🍄Homemade Mushroom Ashtray, Soil Life, and Using Leaf Waste for Substrate, with Jacob from OKfungi

12:47AM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

mushroom cultivation

cannabis events

myco fest

magic mushrooms

soil food web

nutrient cycling

fungal substrate

hemp hurd

flame resistant

mycelium materials

plant starts

medicinal mushrooms

lion's mane

chanterelle ice cream

oklahoma wild

Greetings growers worldwide. Jordan River here back with more grow cast. Just a fun guy doing a podcast today. We have Oklahoma. Fun guy back on the show. Jacob's here to talk about growing mushrooms alongside cannabis. He's here to talk about some upcoming events that he's doing that I'm absolutely thrilled about. I'm going to be at okay, mush fest. And he's also here to talk about growing mushrooms into an actual living ashtray. Very, very cool. I know you're gonna love today's episode before we jump into it, though. Shout out to AC infinity. Code grow, cast one, five, getting you 15% off now, across the board, at AC infinity.com, now there's been some changes to the code that I need to tell you about. First of all, like I said, it's now 15% across the board. For a while, it depended on what you were getting, or it was 10% off or the discount didn't apply, they're trying to send people to the website. So what do you get now? Grow cast one five is the code 15% off all items at AC infinity.com plus free shipping on orders $99 or more. So they're sending people to their website. Code grow, cast one five saves you a chunk on the best fans in the game. Grow Tent kits, lights, scissors, pots, my favorite grow tents out there, whatever you need. Grab it from AC infinity.com and use code grow, cast, one five for 15% off, plus you get free shipping $99 or more at the website, acinfinity.com, plus on Amazon, if you're still going to order on Amazon, grow, cast one five, saves you 5% so go ahead and grab what you need. A whole new tent. Setup, some scissors, some sleeves, some sunglasses, whatever you need. Grow Tent, stuff. Grow gear. It's all there. AC infinity.com, code, grow, cast one five. Thank you to AC infinity. All right, everyone, let's get into it with Oklahoma fungi. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Before we get started as always, I urge you to share this show. Tell someone about grow cast. Turn a grow around to the show, or turn a smoke around to growing. It's the best thing you can do, and it helps us on our mission of overgrow. Check out growcast podcast.com. There you'll find everything, the classes, the seeds and the membership. What are you doing? Jump in membership. Thank you to all the members who make this possible. Today, we're back with another grow cast podcast. We're back with a friend of the show, fan favorite, for sure, mycology expert, host of the amazing, okay, mush fest, and so much more. Jacob from Oklahoma, fungi is on the line with us right now. What's up, Jacob? How you doing? Man,

amazing. I'm doing. I'm doing really well this morning, getting to talk with you about all of our upcoming plans for mush Fest and just the world of cannabis and mushrooms just, I love it all.

Oh, man, you're always full of energy, Jacob, you know, like I get around, I get some things done. I think, I think that there are varying levels of of drive in this industry and in all industries, really. And man, you've been getting after it. You have been getting after it. Your event last year was awesome. You're planning for another huge one this year, going bigger, going better. And you've also just been going around speaking and traveling and doing events and stuff. Why don't we start there? Where have you been? Which events have really stood out to you as awesome. And what have your travels been like since we last spoke?

I'm not even sure when the last time we spoke was maybe about okay, mush Fest was the last time, maybe in person. But since just over the past month, I did four mushroom events, back to back to back. And so the first one was out in Pennsylvania. This was actually the Pocono mountain cannabis fair. So we're starting to see more cannabis events, whether they're local or they're national. We're starting to see them incorporate more mushrooms into the different aspects. And so I was invited to this cannabis event to judge, but also to lead a mushroom foray. And so I would take people out there. You know, of course, we're looking for magic mushrooms, looking for all the things that could possibly be growing during that season. It's a little bit dry. So we didn't find any of the active mushrooms, but we did find some really cool edibles. So that was Pennsylvania, the first weekend of August. The second weekend of August, I went to an event called Myco fest, which is a big mushroom festival out in Pennsylvania, and I spoke about community building and the importance of teaching people about how to identify fungi so when they do other things in their life, they have a little bit of skill set in their back pocket. I taught a really nice intro course out in Pennsylvania, and then the next weekend, I threw a big mushroom block party in Denver with one of my buddies at the mushroom classroom there. So we had about 35 vendors. We ended up selling 1024 tickets, and it was in the heart of Denver, so it was a. Really, really cool to be able to educate, promote, vend and get to showcase what's happening in an environment that's much more relaxed. And what I mean is, because of the prop 122, with the legalization of of entheogens and magic mushrooms, in in Colorado, we're starting to see more events open up, and not just in what they allow, but in the education that they provide. So I was very happy to be able to go up there, and, man, we got one more this. The weekend after that, I went up to the the biggest mushroom festival in the US, at least by social media scale, is the teleride Mushroom festival. So I went up there for my 27th birthday and danced like a mushroom down in the parade and attended classes, workshops and forays, little ego death action, and came back much better. Wow,

wow, wow, wow. And that's the the Telluride festivals you've been all over. Is Colorado kind of the part of this

movement, would you say? What's interesting is, like, if you look at mushrooms from different perspectives, you'll find different states that represent that you'll like be representative of that. So like the the button mushrooms that we see at the grocery store, like the little white ones or the brown ones, those are mainly are grown in Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania produces millions upon millions of pounds of these button mushrooms every year. Like one company I met does 110 million pounds of mushrooms a year.

That's crazy. I didn't know that Pennsylvania was such a huge exporter of edible mushers.

Yeah, so Pennsylvania is the number one producer for mushrooms in the United States when it comes to the gourmets, but when it comes to the active mushrooms, more so the magic mushrooms. Colorado is somewhere that we're seeing everyone kind of look at right now, because they're the second state to go forward with full state legalization, even though prop 122 is a little bit different than most people anticipated, it still hasn't been recalled like what we saw in Oregon. So Oregon they they decriminalized everything, then they took it all back and recriminalized it. So that makes sense. This year, what we're, what we're hope we're actually in 2025 what we're hoping to see is that proposition 122 rolls out in a steady, smooth way for patients and for businesses and for the overseeing agencies, so that way that that, essentially, that program can be used as a template for all the other states surrounding it, including ours.

Oh, well, here's hoping, man, here's hoping. But I love what you said earlier, which is certainly how we've connected and we've met, which is you're starting to see fungi represented in the cannabis culture and at cannabis events, and you're starting to see cannabis represented at fungi events. I mean, obviously they're the two most prevalent illegal, potent plant medicines of our generation, for sure. So there's that connection. Obviously, they're stigmatized, they're they're extremely beneficial for very, very niche cases when it comes to medical treatment, plus people like them. People like having fun with them, and it makes people feel good and better and fun. So I think they're, they're similar in that way. But there's really so much more going on. First of all, just learning about fungi, kind of like what you said about identification. It's just kind of a life lesson. It teaches you more about the universe. It teaches you things. That teaches you how things work, and especially if you're a grower, when you learn about the soil food web, even if you're not like a living soil guy, when you're using that Myco during transplant, it survives those fertilizers much better than the bacteria, and there's a reason you're using that. And when you learn about nutrient cycling and decomposition, A, it makes you smarter as a person, and B, it makes you a better grower, you know, learning about fungi. And I'm sure it's the same way when you're learning about fungi to learn about plants. So, yeah, that's just just my thought. I'm really glad to see people working together and representing each other at these at these events. And you sure do learn a lot from expanding that range of knowledge now.

Yeah, absolutely. Some of the first people that I learned about how to cultivate magic mushrooms from were cannabis growers. And so you know, whether it was because of the counter culture, stigma and everyone having to go underground with what they do. And, you know, the the first guy that I bought cannabis from was the first guy I bought mushrooms from. And so, you know, if I think that our cultures are are intertwined, if not the same, and the cultivation aspect, if you can respect the plant as it grows, and understand the plant, then you have the capacity to understand the mushroom, and together, you can learn how to work with both of them in a better way,

so true and thinking about how old they are and how they interface that that's a really important just lesson about our place in the universe, if you look at how young humanity is, and then you. You look at how young mammals are, then you look at how old plants are, and then you look at how old fungi is. May have came here. It can survive space travel. May have came here on an asteroid, to

be honest. It could have been sent here. Could have been sent here, yeah, like, where you're going, Jacob, like, where you're going. It's all too amazing and fascinating to rule anything out. I

agree with that, and it makes us feel small in a good way. You know, these are very, very old life forms that hold a lot of wisdom and interface with each other, and we just get to dabble and enjoy them and proliferate them. It's an honor to be honest. Absolutely it is. Let's get into the specifics, though, because you were talking about some really cool stuff when it came to your side of that, that kind of treaty, which is taking cannabis compost and waste and things like that, and using it in mushroom production. This is not something I've heard before. Can you talk about this cannabis process for mushroom substrate?

Yeah, so it really depends on the, you know, the most of the most of the growers that I'm sure part of the Grow crafts are going to be growing for the flowers. And so if you're, if you're cultivating for the flowers, and as the plant grows, it's not always in like, the perfect arrangement for you to go through and put through, like a wood chipper or something like that. So you might have to go through this is once the plants already harvested, dried, cured, we have this biomass that we're not sure what to do with it. A lot of people throw it away. It's great for compost. But even better than that, after it's done being composted, can become a mushroom substrate. And so my goal as a mushroom cultivator and educator is to help promote the reduction of waste right, to help with our waste management. And I think that a lot of growers and mushroom growers too, and and in general, plant growers at nurseries or cannabis farms, we see a lot of green biomass, and we're figuring about, how can we mitigate this? And so, you know, if you live in an apartment, you're growing indoor, it's salt based. You don't have organic compost or compost at all nearby, then this might not work best for you, but if you do have the ability to take a little bit of extra space, chop down your essentially, your biomass to smaller amounts, and incorporate it with some local compost and let it sit and let it degrade. And you can incorporate some IMO, you can incorporate some water make sure it's covered with a tarp, or from above, at least shaded, so it's not getting full blast by the sun. The the goal is that the material, whatever say, it's 100 pounds of biomass that's going into the to the trash every once, every three months, you could incorporate that much like what we see, okay, looks doing into his own backyard setup, and able to help not only save costs on adding soil, but knowing exactly what's in the soil and where it came from is so important. You're

so right. I find that one of the worst things you can do as a grower is to let that biomass go into the garbage, because there's so many things you can do with it, taking it and using JLF, turning it back into fertilizer, just putting it into your compost, essentially turning it into compost and getting those nutrients back. You paid money for all of those nutrients, especially if you're using bottles. You're literally paying for this bottle of nutrition to pour into the soil to create these big old fan leaves that are they contain everything that you need for a plant. You know, a healthy green cannabis leaf is the best thing to feed cannabis. So to take that and throw it away is the mistake eating your leaves, feeding them to your livestock, whatever, whatever people do. But you're saying, hey, take this and make it into like a mushroom block that people grow mushrooms, yeah.

Well, I'm just, I'm saying that, like, once people get to that compost step, most people are taking that compost and then reapplying it back to their plants and and growing more plants with it. And that's epic. That's awesome. That's what we want. But also, if they're growing mushrooms, they can incorporate that same compost into their outdoor mushroom beds, or they can pasteurize it and actually be able to cultivate more mushrooms based off a cannabis amended compost. Oh,

I got you. I got you. So it's less about creating, like a okay, it's about adding it to your outdoor bed, or something like that.

It's about you can either add it to your outdoor bed, or if you am, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the the the cultivation process, but through pasteurization, you can kill off a little bit of the microbes, a little bit of of the bacteria, but not everything. So that way, you can apply your sterile mushroom grains and allow your your desired culture to grow around. And my Sally ate this substrate bag that's. Filled with cannabis, compost and other soil amendments. Wow. And then from there, you can get healthy mushrooms to grow off of that bag. You can take the mushrooms and eat them. You can take the, what we call the spent substrate, and apply that back into the soil. And it's almost really the only the non carbon neutral. Part of that would be, if you're growing the mushroom in a plastic bag, that's the only waste. That's literally

what I was going to ask is, could you treat this just like a block in a bag, like I've seen before, and you can just grow mushrooms straight out of pasteurized cannabis compost? That's amazing.

Yeah, and just to clarify, it's not just on the just on like cannabis, leaves and stems definitely needs to be incorporated with organic matter, as well as worms and some of those other organic gardening amendments that you might have on hand that will help to speed up the decomposition and aid the fungi into breaking these things down. Because really what fungi are doing is they're sweating out these enzymes that break down the stuff around them so they can reabsorb them through their skin. So it's this wild concept is kind of like, kind of like the like salamanders, or amphibians that live in the rain forest, where they have super permeable skin, and they ex they can excrete stuff that affects their environment. Fungi do the same thing. And so when they are excreting these enzymes and they're reabsorbing them, that is what we want to be able to provide something healthy, because what we give to them, they absorb their bio accumulators, just like plants are.

That's a really good way to put it, because I've heard about the production of these enzymes, you know, and enzymes being catalysts for breakdown of very specific things and changing things like pH and all sorts of chemistry within the soil. But I hadn't heard it described like that, kind of sweating it out their skin to reabsorb it within themselves. That's the whole decomposition process.

Yeah. I mean, I've just, I'm very grateful to have been able to travel around and get to learn from really, really bright minds and that have been doing this for like, 3040, some, even 50 years. The professor that I work with at the University in Oklahoma is in his 70s, and it's so amazing to have people who are willing to explain things. Who've been doing it for so long, and they've they've got, they've come up with some really good metaphors to describe these things. And like one I've heard was that mushrooms are like sitting in the bowl of jello that they're trying to eat.

These are the types of analogies I need to understand. You know what I mean Exactly? Jello analogy. I can wrap my head around that I've been in a bowl of jello. I know that scenario, so tell me this. Then, if we can take this kind of generalized approach to fungi, forget you're on a cannabis show. Forget all of that. Let's just say I have some dirt. Let's say and I want to make the fungi go crazy. I want to feed them. I want to beef them up. I want to proliferate them. What, what am I adding? You mentioned like these other garden amendments help. Like, what microbes play nice, what nutrition? What can I add to my soil to make fungi go crazy?

So anything that you can add that's going to attract worms and insects. Worms and insects, if you're not, if you're not adding them in into the compost, the amendments that you add like the organic matter, whether it's vegetable scraps, whether it's fan leaves, whether it's wood chips, these things, once hydrated, are are either going to already have fungi in them or like endophytic fungi, or they're going To be attracting insects that are going to be releasing spores through their excrement or through the spores that are traveling on their bodies as they come to visit the compost. And so whether or not that like you're you're actively incorporating fungi into the compost. It's already going to be there, and as long as the compost isn't getting too hot and it's not getting overly saturated, you will start to see these fungal these fungal biomes increase to further increase the production of like your native, your native like you could work with, IMO, you could go out in the woods and collect some of, I wouldn't say, Like species out there, because it's so difficult to ID species, you could go out there for some sample collection, come back and expand it, and from there, you could be able to incorporate what's indigenous to your area versus what is going to survive in the compost from the insects.

That's a great answer attracting more insects to your I think that's where a lot of beginners get thrown off a living soil cultivation situation. I certainly receive the message all the time. Holy crap. I have root aphids. I have some sort of pest because they find that they have soil mites right in their soil. It's like, no, no. You want to we're. Are the best thing you can have in there. You want to attract. That's how the soil food web works. It's a holistic, broad system. It incorporates a lot of things. You know what I mean? From, yes, the fungi and the bacteria and the protozoa and all this stuff, but the insects and the birds and the local mammals and all of these things play a role. Sounds like it's the same thing you're talking about with the health of the soil for fungi.

I think that we still we there's still so much we don't know about the interaction that insects and fungi have, and also the the way that all three of them, plants, insects and fungi all interact. And so I just want to also share that there was an experiment that was done by Paul Stamets. It was called the petroleum problem. And basically they had taken two compost piles, one that was filled with petroleum, contaminated compost inoculated with oyster mushrooms, with fungi, and another compost non inoculated. And you can look into this after if you want. I can also send you the link, but the synopsis of this experiment was that the compost that was contaminated but still had fungi was able to attract more biodiversity, which therefore helped to break down the contamination at a much faster rate. And so it's still, you know, to be determined where the and essentially where the contamination went, was it actually broken down, or was it reabsorbed? Regardless, in the experiment, when they did the testing, the percentage of the petroleum contamination did decrease in the compost that had been inoculated with oyster mushrooms. And so I think it's really fascinating. Like, what we're seeing is like fungi starting to break down petrochemicals, and then insects coming to eat these fungi, but not having negative effects from the petrochemicals that the fungi are breaking down. It's like, what is going on? Amazing.

That said that. That's incredible. And I heard about that. I think I heard about that same experiment, how the oyster mushrooms would turn dark from the petroleum products, and then, and then eventually lighten back up. I think, I think I had heard something about that. Just amazing how, you know, it sucks too, Jacob, because these are, like, bio accumulative properties, the same thing you mentioned with cannabis. You know, maybe, if you haven't heard that term before, the idea that the plant is accumulating things out of the ground sometimes, other than the major macro and micro nutrients, cannabis is a good bio accumulator for heavy metals. And so what people do, unfortunately, Jacob, is they spin this as kind of a negative aspect, like, oh, well, if you don't grow it, right, you're going to have heavy metals in your flower, and then you're smoking lead. And it's like, no, no. This bio accumulation property is, is where the magic happens. That means you can get that stuff out of the soil. That means, you know, after Chernobyl, they went in there and planted a bunch of hemp to remove the uranium. And, yeah, you don't smoke that flower that turns into fiber or turns back into compost, or, I don't know where it goes. You take it somewhere other than where you are. That's

honestly Jordan. That's still the thing that I think the scientific community and the hemp community is figuring out is, you know, when these plants are absorbing it the contamination from the soil, are they actually breaking it down on a molecular level, or is trace, like is trace amount still found in the plant biomass. And what we're seeing with mushrooms is that they're actually breaking down these bonds. They're actually taking them on the smallest level and ripping these molecules apart and breaking them down. And so it's truly amazing, wow, that,

I mean, listen, that's the type of testing we need, because we know it's out of the soil. We're assuming it's in the plant, that's a really good point, and people pop hot for for this or for that, and it's like, that's the that is, that is the unfortunate but also blessed nature of these things. So to me, it's like, that's how we save the environment, and people spin it as a bad thing sometimes. So

in Asia, I think it's like 80% of the of the non button mushrooms consumed in the US are imported from Asia, and it's not uncommon for these mushrooms that come from overseas to be high in heavy metals. Wow. And it's the same thing they're cultivating in environments that they haven't properly tested the soil or properly tested their inputs. And so even though these mushrooms, you know, in some cases, can break down these compounds, and in some species and other species, in other situations, they cannot, all they do is absorb them, then we consume them. And so, yeah, I just wanted to touch on how important it was like to to know, like is, are these things? Are these, like molecular chemists breaking down the contamination, or are they absorbing it? Because that's like something that we want to know as people who are cultivating and consuming these organisms, right?

And generally, we're dealing with the when we take a look at like your average home grower, we're dealing with species of fungi that don't fruit. Right. Like mycorrhizal fungi doesn't ever come up into a into a mushroom bloom. Am I wrong about that? The type of micro that we use certainly

doesn't. Yeah, you're exactly right. We typically do not see fruiting bodies come from the micro applications. Well, you know, occasionally we'll see what the the plant pot, power parasol. It's like a yellow mushroom, Luco coronaru, some, something like that. And

of course, we see other things, because we use the soil with compost, which has like, a bunch of fungus in there. But yeah, let's talk about that, though. Let's talk about the competition, or not thereof, between cannabis and mushroom cultivation, specifically magic mushroom cultivation. Before I ask this question, I do want to thank you for coming on and talking about the wine cap mushroom and growing that in soil, in living soil beds, because I had three or four listeners, one close friend of mine in membership, do that thing that you said, do that wine cap flush or whatever, where they apply those spores to their living soil bed, and they had this Wonderful harvest of edible mushrooms right next to their outdoor cannabis. So thank you for that. And follow up, question is that something we can do similarly with magic mushrooms?

Absolutely, I was testing the waters the first time I mentioned that because I wasn't sure if I should just, you know, drop you can grow a magic mushroom next to your cannabis, right on the first podcast. So I appreciate everyone who listened and dabbled in the gourmets. You know, I think if my favorite thing about the wine caps and growing it in the outdoor, whether it's your vegetables or your cannabis, is that wine caps are not they don't like sterile environments. They actually grow really well with bacteria. And so that's something that I really recommend to gardeners, because it's not in a sterile technique. You don't need a lab. You don't need a face mask or gloves or isopropyl you know, a lot of the stuff that I do in mycology requires being sterile. But, you know, this outdoor cultivation, the best thing about it is you don't need to be sterile. In fact, you don't want to be sterile, because you continue to be negatively impacting the adaptability of the organism. And so, to give an overview, for people who weren't listening to the wine cap or haven't heard the first episode, if you already have an established garden bed where you already have a trail that leads to your garden that is covered in wood chips, or your mulching with wood chips. Specifically, hardwood wood chips are going to be the best if it's cedar or pine. Those can be a little bit more tricky, because they have these compounds with these like they're not fungicide, but they're compounds that aren't necessarily most conducive to beneficial fungal growth, and that's why we don't see a lot of edible mushrooms growing off of cedar or pine trees. We see them growing off of the ground through the ectomycorrhizal relationships that they have. But so when it comes to cultivating the magics and the wine caps with your plants, really, there's no difference, except for that the wine caps prefer wood. And the magic mushrooms, if it's a salos to be mushroom or a panaeus, it's going to prefer manure. And so if you're growing you know cannabis plants outdoors, your compost is manure based, or your top dressing with a little bit of compost, like you are with mulch. This is something that you can incorporate colonized grains, spent substrate, and this is what you can also do to cover the the top like, you know, as the as your plant matures, and sometimes those roots start to become exposed right next to the plant. Some people are mulching to cover up that, and you can do that with your mushroom substrate. And so really, what this does is it allows for the soil underneath your cannabis plant to still provide the plant what it needs, the water, the protection, and then the mushroom substrate that you've covered the top layer of the soil with is going to help provide an extra sponge for water. And so because this this cake, or this substrate, is very dense, filled with mycelium. As that water penetrates through it, that Mycelium is going to absorb it. Now one thing I do want to note is that you know the wine cap relationships, the relationship that a wine cap mushroom can have with a plant and exchange that nutrient cycle, it's studied more than philosophy and in cannabis, and so I can't say directly that having your magic mushrooms next to your cannabis plant is going to help your cannabis plant, other than the fact that it will help with water retention, lack of soil erosion and it could. Also potentially help to attract the insects to eat the mushrooms instead of eat the flowers that are growing on the cannabis plant, depending on when it's what stage it's at.

I mean, it makes sense, right? And we we know, like, hey, it doesn't interface this way or that way. But to me, it's like, I've seen such good results from broad spectrum compost that has a bunch of different or these types of fungal products that have a bunch of different species of fungi, even the Ecto mycorrhizal and the other crazy types of these. I just really think it helps to go full natural and to try to mimic nature as much as possible. And biodiversity seems to really be a key to some of the best gardeners, gardens that I know, when I think about the best growers I know who consistently put out the top quality flower, lot of them focus on microbial diversity, whether it's bacteria, fungi, everything

biodiversity is security. Yeah, that's

absolutely true. And I think it relates to quality. It has to there's just, it's, like you said it's such a complex relationship, I think it would be hubristic to think that we understand it fully. I think you're better off going just by results and what works best for you, and try going maximum diversity, because I think that works best for a lot of the most talented cultivators that I know.

Yeah, and you know, one other thing I want to mention on the cultivating the magic mushrooms is, for those of you who you know are very familiar with the strains or the different species of mushrooms, if you use something that's been hybridized for decades inside of a lab with sterile technique in front of a flow hood that's meant to grow in, you know, particularly like a monotub or something like that, that strain isn't going to be able to do as well as something that's been acclimated to the outdoors. I think we touched on landrace varieties last time, and landrace varieties are something that's very close to my heart, because two years ago, I found a magic mushroom in Oklahoma on June 9 of 2022 I found this mushroom took spores, and since then, have been able to help distribute over 1000 different units of these spores throughout the country at events I speak at, or at the Oklahoma mushroom festival, we give away, like this year, we're giving away 250 free syringes to in the VIP. Oh, cool. And so what we're trying to do is spread awareness and emphasize the importance of growing these land race varieties that actually have value because they have more access to like the these ability to adapt that we see in nature that plants or other fungi or insects have versus these indoor varieties that have been hybridized. They can't really deal with the the high temperature swings or the humid the lack of humidity, or the cold temperature than the hot days. And so especially in Oklahoma, what we needed was something that could grow in our environment. So the best thing that we could possibly choose is something that already grows there. And I know I'm so grateful. It's seriously one of the best days of my life to have been able to found a magic mushroom growing in a state that I live in, and be able to collect it and share the spores, and get to hear people tell me that they've tried it and that they enjoy it and that they're growing it outdoors. And the thing about landrace is that even when you contaminate, even when something goes wrong, you can still put it outdoors, and the odds of it working are much greater than if it was one of those hybrid strains. There's

so many parallels between what you just said in the in the growing world, like what you said about land races, is dead on, even just cuts that I've ran inside for round after round. And you take them outside, sometimes they take off and they degrade, but other times, it's like you said, they can't adapt to the environment. It's some sort of law of nature where the less you expose these living organisms to the elements, the more sensitive they can become to those elements down the road. I think it's the same reason doctors flip flopped on, uh, giving your children peanuts. At first it was like, oh, peanut allergies on the rise. Keep your kids away from Peanuts. And they saw peanut allergies went skyrocketed, even from there, and they now they go, give your kids peanuts, give them, give it to them early. Expose them. Expose them. So it's similar to that. Also, your story with the mushroom is kind of similar to, like, a lot of breeders have, like, a story about a cut that they like, you know, the cut that was given to me or smuggled across the thing, or my grandpa did it or or I pulled it out of a dumpster, like riser story. It's like the magic or the serendipity of the Botany of Desire. Like, because you were out hunting that day and you happen to find this one thing growing, then you took it and proliferated it across the state, nation and globe, more so than it ever could have done on its own. Because of that Botany of Desire, you're cultivating something that's desirable to you, and therefore you're doing the plant a service when it comes to natural selection by proliferating it on your behalf and on its behalf. So. So pretty cool stuff. It's heavy stuff. I love it. Yeah,

and I and anyone who's listening, if you guys haven't had the opportunity to to grow the Oklahoma wild, just shoot me a message. Be more than happy to give you a discount on that, that spores, because we're really just trying to see more Oklahomans grow. You know, everyone's on this big kick to grow native plants, but I'm like, on an even bigger kick to, like, grow native mushrooms. That's

awesome. Just before we go on, talk to me about that Oklahoma wild for just a second. I know that strains of your fungi are much like strains of my plants, which they're very different from one another. How would you describe the Oklahoma wild from a medicinal or effect basis.

Yeah, I would describe it as very comparable to Golden teacher. As far as the effects, it's very it's a half a percent per dried gram. So since the day that I found it, and we've been cultivating and testing, I've been doing testing with out of state labs to actually verify, just like we do with cannabis, what the the potency of these active compounds is. So right now, what we're seeing is about a half a percent per dried gram of total active compounds. So gentle, yeah, that's like a very gentle that's like, you know, imagine your cannabis plant only having a quarter percent cannabinoids and quarter percent terpenes, and that's it, right?

Well, that's what I like. I sound like those people who don't smoke cannabis very often, where they're like, this stuff is too strong for me. Give me something gentle. That's what I like with my fungi Oklahoma, Oklahoma teachers, golden teachers, have traditionally been my go to because they're like, I know I know him. I can trust him. And

that's we know. That's one thing that, like a lot of people are looking for. People are looking for something that's, in a sense, reliable, familiar, it's not going to send them to the moon unexpectedly. Yes. So the reason that I like the Oklahoma wild is because it's easy to grow and like, when you compare it side by side to Golden teacher, it grows faster because it's a land race. When you compare the potency level to something that's super strong, like, say, hillbilly, hillbilly was create, was isolated and then and then domesticated in a lab. And so it's going to have a much stronger effect. It was, in a sense, selected for its potency, whereas Oklahoma wild is not selected for potency. It's actually selected for ease of cultivation. Because I believe that's the most important aspect, is beginners need to be able to cultivate it, to be able to try it. And we don't want beginners to cultivate something that's going to send them to the moon and never come back. But that's

perfect, man. That sounds a lot like what we're doing with overgrow. You know, get people growing it. You can always chomp a little bit more if you need I have had quite an experience with medical fungi since we've last spoken, because I was having another bout of these insane cluster headaches, which my new Doctor says Those aren't cluster headaches. And he's he thinks I have some nerve thing, and I'm doing way better. Now,

are you taking lion's mane? I'm

taking a blend. Should I be eating more lion's mane? We'll

talk about it after. But you should definitely focus specifically on Lion's Mane, if it has anything to do with nerve or brain health, should definitely be focusing on on lion's mane and getting a nice effective dose of that.

You got it. And if we have time, I definitely want to, we got we got to talk about this next point, because it's probably the coolest thing you've ever sent me. But, but also, if we have time, I want to talk to you about recipes like eating mushrooms. Anyway. Let's see. Let's see if we can do this. You sent me in the guide. I was like, This is so cool. You sent me a bullet point this. I'm just gonna read it. How to Grow a flame resistant mushroom based ashtray that you can use when smoking. Are you gonna do this? Oh,

yeah. And I have, I actually, I can send you some photos. Maybe we'll put I can put together a reel, and I'm gonna make another one today, and I'll mail it to you so you can use it on the Grow cast podcast. Oh,

dude, you are way too cool. I would be so, yeah, I would be so grateful for that. So, so what does this look like for the people at home?

I'm gonna take it a step further, because it's actually gonna be grown on hempired. What? It's a weed mushroom, yeah, yes. So you're gonna be smoke, you're gonna be smoking, and then you can ash it in a fungal like a, I don't even know it's so complex. It's like a mushroom based, but fungal grown ashtray. Wow. I mean, sorry, cannabis based, but fungal grown ashtray.

That sounds awesome. What does this process look like? Yeah, yeah,

dude, it's so kind of like how I touched on earlier, like with the cannabis, the cannabis plants when you're chopping them down in the wood chipper. So what this company, Ecovative, has done is they've been purchasing large amounts of hemp herd, so if you're familiar like hemp Crete, making houses and making insulation with with the. Cannabis plant. There's a process called decorification, where they strip the outer part of the cannabis plant and then they only keep the end part, which is the herd. So h, u, r, d, there's herd and fiber. The fiber is used for clothes, and the herd is used for hemp C and other applications like this. So this company purchases the internal stems, components to the cannabis plant. They take mycelium, and they inoculate this bag filled with this hemp herd, so it looks like a bag filled with little pieces of hemp. Then this mushroom grows over the piece of all the pieces of hemp. And then from there, you stuff it into any size, shape or mold that you want, and this mushroom will regrow and re and read my cell y in the form that it's grown in. And then you can remove it. You bake it to kill off the mycelium so there's no more fungal growth. It's completely dead. And from there, you have a flame resistant cannabis based, fungal grown ashtray. Wow, it's epic.

Is it sturdy? Is it like solid? Oh,

yeah. You can drop, I mean, you can kick it. You could drop it off your table. It wouldn't break. But the best thing about it is that if it does break, if something does happen, all you have to do is compost it, because it's two materials, it's cannabis and it's mushrooms, so

it's no way. So then guess what? You just grow another you grow another one with that same compost, and the cycle starts all over again. Man, that is really, really cool, essentially using a mold,

yeah. So choose, like, you know, if you have two bowls of the same size, or two glasses of the same anything that you have, if you don't have a negative form of it, you just get two of the same object and squish it, and from there you can create that form. And so in particular, what I have is this, like little they call it a squiggle dish. It's meant to, like ship bottles. But literally, as soon as I saw it, I thought, this is an ashtray. Oh, I

know what you're talking about. The little soft thing that they put on the bottom of bottles that holds onto it, yeah. And it's not quite even it's got a little bit of design to it.

You got it? Wow. And so I I saw that, and I was like, Why isn't this an ashtray? Because with hemp Crete, you can put a flame directly on the hemp Crete, and it won't catch on fire. And it's so incredible because it's the same thing with mushrooms, is that you can take your hot joint or your blunt or whatever you're smoking, and you can ash it right on to the mycelium. All it's going to do is turn it this really brown kind of gives, like petite pantina To, like the ash tray it was, doesn't burn on, like incendiary in any way. Just kind of leaves this little ash mark on it, and you just keep going.

That sounds awesome. It reminds me of a video I saw. You should do a follow up video it did that would be great for your channel. There's a video where someone took, like, a molten ball of sphere of metal and put it on a pineapple skin. Have you seen that viral video?

Yeah, pineapple is also, like non is very heat resistant,

and it just smoked. It didn't, like, melt straight through this thing, shockingly. So someone else took that video and did their own thing where they made a like Zelda style shield, and it was all out of pineapple skin, and they blasted it with the flame thrower. You should make a mushroom shield, and we should take a flame thrower to that thing. Put that up on your put that up on your Instagram, because you're right. Super flame resistant. Why are we using this for fighting dragons? You know? Yeah,

exactly. That's honestly, I have to, I'm gonna have to figure out how to build a mold in the shape of a shield, I would say, like in this what we call micro materials, or mycelium materials, generally. What's the harder thing to do is create the mold. Because the only other thing you do after is fill it.

Someone is listening to this right now, who's like, I can do this. Anyone

who is listening, reach out to me. I can I can give you the contact information and a discount code to get this material and molds from the company who's already doing it across the nation. Or I can just send you some tips and tricks to learn how to do it on your own, because you don't have to use their particular strain or species of mushroom. You can use whichever one you want, but the one that they have, they have one of the largest private fungal databases in the world. And so what they've gone through is collected and tested hundreds of 1000s of different strains and species for their application abilities. And so how strong they are, how white they are, how fast they grow, how slow it takes for them to decompose, like all of these different things, to create what they could call the most ideal strain for the micro materials. So Wow. You know, this is a whole world to explore. And one other thing I want to you. Mention is that you could also create plant starts or plant pots out of these mycelium materials. You could be growing a living plant in a mycelium vase that has a hole at the bottom that would work the same way as your terracotta. It would allow the air, the water, to permeate through the side of the mycelium vase, as well as the excess water to drain out the hole in the bottom. I

would love to see some of this stuff. Man, that's that's perfect. And then you can keep your mushroom shield on hand for when you eat those hillbillies and you see a dragon, you'll be prepared exactly. You don't have to be scared. Grow cast membership. Come and join the best community in cannabis cultivation. I would love to have you inside. We make growing fun and easy. If you're running into any problems in your grow we can diagnose your problems accurately and provide you with solutions that work. The last thing you want to do is run to Google with your grow problems. There is so much bad, conflicting advice out there. Come jump in our membership. Jump in our plant problems channel. We will walk you through it and hold your hand and fix any problems you have. Plus we have a thriving community for you to connect with, people to trade cuts with and seeds. We've got live streams and giveaways and contests. We've got the grand fino hunt going on right now. Someone's gonna win $1,000 for hunting through a pack of our seeds. And we've got another round two of the grand final hunt coming up. So soon, you're going to want to get in membership, just to see what it's all about and to make sure that you get in on the next Grand fino hunt and all the Grow challenges we have going on. You can find it at grow cast podcast.com/membership get on in there. You will not regret it. Send me a message that you heard about this ad. I'll even refund your join fee so you can enjoy 30 days free. And like I said, get out of this grand final hunt. It's one of the greatest things we do. The next one's going to be even bigger and someone's going to win 1000 bucks just for growing along in Grow cast membership. Shout out to hygrozine for sponsoring the grand final hunt. We love hygrozine, and they are supporting us as we make some fun contests and grow alongs for the community, because that's what it's all about, supporting the growers, supporting the cannabis community, and making all of this easy and fun as it should be, so special. Thank you to hiker time special. Thank you to all the members and all the grand fino hunters. What are you waiting for? Come and join us. We've got the greatest community in cannabis. Growcast podcast.com/membership, we'll see you there. You

What about eating these things? Man, what are your favorite ways to consume mushrooms and your favorite species to eat?

Lion's Mane for sure, oysters for sure, just because these are ones that we like we can find at the farmer's market. So I'll go like I'll do, I'll give you two lists. The ones that you can find at the farmer's market that I love are going to be your Lion's Mane, your oysters, piaquinos, your chestnuts. And the simplest go to way for those is to put your pan on medium. Notice I said put the pan on medium before you add the mushrooms, it's a steak. Get it hot. You alright? Get it really nice and hot, because your mushrooms are 80 to 90% water. So when you add those mushrooms to that hot pan, a lot of that water is going to be released. And it's only when that water is released that other flavors can reabsorb into the mushrooms. And so if you take your pan, you put your mushrooms in there, you turn it on hot, then you add your butter or your oil. Nothing is going to absorb into your mushrooms because they're still full of water. You have to get that water out for them to be able to reabsorb what's left in the pan. Do

you drain it or do you just leave? Do you get it out and then throw it? You know what? I mean, do you ever do a drain, uh, like, of the water? Yeah, do you need to? Is that, like, because brown beef, you do that, typically

the water evaporates right out. You don't have to, yeah, there's not a it's not like, excess, but it's just enough that, like, when your pan's on medium, and you put those mushrooms in there, you'll see some water droplets come out, and after, you know, about a minute or two, you won't notice any more water. And that's when you add your butter or your oil. And you know, personally, I love, I love to get in there with garlic, a little bit of chives, a little bit of salt. That's like, a great way to, just like, saute and eat them as a side. One of the ways that I've recently enjoyed was stuffing them. So, like, if you have a morel mushroom, yes, it's a mushroom that's hollow on the inside, and you can take, like, a mixture of like, trying to think what the most popular one is, the thing, it's like, cream cheese and bacon or something like that. Yep, yep, I've seen that. And you fill the morels, and then you batter them, and then you fry them. And so those are some good ways for morels, because they're hollow. So you can stuff them the lion's mane. I really love to slice thinly, or you can leave it kind of thick, like a steak, and you can saute it. Or. Or you can put it directly on the grill. And so the mushrooms, because they're made of cotton, it takes a lot for them to actually char and burn, yeah. So what you'll see is that you can put it on the grill, that these edges of the mushrooms will get it nice and crispy, but that the center of the mushroom still has really good moisture, and it's not going to be too dry.

Oh, God, it sounds so good. Now I'm getting hungry. Last one. We'll finish you

with dessert then, because one of my favorite ways to consume like wild forage mushrooms. So like mushrooms that you can't cultivate, they're only able to be found out in the wild, because Mother Nature does it best. And this is a mushroom called the chanterelle. And chanterelles grow in many different colors and shapes and sizes, and one of my favorite ways is to basically sugar glaze them and then add them into ice cream. What get out of here? And so it's like a sugary mushroom umami ice cream, and it's delicious, really. That

sounds very interesting. I'd definitely give it a try. Definitely give it a try. That sounds great. I've seen those chanterelles, just delicious. Man, just delicious. I had the pleasure of eating wild foraged morels. I'd never had them until I my early 30s, and then I just had them a few years in a row. And my God, they're just the most delicious thing in the world. I mean, I love all different types, but those wild ones and the morels and, like you said, stuff them, stick a cheese stick down in there. That's good stuff. I like the different cultures around the world's take on the mushroom, right? So like Korean hot pot, that king oyster mushroom is my favorite. But no one does it better than your people. Jacob, you take that mushroom and you stuff it with some Italian sausage and some, like, a little bit of bread crumb, mix in there, and you put some cheese on it, and you bake

it. Are you kidding me? This is too good. Jordan, that's my

favorite. I think that's the best way to do it. But yeah, I'll eat a mushroom any which way, any country, anytime any place, I will eat a crazy amount of fungi. That's, that's my go to so, and then Lions Mane, you said for, for the medicinal nerve stuff, I'll have to go and get myself a whole bunch of Lions mane. I know I take, like, capsules that are supposedly, but I don't know, man, sometimes I feel like you got to eat the real thing.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's like a whole thing we could get into to talk like the the consumption, but really the when you consume the mushroom fresh, you're it's like consuming the cannabis plant and expecting the effects of smoking it, right? And so the effects are definitely different. In some ways, you will get more benefits eating the mushroom than you will like for digestive health. Typically, we see patients who consume the mushroom, cooking it, and have an increase in quality of life, versus someone who takes a capsule, wow, because they're not taking enough of that mushroom biomass to help alleviate their ingestion.

That makes sense to me, though. So I'm going to start. I'm going to start I'm gonna start on my diet, just because of this episode, dude.

I appreciate that. And you know, another thing that I recommend is, you know, is, are you interested in extracts? Are you interested in the whole fruiting body?

I would absolutely take extracts. But generally, I like to eat the whole fruiting body. I'll eat the out of some mushrooms. Oh,

yeah, same. And that's like, for me, I'd like to do both. I Every morning, I wake up, I take a lion's mane gummy. So we we take the lion's mane, we extract it, and then we put the extracts into a gummy. And so for those people, we're interested in trying legal mushroom extracts for like, a medicinal, functional, non psychoactive way, they can try them in gummies. We also have tinctures. We also have capsules, and this is a great way for people to figure out what works best for them and at what those Yeah,

probably best to do both. That's the answer, right? That's the way to go with the cannabis as well. Listen, Jacob, this flew by. Man. I want to make sure we have time for plugs at the end here. What an awesome episode, everything from the outdoor cultivation side by side to the flame resistant mushroom ashtray. Go and follow at Oklahoma fungi on Instagram. That's at Oklahoma fungi. Where else can people find you and where will you be on your travels? This should be dropping just before your amazing mush fest.

Epic. Yes. Can't wait for the second annual okay mush fest. And you can also learn more about that event on okaymushfest.com or at okay mushroom festival on Instagram or Facebook. And if you visit the website, you can check out all of our official speakers, all of our vendors. We have 118 vendors this year. We're in 17,000 square foot expo hall. I mean, this is if you came last year, it's going to be a whole new world this year. And I'm so grateful for the support the community has shown and for the greater support that I've seen from people who live from out of Oklahoma, who are coming for the first and only time they say to visit. Oklahoma, just because there's a mushroom festival. And so if you haven't been to Oklahoma and you want to come out for the festival, use promo code mush love 10 on our ticket website. That will save you 10% off on all ticket sales. So we really appreciate all the Grow cast listeners, the support that they've shown me through the past couple years, and just getting to work with Jordan at the community Cup, the home growers showcase, and everything that we have coming up in the future. So you want to learn more. Check it out. Oklahoma fungi.com Okay, mushroom festival.com. You

got it, man. October 12 and 13th, I'll be there. You just everywhere you go, you're crushing it the last Okay. Mush Fest was so much fun, so much fun. And I just, I had to grab a booth as soon as I could this year, because there's just so many great people to connect with and share our mission of overgrow and talk about fungi. And hopefully we'll be able to, we'll be able to hang out at the after party. Yeah, yeah, I'll see you at the after party. Oklahoma, Scentsy after party, after life party, that's right. Saturday,

the festival is from 10am to 5pm but at 7pm to midnight, we have the afterlife party hosted by Cincy, Oklahoma. That's going to be an epic time to come and relax. Get to hang out. There's a consumption area so we can just hang out, enjoy, relax and enjoy the afterlife. Oh

man, I'm there. I can't wait again at the time of this episode dropping, it'll be in about a week and a half. It's October 12 and 13th. I'll see you there, everybody. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you for everything, my friend. We appreciate you with this community. Always dropping some awesome episodes. This was another one. So let us know what we can do for you. Yeah, anything grow cast can do for Oklahoma fungi, you just let us know, I sure

will. Thank you all so much, especially you, Jordan, appreciate your support from the beginning. Man, everyone who's listening, you're in the mush love family, whether you're growing mushrooms or not, and really appreciate you for being here.

That's awesome. Man, take care, Jacob. We appreciate you, and we appreciate you, dear listener. Thank you so much for tuning in. I will be back with another episode here shortly. So stay tuned. Jump into membership. Come and see me. Come and hang out. I'm always hanging out there, and until next time, this is Oklahoma fungi and Jordan River, signing off, saying, be safe and grow smarter. And much love, much love. Bye, bye. That's all. Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody. Thank you to Oklahoma fungi. Thank you to the listeners. Thank you to all you members who make this possible. Growcast podcast.com. Is where you can find all the stuff, seeds, membership, classes, just a few spots left in the okca Alex class, as I record this may be sold out already by the time this drops before we wrap it up. Shout out to rooted leaf nutrients just pulled down my run. It looks amazing. The Super snow brunch came out incredible thanks to rooted leaf nutrients. Rootedleaf.com code grow cast saves you 20% on the best nutrients. Money can buy no pH in I didn't pH this whole run. Just mixed it and ran it, ran it in some pro mix, and I got some of the best flour I've ever had, loaded with carbon and the micro and macronutrients that your plants need, nothing more, nothing less, that lush green is like rocket fuel. People, if you're not completely satisfied with your nutrient protocol, switch to rooted leaf. Use their medium feed chart in a peat based mix, like pro mix. It works in any medium. But if you're just getting started or you need to switch styles, grab some pro mix. Grab some rooted leaf. Use their medium feed chart, use their foliar spray. Watch the magic happen. Folks. I love the results from rooted leaf. Rooted leaf.com code, grow cast 20% off. Thank you to rooted leaf. So so much. Nick will be back on the show soon, by the way, that's all for now. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll let you go be safe out there, see you next time bye bye,

mushrooms are like sitting in the bowl of jello that they're trying to eat. I.