Growing mushrooms for fun and money
September 8, 2021
Josh Wardlaw
When most people think of wild mushrooms in the Ozarks, they only think of the delicious morels that grow for a few short weeks in the spring. However, for Lauren Smith of Palace Mushrooms, wild mushrooms are a year-round, full-time job.
For years, Lauren was an avid mushroom hunter. In 2015, while attending the University of Arkansas, she took a mycology class and realized that she could clone wild mushrooms that she had found. After graduating, Smith moved to Missouri, alongside Mike’s Creek on the Barry/McDonald County line, and started the process of creating a lab and fruiting chamber in the old farm house that she and her husband, Josh Wardlaw, live in. In 2019 she officially created Palace Mushrooms.
The first step in the process was collecting samples of local edible mushrooms. Though she primarily focuses on oyster mushrooms, Smith has also cloned lion's mane, chicken-of-the-woods, and enoki. She even attempted to clone the one truffle she found during her edible treasure hunts.
After gathering the mushrooms, she begins the process of isolating and cloning them.
Smith converted her laundry room into a lab and built a flow hood, which uses a squirrel-cage fan to create a clean working environment. Positioned in front of the flow hood, Smith uses a scalpel to slice thin pieces off of the mushrooms. The slices are then placed into a Petri dish containing nutrients to feed and grow the mycelium, the foundational material that mushrooms come from.
After about a week, the cells in the Petri dishes will have developed. Smith then transfers the flourishing mycelia into jars full of grain. As the mycelia consume the grain, they expand.
Once the mycelia have fully colonized the jars of grain, Smith mixes them with pasteurized straw and stuffs them into plastic sacks. She cuts holes in the bags, hangs them in her fruiting chamber and waits for mushrooms to start popping out of the holes.
Across the yard in Smith’s and Wardlaw’s Mike’s Creek home, there is an old barn that the couple has converted into a work area. It is here that Lauren stacks the sacks of mycelium on a steel table.
Cleanliness is vital to success, so every work space has to be meticulously clean for each project. Inside the shed, the couple built a waterproof room where Lauren can regulate the temperature and humidity, using a homemade swamp-cooler in the summer and crock pots in the winter.
Between local restaurants and word-of-mouth, Palace Mushrooms, as a business, has taken off. The demand has been greater than Smith’s growing space. As a partial solution, she began to create mushroom kits for individuals to take home and grow mushrooms themselves.
During the pandemic, when many parents and teachers found themselves teaching small groups outside of the classroom, at the request of a teacher, Smith began creating kits that students put together as science projects. This popular activity has since become a vital aspect of production for Palace Mushrooms.
Wild mushrooms can be intimidating for those who are unfamiliar with what is safe and delicious to eat. Through Palace Mushrooms, Smith hopes to expand people’s understanding of the amazing foods which may lie just below their feet, or, sometimes, just above their heads.
Josh Wardlaw
When most people think of wild mushrooms in the Ozarks, they only think of the delicious morels that grow for a few short weeks in the spring. However, for Lauren Smith of Palace Mushrooms, wild mushrooms are a year-round, full-time job.
For years, Lauren was an avid mushroom hunter. In 2015, while attending the University of Arkansas, she took a mycology class and realized that she could clone wild mushrooms that she had found. After graduating, Smith moved to Missouri, alongside Mike’s Creek on the Barry/McDonald County line, and started the process of creating a lab and fruiting chamber in the old farm house that she and her husband, Josh Wardlaw, live in. In 2019 she officially created Palace Mushrooms.
The first step in the process was collecting samples of local edible mushrooms. Though she primarily focuses on oyster mushrooms, Smith has also cloned lion's mane, chicken-of-the-woods, and enoki. She even attempted to clone the one truffle she found during her edible treasure hunts.
After gathering the mushrooms, she begins the process of isolating and cloning them.
Smith converted her laundry room into a lab and built a flow hood, which uses a squirrel-cage fan to create a clean working environment. Positioned in front of the flow hood, Smith uses a scalpel to slice thin pieces off of the mushrooms. The slices are then placed into a Petri dish containing nutrients to feed and grow the mycelium, the foundational material that mushrooms come from.
After about a week, the cells in the Petri dishes will have developed. Smith then transfers the flourishing mycelia into jars full of grain. As the mycelia consume the grain, they expand.
Once the mycelia have fully colonized the jars of grain, Smith mixes them with pasteurized straw and stuffs them into plastic sacks. She cuts holes in the bags, hangs them in her fruiting chamber and waits for mushrooms to start popping out of the holes.
Across the yard in Smith’s and Wardlaw’s Mike’s Creek home, there is an old barn that the couple has converted into a work area. It is here that Lauren stacks the sacks of mycelium on a steel table.
Cleanliness is vital to success, so every work space has to be meticulously clean for each project. Inside the shed, the couple built a waterproof room where Lauren can regulate the temperature and humidity, using a homemade swamp-cooler in the summer and crock pots in the winter.
Between local restaurants and word-of-mouth, Palace Mushrooms, as a business, has taken off. The demand has been greater than Smith’s growing space. As a partial solution, she began to create mushroom kits for individuals to take home and grow mushrooms themselves.
During the pandemic, when many parents and teachers found themselves teaching small groups outside of the classroom, at the request of a teacher, Smith began creating kits that students put together as science projects. This popular activity has since become a vital aspect of production for Palace Mushrooms.
Wild mushrooms can be intimidating for those who are unfamiliar with what is safe and delicious to eat. Through Palace Mushrooms, Smith hopes to expand people’s understanding of the amazing foods which may lie just below their feet, or, sometimes, just above their heads.
