Nick Hensler’s 2-bedroom apartment in Arcata is the centre of operations for a master-planned mushroom kingdom.
In one of the rooms, a perfectly square and tall shelf made from pallets features 4 levels, each carrying 12 bags of incubating mycelium. The bags align up evenly and orderly like a line of soldiers in a batallion.
The six-foot pallet shelf take one section of the impressively clean and obstruction-free carpet, and lies across a similarly tall greenhouse. Peel back the door flap of the opaque tent and you’ll be immediately shrouded with hundreds of thick shitake mushrooms bursting out the seams of the mycelium blocks.
The tiny area sprawling with life contradicts the four sterile walls of the humanoid dwelling, far from the rich and raw nature of its origin in the woods. On the floor, a small white desk fan circulates air for the mushrooms.
Hensler is a mushroom cultivator with more than five years of experience down his sleeve. The soon-to-be-graduate dons a backpack that flows underneath from his healthy brown shoulder length hair. His calm and cool demeanor compliments his intricate descriptions of his growing process.
“Mushroom cultivation is taking a pure culture of a fungus and propagating it on an ideal substrate, introducing it to fruiting conditions to allow the fungus to go through its reproductive style,” Hensler said, “I would say just in a basic sense.”
Hensler keeps his cultivation room clean and well ventilated. His diligent and necessary cleanliness is thanks to one of his experiences during his time at HSU. Hensler took a botany class where he learned how do aseptic work by cultivating plants in a clean and controlled environment, shielded by a barrier to outside conditions.
“I had already been into mushroom cultivation,” Hensler said, “But after that, I started to combine my skills and really get into mushroom cultivation and culture plant matter.”
His experience is a reflection of how available mycology connections are of Humboldt County. “Back before I came up [to Humboldt State],” Hensler said, “I didn’t know how to seek out any resources for cultivation from other people or anything.”
After 5 years of research, practice, trial and error, Hensler said he now produces 50 pounds of mushrooms per week, all within a single bedroom, growing oyster and shitake mushrooms to throw in his meals and to give to his friends. The sheer quantity he produces allows him to sell 20 pounds of mushrooms per week to local restaurants, and make a near-unlimited amount of mushroom soup, five pounds at a time. He also likes to throw mushrooms in stir fry.
After graduating from Humboldt State University next semester with a bachelor’s degree in math and botany, Hensler will be moving down to his hometown in San Diego to start his first established venture into the mushroom market. With the help of his dad and his brother, Hensler seeks to grow more than 1,000 pounds of mushrooms in his own facility.
“It’s going to be a family business,” Hensler said, “My dad and my brother are going to get on board with me because they like the idea.”
The start of his experience in mushroom cultivation came from his family. Five years ago, his parents went to his local hardware store and bought him a mushroom growing kit. “I really enjoyed growing mushrooms ever since,” Hensler said.
Hensler is just one of many people who is excited about mushrooms. Bradley Thompson, Humboldt State alumni in botany and mycology with 30 years of experience as a research chemist, is field trip chair for Humboldt Bay Mycological society.
He plans expeditions along the northwest coast of California. “I like taking people out and showing them what I know,” Thompson said. He was very happy to answer any questions I had about anything remotely mushroom related.
The HBMC’s mission is to educate the public on mushrooms. Several mushroom enthusiasts join Thompson mushroom hunting on the fifteenth of each month.
“It’s an amazing cross-section of the culture,” Thompson said. “There’s young people and old people, there’s kids who are interested in psychedelics, and all kinds of ages, people who want to eat edible mushrooms, people who dye with fungi, photographers, taxonomers.”
There are also commercial mushroom foragers who are interested in marketing exclusive finds for a price. Commercial collectors have secret spots deep in the forest where only specific mushrooms can grow.
Mushrooms require a particular environment and condition in order to fruit bodies. In Hensler’s case, he creates an artificial environment in which certain species of mushrooms can thrive. In a general sense, there are two kinds of mushrooms. Saprotrophic mushrooms, which grow from dead things like grain and wood, are the ones that Hensler grows.
In a sterile environment, Hensler cultivates his mushrooms by first growing an initial sample of commercial fungus for one week. Then he creates a mushroom spawn from that fungus by introducing it to a jar of grain. After two more weeks, the spawn is transferred to its final home on what’s called a substrate block.
This substrate block is made of a sawdust mixture with nitrogen, and will eventually fruit mushrooms once it’s mature enough and in the right environmental conditions. During this whole cultivation process, the saprotrophic mushroom fed on dead material.
And then there are mycorrhizal mushrooms, which grow from a symbiotic relationship with trees. “Most trees can’t grow and get established without a fungal partner,” Hensler said. Symbiotic means that both the tree and the mushroom benefit from each other and cannot survive without the other.
Commercial collectors need to visit these secret spots in the forest for mycorrhizal mushrooms because they are not practical to cultivate. In order to cultivate them, you would need to have grown the trees and the ecosystem around it.
Thompson worries about the ecological impact of commercial foragers. Trampling, climate change and loss of habitat due to development inflict damage on a fungi’s specific habitat. With more ecological damage and overcollection, Thompson said, the fate of those mushrooms are unknown.
“A lot of the wild fungi have specific needs,” Thompson said. “Though [wild fungi] may fit into human ways with some, many don’t and we’re destroying them – just like many kinds of wildlife and plant life.”
“I don’t really think it’s my call to tell them not to collect,” Thompson said, but is discouraged by seeing prices rise on a limited supply that will only become more limited.
There is a lot of room for future studies about mushrooms. “We’ve come a long ways since I was a student back in the 80s.” Thompson said. “They couldn’t sequence the DNA then and see what’s on plant roots.” But now scientists are taking strides into further understanding their ecological impact.
They build soil, feed nutrients to higher plants and they’re a major part of the carbon cycle.
“How significant that is in our world, I don’t think we can really say,” Thompson said.
Rigorous study and research on fungi are not a requirement to enjoy their complexity, however. Michelle Stone is a sophomore in art history and is the president of the mycology club at Humboldt State.
“The main goal of the club is we’re trying to educate people on the study of mushrooms and getting people interested,” Stone said. “The Redwood Coast and Northern California in general is great for that.”
Throughout the year, Stone and the club take people out on walks to identify mushrooms. “That’s what I’m best at,” Stone said. “I’m not really like a speaker per se, this is just my hobby.”
Besides the mycology club, Humboldt State is home to the campus center for appropriate technology, which practices sustainable mushroom growing. Austen Thibault, a volunteer at CCAT, said that they are starting to inoculate mushrooms all over the center grounds.
A large tree, last semester, hung over the main building of CCAT. The tree was deemed a potential hazard for the occupants who live inside and volunteers removed the danger branch. In regular CCAT renewable fashion, they repurposed the branch into sections of log intended to live as mycelium substrate.
These logs now lay under a shaded area on the grounds dubbed the “Mushroom Bed” near the yurt. Garden beds lined with similar logs are scattered through CCAT. Thibault said the plan is to inoculate each log in the grounds, and hopefully the entire center will fruit mushrooms
In March, the mycology club teamed up with CCAT to present “Mushroom Week,” where they held presentations and workshops in the library for the students of HSU. Several of the presenters are community known enthusiasts from Radical Mycology and Humboldt Bay Mycological Society.
“It’s a very tight knit community, It’s very small,” Stone said. “It’s a very niche interest, so a lot people tend to know each other. It’s like, if you know David then you probably know Scott – sort of thing.”
“I have a lot of friends who are botany majors and they ended up dragging me one time to the mycology club, and hilariously, none of them came back and I kept going.”
There are a myriad of interesting people who partake in studying mushrooms in Humboldt County. Its mysterious nature can allure the most different of people. Just like the many on Thompson’s field trips, cultivators, foragers, dyers and lookers of mushrooms.
“They’re all obsessed with mushrooms,” Thompson said of enthusiasts. “That’s the thing that ties us all together.”
Michael Weber 