Basil’s fungi farm

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Basil’s fungi farm

We supply East Sussex with unique gourmet mushrooms, grown in the centre of Hastings at The Yard

27/10/2024

It’s not long now until the Water Lane Christmas markets, we’ll be bringing the best mushrooms we’ve got to offer, and, more importantly, plenty of grow kits for Christmas presents!

We’ll be in good company, take a look at .lane for more information.

22/10/2024

Hello!
It’s been a chaotic couple of months attempting to rebuild the farm from the ground up so that I can keep up with the demand for mushrooms and growing kits.
Thanks to the generosity of my friends, we’re making good progress and will have lots to share soon.
I appreciate everyone’s patience in this time, if I’ve missed any messages, just give me a prod.
For now, here’s a huge coral tooth I’ve grown, and Derrick my beloved van.
See ‘s latest post on how to cook coral tooth like calamari!

23/09/2024

I’m so happy to be getting some large clusters of our East Sussex Native blue oyster out to this week.

This is the blue oyster mushroom that found in the woods last year, I cloned its mycelium and have propagated it out into our grow room.

It grows as big as our commercial cultures, and has an impressively firm texture, which probably lends to a great shelf life

Just like all of our mushrooms, this has been grown on local wood waste from

21/09/2024

Thank you for putting on such an inspiring event last weekend! We only made it on the Sunday, but still met so many interesting people and took away so much enthusiasm and knowledge. We’ll certainly be back next year!

21/09/2024

I hope to see lots of you at The Yard makers market today, come take a peek into our grow room! waterworksroad

09/09/2024

We’ll be at the Waterlane Autumn fair this Saturday. This was our first ever market one year ago! It’s always a busy one so do turn up early for mushrooms 🍄

30/08/2024

Come and pick up some colourful mushrooms tomorrow at , It’s always a nice market!

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes, soon enough we’ll be offering local collection (and possibly deliveries?) to the general public, as well as significantly ramping up mushroom production. Let us know which varieties you’re most keen to see 🍄🍄🍄

08/08/2024

We’re starting to get the amazing Coral tooth mushroom out to some chefs in Hastings. Its branching stems and firm texture make it very similar to calamari tentacles when battered and deep fried 🐙🍄
Very popular so far!

15/07/2024

Look at this huge king oyster 😱 it weighed in at 600 grams.
It’s so nice being able to get more varieties growing now that I’m working out of the new lab!

05/07/2024

This months oyster mushroom grow kits contains the Florida blue oyster mushroom. It’s possibly got the firmest, meatiest texture of all the mushrooms we grow. It’s fast growing, high yielding and produces these beautiful dense clusters of delicate mushrooms, they get the most amazing pearlescent blue colour in the right lighting!

04/07/2024

Hastings locals, let me know your thoughts!
I’ve had a lot of people asking if they can buy mushrooms directly from us at our farm at .waterworksroad
So far my answer has been no, we don’t have enough stock.
But now I’m growing more than ever, both in variety and quantity.
If I were to open up once a week for a few hours as a mushroom shop, would you be interested in collecting some mushrooms?
Please let me know what time and day would work best!

Thanks for the continued support from our markets and wholesale customers!

03/07/2024

Mushroom farming takes a lot of work!
Each week, 400kg of sawdust comes through this lab. First I add water and bag it up, then I steam sterilise it to kill any competing mould or yeast, then I inoculate each bag with my home grown “grain spawn” mycelium, all from Petri dish. The inoculated bags are all shaken up to disperse the grains, sealed up and put into incubation.
This is just the first step of growing mushrooms!

Doing it all myself allows me to decide exactly which varieties I grow, and the quality of the substrate I grow the mushrooms on.
It’s why my mushrooms are so pretty! They’re all sustainably grown on nutritious local waste sawdust🍄
It also helps me keep my prices low, as we’re not importing mycelium from europe as many farms do, better for the chefs!

02/07/2024

The golden oyster mushroom!
It’s best suited to warmer weather, so we’ll be growing more of this mushroom through summer and autumn.
I’ve noticed that it’s mycelium smells like watermelon, I’m yet to taste it but I’ve been told it’s quite unique

01/07/2024

We’ve got a new round of T-shirts and hoodies ready to go!
More sizes available now.
Many thanks to for the design and for printing them.
Message me if you’re interested!

29/06/2024

Today is the day!
Come along to the beacon to hear me talk about mushroom cultivation, see Zak from , Ollie from , and some great food by the brewing brothers!
Tickets can be bought at the door
Tickets can be bought at the door

28/06/2024

I’m really pleased to say that most of our mushrooms this week have been grown on local sawdust from East Sussex.
Thanks to the generosity of and .
It really makes sense for our business. It means we’re not spending huge amounts of money to purchase imported sawdust, helping us keep our prices as low as possible for all the chefs and home-cooks out there, which is important to me.
It’s also yet another reason why mushroom farming is so sustainable, we’re able to grow hundreds of kilos of nutritious food off of the waste products of other local businesses. It’s an added bonus that once we’ve grown a few crops of mushrooms off of the sawdust, we’re left with a very nutritious mushroom compost that we can give away for free to help fertilise our local soils!
has been using our mushroom compost to build up the soil at his new permaculture food forest at the St Leonard’s academy.

17/06/2024

It’s hard to beat the king blue oyster 😀

14/06/2024

Here’s some exciting news, we have a new lab!
I’ve been working on this throughout May, and trying to finish up this month.
We were completely running out of space in our original building, so we decided to expand into another unit, focused solely on producing the mycelium we use to grow our mushrooms.
This is where we do our sterile work now, propagating mycelium on Petri dishes and jars of liquid culture, onto grains, then onto the sawdust we use for our bulk production. This is everything you don’t see on Clarksons farm.
I’ve been putting off posting this because I wanted to get some photos of it in its final state, but I’ve accepted that it might be months before it’s actually “finished”.
The aim is to keep it as clean as possible in here, we’ll have hepa filtration constantly running, capturing any particles floating in the air like mould spores or bacteria, the lab is all cladded with hygienic pvc so we can easily wipe it down.
The plan is to use this extra space to experiment with growing more varieties than our usual oyster mushrooms and lions mane, and to continue cloning local mushroom species. It also frees up space in our original building to grow more mushrooms.

Let me know if you’re interested in learning more about what goes on behind the scenes, and please tell me which mushrooms you’d like to see us growing this year 🍄🍄🍄

09/06/2024

The King Blue oyster!
We grow it all year round.
Thanks to everyone in May who attended our markets, purchased a grow kit from our website, or supported any of the restaurants and shops who use our mushrooms.
It’s really appreciated!
We’ve got lots of exciting things lined up…

03/06/2024

Our lions mane is near perfect at the moment 🍄
We’re growing everything ourselves from mycelium on a Petri dish straight through to mushroom, and it really shows in the quality and consistency of our crops.
One of the mushrooms in this picture hit a record breaking 2Kg! Not to mention, the texture is so meaty and they have a great shelf life 😊
These ones are all going to

30/05/2024

The ever popular pioppino in front of our wall of lions mane

28/05/2024

I’m really excited to be involved in this event put together by our friends at !
The Brewing Brothers will be cooking up some tasty street food with our mushrooms and pouring a specially brewed Lions mane lager 🍺🍄
Our friend will be there, we’re always impressed by his kombucha and his knowledge!
will have some mycelium sculptures on display.
Ollie from lions den will be discussing his new range of mushroom products.
We’ll be selling our mushrooms, grow kits, and t-shirts, and hopefully educating some of you about what we do and how we do it!
All at the beautiful venue that is The Beacon, within view of our farm!

You can book tickets in the link in bio.

28/05/2024

All week every week we have the tastiest mushrooms coming straight out of the grow room to our customers🍄
Thanks to all of our chefs and greengrocers in Hastings and beyond who keep us going!

18/05/2024

I’m so happy with these new t-shirts, featuring Basil (my cat) amongst a forest of mushrooms🍄
The artwork was all done by Adam Dando and the t-shirts were all printed next door to the farm by Chester
I couldn’t be more impressed!

We only have a limited quantity, but if you’d like a T-shirt, send me a message letting me know what size you need :)

09/05/2024

We’ve got a limited run of speckled chestnut mushrooms this week, I’m sure these will sell quick!

Address

The Yard On Waterworks Road
Hastings
TN341RT

Website

http://www.Basilsfungifarm.com/

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