector... but if you have bags of non-organic fertilizer sitting around your operation, then hopefully those people are caught.


--------------------
:mushroom: My trade list :mushroom:
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us  :skol:


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InvisibleMr. Bojangles
Breathe In
I'm a teapot User Gallery


Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 1,937
Loc: The Dirty
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24532759 - 08/05/17 02:41 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

USDA "organic" certification is actually a pretty loose term and there are tons of exceptions you can have and still be certified organic IME.  Generally for mushrooms, they're concerned about the substrate.  We used cottonseed hulls from GMO cotton and got an exception because we were able to prove that the modified gene in the cotton was not passed on to the mushroom fruit bodies.  They also don't want you spraying most types of EPA-regulated pesticides.  Some 'organic' pesticides, like neem oil, are more or less extracts with natural insecticide properties.


--------------------
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

Francois-Marie Arouet


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Offlinedrake89
Mushroom Magnate
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Registered: 06/26/11
Posts: 4,168
Loc: TN
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24533446 - 08/05/17 07:36 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Ferather said:
How does the organic cert work when materials such as potassium or lime are in-organic?
Also if I isolate some amazing genetics, using a lab is that then GM mushies?



1.  You look up the material on thr NOP approved list.

2.  I think you're trolling.  GM means inserting DNA , usually from another organism .  How could isolating a strain possibly be concieved as GM?


--------------------
Fiery Fungi (like us on faeboo)


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OfflineFerather
Mycological
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Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: drake89]
    #24534322 - 08/06/17 08:41 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Well according to the term I read here, it also includes using two different species.

I meant DNA instead of genetics, I never spoke of cloning.


--------------------
                   

Growing mushrooms, general guide and information (Ferather's Journal), https://ibb.co/rG3rML2

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27857366#27857366

DTS DCH Driver for Realtek [DTS:X] - Unlocked and reprogrammed.


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OfflineMorePies
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Registered: 02/09/16
Posts: 808
Loc: TX Flag
Last seen: 1 month, 1 day
Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24534710 - 08/06/17 12:30 PM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

drake89 said:
Quote:

Ferather said:
How does the organic cert work when materials such as potassium or lime are in-organic?
Also if I isolate some amazing genetics, using a lab is that then GM mushies?



1.  You look up the material on thr NOP approved list.

2.  I think you're trolling.  GM means inserting DNA , usually from another organism .  How could isolating a strain possibly be concieved as GM?




First rule of reading anything Ferather posts is to realize that they will provide some scrap of the internet to support what they are saying.

Second rule is that they don't actually read/understand the links that they post.

Third rule is that their rebuttal will not actually address whatever issues you have brought up.



Quote:

Ferather said:
Well according to the term I read here, it also includes using two different species.

I meant DNA instead of genetics, I never spoke of cloning.




This doesn't even make sense or respond to your statement. You were like hey man breeding isn't considered GM in this context and Ferather be like well according to this news week,  hybrids are sterile.


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OfflineFerather
Mycological
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Registered: 03/19/15
Posts: 6,325
Loc: United Kingdom Flag
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: MorePies]
    #24536565 - 08/07/17 09:43 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

So mean, oh well, I found my answer here and here. (More internet links).


--------------------
                   

Growing mushrooms, general guide and information (Ferather's Journal), https://ibb.co/rG3rML2

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27857366#27857366

DTS DCH Driver for Realtek [DTS:X] - Unlocked and reprogrammed.


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Offlinedrake89
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Registered: 06/26/11
Posts: 4,168
Loc: TN
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Need Pro Tips [Re: Ferather]
    #24536661 - 08/07/17 10:47 AM (6 years, 5 months ago)

Go get a masters degree or PhD in biology (preferably molecular) if you want to make GM mushrooms.  You honestly could do something possibly useful on a budget of $20k wit CRISPR technology.  I've looked into it and found I don't know quite enough with just an an undergrad degree.


--------------------
Fiery Fungi (like us on faeboo)


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