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We love mushrooms, and are passionate about the power of mushrooms and their health benefits.
At Flora and Fungi we are inspired, motivated and driven by a desire to eat well, for ourselves and the planet.
We want to provide our community with locally produced, nutritious and delicious mushrooms in a manner that reaches beyond sustainable to regenerative.
Established in 2018 Flora and Fungi relocated from the Mornington Peninsula to beautiful East Gippsland in January 2019.
We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to the elders past, present and future.
Mushroom cultivation typically has a heavy reliance on single use plastics at multiple stages of the process due to their convenience and low cost. As we are advocates of the permaculture approach of reuse, repurpose, and recycle we were unwilling to take the well-established path of single use plastics. We looked into biodegradable plastic bags and compostable materials, but decided against them as it is not clear whether they actually offer an environmental advantage over conventional plastics, especially as biodegradable bags by design break down and fragment into microplastics, which raises concerns that they are contributing to the increasing collection of microplastics in our oceans.
It has been challenging to find a reliable and environmentally friendly solution, and we will always be looking to refine and improve our processes, but we are excited to be able to provide delicious, wholesome food grown with the least environmental impact possible.
We are proud to say that we do not use any single use plastics at any stage of the mushroom growing process. We reuse and repurpose food grade plastic and glass containers for our mushroom cultivation, extending the life of these vessels and producing many mushrooms, before committing them to recycling.
Although, our chosen approach is more labour intensive and less convenient, we believe the additional effort is definitely worth it for the environment. We also use filtered rain water and solar power, both of which have been collected on our property, further reducing the impact on the environment.
We do not use any pesticides, and our gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are grown on hardwoods (not manure) and grains sourced as locally as possible. Once the mushrooms have been harvested the remaining mushroom substrate is composted and used in our vegetable gardens. We want to create a regenerative system where nothing is wasted, just like the symbiotic relationship of flora and fungi in the world.
As our aim is to provide seasonal gourmet and medicinal mushrooms grown with minimal impact to the environment, the different species we grow will vary throughout the year.
Species which we aim to cultivate will include Lions Mane (Australian Hericium coralloides), Turkey Tail (Trametes Versicolor), King Oyster (Pleurotus eryngii), Shiitake (Lentinula edodes), as well as more warmer climate species such as the wonderful Pink Oyster (Pleurotus djamor) and Golden Oyster (Pleurotus citrinopileatus) for example.
Having said that, if there is a particular demand from our customers for a particular species and we can accommodate that particular species within our cultivation process, we would also be open to cultivating it.