Fungal Materials Handbook 

An guidebook to experimental biofabrication with fungi and friends. 

Version 0.0.1 Jan 23 2018. THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE AND ROUGH DRAFT!! 

Up-to-date versions can be downloaded at http://fungalmaterials.org/handbook 

 
DISCLAIMER!! 

Much of this information is speculative and experimental. Get experimenting, and share 
your findings! No warranty about anything at all is implied here, and this will be subject 
to massive changes, edits, revisions, retractions, and every other kind of conceivable 
modification. The format is currently difficult to navigate, and is not nicely formatted. 
With all that said, enjoy! :) 

Credits 

There have been so many fantastic conversations in the Fungal Materials group on 
Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/groups/fungalmaterials 
 
The ideas in this document are derived in large part from those conversations, combined 
with relevant published literature and personal experience. With deepest apologies to 
anyone inadvertently left out (and ordered by when permission was received to include 
them here), thanks to Nel Thomas, Ty W. Duquette, Amanda Braun, Tom Trueb, Itai 
Goldman, Matthew Fallon, Chris Heaney, Li-Jen Chu, Thomas Gonda, Indusjaivik Aura, 
Glen David, Levon Durr. 

Thanks to Elise Elsacker, Kristel Peters, and Winnie Poncelet of Magma Nova for their 
open source Fungi Materials Manual which is excerpted to form Section 4: Base Materials 
> Hard. 

Thanks to Levon Durr of Fungaia Farm for the image used on the cover. 

This document is coordinated by Jason Padvorac, reachable at 

jason@echolakeresearch.org. 

License 

The contents of this document are in the public domain. Feel absolutely free to mix, 
match, modify, and redistribute it in whatever ways serves your personal or commercial 
purposes. Enjoy! 

   

1   
 

Credits 

Introduction 

=== SECTION 1: GROWING FUNGI === 

Lab setup 

Making spawn 

=== SECTION 2: GROWING MYCELIAL MATERIALS === 

How mycelial materials are formed 
Substrate 
Shape 
Growth parameters 

=== SECTION 3: HARVEST AND PROCESSING === 

Heat treating & drying 

Innate water resistance 

Weatherproofing treatments 

Plasticizing 

Natural additives 

=== SECTION 4: BASE MATERIALS === 

Textiles 

Spongy & Rubbery 

Hard: Wood and friends 

=== SECTION 5: ATTIRE === 

=== SECTION 6: STRUCTURES === 

=== SECTION 7: OTHER APPLICATIONS === 

Appendix A: Making Airport Lids 

Appendix B: Eight-week workshop syllabus 

2   
Introduction 

We often divide human history into ages - the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and 
now the industrial age. The physical substances that we use for our tools, clothing, and 
shelter define the kind of world that we create and live in. And as the dominant keystone 
species across the globe, how we create those substances also indelibly shapes the world. 

The age we live in now, the industrial age, is coming to an end, with a whimper. Our 
technology has brought us unprecedented wealth and prosperity, at the cost of requiring 
us to tap into and deplete non-renewable resources at a breathtaking rate. Our current 
way of life depends on unsustainable one-way extraction of oil, natural gas, rock 
phosphorous, water from aquifers, precious metals, and even sand deposits among many 
other limited resources. And our extractions and resulting trash damages and destroys 
the irreplaceable ecosystems and biodiversity we need to produce the very oxygen we 
breathe. 

Given that nothing unsustainable can continue forever, eventually we will be forced to 
change our ways. Not in an apocalyptic collapse, but in gradual awakening steps as our 
eyes open to the truth of these seemingly unlimited streams of energy or substance as 
limited. 

As we stand here at the opening of the 21st century, we are witnessing an explosion of 
awareness that our plastics, our cars, our houses and clothing, the production and 
distribution of our food - everything - it all has to change. 

Fungi are stunning in their ability to provide solutions for a plethora of these challenges. 
This is why recent years have brought an explosion of interest in fungi: for 
bioremediation of the poisons we have unleashed, for building soil, for food and 
medicine, and for the creation of the material substances we use to live, fungi are almost 
uniquely situated to help us climb out of the hole we've dug ourselves into. 

This guidebook presents the theory and practice of a portion of these solutions: using 
fungi to serve our material needs of shelter and infrastructure, clothing, furniture, even 
tools and artwork. 

Welcome to the Fungal Age! 

3   
History of Fungal Materials 

The oldest fungal materials that have been used by humans are the ones that grow wild. 
For millennia people have used Fomes fomentarius, the tinder fungus, to prepare tinder 
or to make a felt-like material for hats and bags. Leather-like mycelial mats sometimes 
naturally form in wood when a fungus invades a tree and shoots mycelia up and down 
through a soft ring of wood. It is unknown if this material was ever used by people, but 
given the marvelous ability of traditional indigenous cultures to make intelligent use of 
every piece of the harvest, we must imagine that throughout history this material has 
been used whenever it was naturally discovered. 

The first deliberately cultivated fungal material is bread. Using yeast, a single-celled 
fungus, the material properties of the substrate (the dough) are completely transformed, 
to the delight of millennia of bread lovers. The yeast itself was not providing the change 
directly, though. It only produced carbon dioxide, which in bubble form provided the 
desired change. For the first time, human beings were employing fungi to transform 
substrates to a form more to their liking. 

The next step in humanity's relationship with fungal materials also involved food: 
tempeh. This is made by culturing the fungus Rhizopus oligosporus on soybeans. The key 
difference between tempeh and bread is that in tempeh, the body of the fungus itself 
forms much the newly transformed material. R. oligosporus is a multicellular fungus, 
and grows on the soybeans as a fine mesh of innumerable mycelia.The mycelia of R. 
oligosporus bind together the soybeans into a cohesive cake, while partially but not 
entirely digesting them. The result is a composite material of beans and fungus! This is a 
food, but it is also a material - by binding the beans together, it changes not only the way 
that they are cooked, but also the way they are handled and stored. 

More recently, in the 1800s mushroom farmers growing portobello mushrooms would 
form something called "brick spawn" by inoculating manure bricks with living mycelia, 
letting the mycelia fully colonize the manure and convert it into a cohesive material, 
then drying them out. They were using the naturally glue-like nature of mycelia to form 
easy to handle, easy to transport blocks of a desired material, namely inoculant. 

Shortly after that, the process of making sterile spawn was invented, and gave growers a 
much more reliable inoculant. Fundamentally, the technology of sterile spawn is what 
opens the door to incredible leaps in harnessing the material properties of mycelia. But 
at that time, there was seemingly no need to develop fungal materials. There were still 
many uncut forests and untapped mineral deposits for metals and concrete, and little 

4   
understanding of the ultimate costs of unlimited extraction. Textile mills were becoming 
ever more advanced, and there were not the same concerns then as we have today about 
local, ethical sourcing, or clothing that sheds toxic plastic microfibers. 

And the plastic entered the scene. We could transform oil that gushed out of the ground 
into an increasingly diverse suite of materials that could seemingly solve any challenge 
put to them. It would be decades before we would begin to understand the pandoras box 
we had opened. And even today, as a global society we have not fully come to terms with 
the true costs of our plastic addiction. 

[ discuss intermediate history, such as these patents: 

https://www.google.com/patents/US2811442 

http://google.com/patents/US5854056​ ] 

[ discuss recent history/ first companies and artists and their advancements ] 

Which brings us to the present. Mushroom farmers all over the world know firsthand 
how tough substrate becomes when it has been consumed by mycelia, and they know 
how mycelia binds particles and chunks into a single cohesive mass. Anyone who has 
been in the woods has seen a mat of mycelia underneath the bark of a tree, and many 
have touched and felt it. And mushroom growers know the thick mats of mycelia that 
can form, say in an overcolonized grain jar or block of substrate. 

As awareness has become widespread that we need sustainable, regenerative, local 

economies that are tied with natural cycles instead of toxic synthetics and petroleum, the 
materials that fungi naturallyproduce are being seen in a new light. The knowledge of 
sterile cultivation practices that was developed a hundred years ago unlocked the 
potential for us to grow almost any material we can imagine with fungi. That potential 
has lain dormant for a century because we didn't see a need for it. Now we have realized, 
and the fungi are ready and waiting, and we are witnessing an explosion of interest in 
material uses of fungi.  

   

5   
=== SECTION 1: GROWING FUNGI === 

How fungi grow 

Generally speaking, fungi grow in two forms: "mycelia", and "fruiting bodies". Mycelia 
are like roots, and grow through the food that the fungus is consuming, which is called 
the "substrate". When conditions are right, from the mycelia will emerge the fruiting 
bodies (mushrooms, conks, etc). The fruiting bodies release spores, which travel on the 
air and eventually germinate and begin the cycle afresh. 

When fungi are cultivated, normally we start with live mycelia. They are often 
suspended in liquid, which is called "liquid culture", or they are grown on sterile grain, 
sawdust, or wooden plugs and called "spawn". More advanced cultivators use petri 
dishes with agar substrate, which enables a person to take contaminated tissue sources, 
clean them up, and store for extended periods of time. 

A small amount of liquid culture, wedge of agar, or more frequently grain spawn is 
mixed into a substrate, and it grows throughout it and consumes it, creating a dense web 
of mycelia throughout. 

Getting started 

If you are new to working with fungi, I HIGHLY recommend you check out Peter McCoy's 
work. Start with these two videos: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB9JSky8x6k 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs9qb-zZLDw 

Then, if you can get a copy of his book Radical Mycology: 

http://www.chthaeus.com/Radical-Mycology-by-Peter-McCoy-p/b-rmp.htm 
 
Join our Facebook group at: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fungalmaterials 

And join the Mushroom Growing Facebook group at: 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1386696498248239/ 

6   
LAB SETUP 

Airport jar lid supplies 

- Rtv silicone 
- Wide mouth mason jars 
- Paper hole punch 
- Polyfil (take apart a ratty old pillow or buy) 

Other supplies 

- Liquid culture syringes 

- Pressure cooker or large pot 
- Baking pan 
- Aluminum foil 
- 2" wide masking tape 

Substrate checklist 

- Spawn: Whole grains (rye, corn/popcorn, oats, wheat, brown rice) 

- Casing layer: Scrap paper or cardboard 
- Bulk substrate: Straw, shredded paper, cotton balls, scrap fabric from natural 
fibers, cattail fluff, or other loose, fibrous organic matter. Be creative! 

Making air port lids 

To make your own spawn you will need to make lids for your mason jars that allow you 
to inject liquid culture mycelia, and let oxygen pass through so the fungi can grow, but 
does NOT allow contaminants to pass through. This kind of lid is called an air port lid, 
because it has an injection port, and allows air passage. 

To make this lid, use your paper hole punch to punch two holes into a mason jar lid 
insert, one on each side. Fill one hole with RTV silicone from one side, and gently press a 
piece of paper onto it. Turn to the other side, and fill it out and gently apply another 
piece of paper. After drying you can remove the paper (you may need to lightly scrub it 
off with some water) and you will have a clean, smooth surface for injections. 

After the silicone is cured, pull a large tuft of polyfil through the other hole until it is 
firm. This will allow oxygen to pass but filters out bacteria and other contaminants. 

Full picture instructions are in Appendix B: Making airport lids 

7   
MAKING SPAWN 

[ need to write this section] 

=== SECTION 2: GROWING MYCELIAL MATERIALS === 

HOW MYCELIAL MATERIALS ARE FORMED 

All mycelial materials start as a substrate. This substrate is the thing, or the mixture of 
things that the mycelia will grow through. Simple enough! But with a world of 
opportunities. We'll cover that below. 

In most cases, at the beginning you want the substrate to be sterile, or at least 
pasteurized. No living organisms, or spores - just a clean slate for your mycelia to grow 
through. You will then add an inoculant, most often whole grains that have been 
thoroughly grown through with mycelia. The mycelia will then jump from the grains to 
the substrate. 

That is when the clock starts! At first, the properties of the material are dominated by the 
composition of the substrate, because the mycelia have not had time to grow through it 
and feed on it. Gradually the mycelia will thread their way through the substrate, tying it 
together with their innumerable fibers, and consuming whatever in the substrate they 
are capable of consuming. 

Midway through, the properties of the material will be a balance of the substrate, and the 
mycelia. The longer you let it grow, the more of the substrate will be consumed, until 
eventually the fungi will have consumed as much of it as it can. If allowed to go that far, 
then the material properties will be dominated by the mycelia, unless of course the 
substrate was largely inedible. More on that later. 

The point at which you harvest the material and halt growth will depend on what 
properties you want from the material, and how quickly you want it to grow (i.e. what 
percentage of the food you want converted into mycelia). The amount of mycelial growth 
you allow is one of the most important variables that will dictate the properties of your 
material. 

FUNGAL SPECIES 

Different species of fungi can impart different properties to the materials being 

8   
produced. This is mostly an issue of trial and error, and research for us to characterize! 
Especially because each species will behave differently under different growing 
conditions. 

But one important predictive feature is the kinds of hyphae that a species forms in its 
fruiting bodies. Basidiomycete fungi all form "generative" hyphae, an undifferentiated 
and not particularly strong kind of hyphae. They are also capable of forming long, thick 
"skeletal" fungi, and thick, highly branching "glue" hyphae. Some of the most commonly 
used species for fungal materials can form all three kinds of hyphae, which lets them 
make the strongest materials - these fungi are called "trimitic". Reishi (Ganoderma 
lucidum) and Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) are both trimitic fungi. 

SUBSTRATE 

Your choice and preparation of substrate is another critical variable that will define the 
nature of your material. And it is an enormous blank canvas - because you can integrate 
anything at all into your substrate! 

Scientific research has shown that fungi that are fed more cellulose develop mycelia that 
are harder, while fungi that are fed simple carbohydrates have softer mycelia. So if you 
are wanting to grow pliant, supple mycelial textile you will want to make sure they have 
lots of simple carbs to eat! If you are growing structural elements, you might want to use 
a substrate that is heavy on the cellulose, and light on the carbs. 

If you terminate mycelial growth before it has consumed all of the available food, then 
whatever has not been consumed will directly lend its physical characteristics to the 
final material. For example, if you are growing a textile, you could make a mat of natural 
fibers to grow the mycelia on. The mycelia could partially consume the the fibers and 
weave a connective mesh throughout, while leaving them partially unconsumed and still 
able to lend their tensile strength to the material. 

Or, if growing structural materials, you could form a substrate with chopped straw filled 
around a lattice of sticks, or even a random mishmash of sticks. The straw would be 
consumed more quickly then the sticks. Given enough time the sticks too would be 
consumed, but if the material was heat treated when the mycelia were just entering the 
sticks, then the entire assembly would be tightly attached, while the compressive 
strength of the sticks would be little altered by mycelial decomposition. This would use 
the concept of tensegrity - a combination of elements in tension and elements in 
compression, that together are very strong and resilient. But instead of discrete tensile 
elements typical of tensegrity structures, the complex web of mycelia would be used. 

9   
Taking that even further, non-edible materials can be integrated into the substrate! Many 
psychedelic mushroom growers mix perlite or vermiculite into their substrates, because 
of how it helps them to manipulate the aeration and water retention of their substrates. 
But fungi can't eat perlite or vermiculite, so those materials simply become enveloped 
and shot through with mycelia, but not digested. The final nature of a substrate "cake" 
grown with perlite or without perlite will be quite different. 

The most complex substrates could be formed of easily edible, difficult to digest, and 
inedible components. Like a structural material composed of straw, sticks, and sand, 
gravel, or stones. 

SHAPE 

GROWTH PARAMETERS 

- Inoculation rate / technique 

- Hydration over time 
- Temperature over time 
- Point of harvest 
- Disruption/reshaping 

=== SECTION 3: HARVEST AND PROCESSING === 

HEAT TREATING & DRYING 

Once you have grown a mycelial material and are ready to harvest, you can stabilize it 
by killing the fungus and removing the water. This can be achieved at by baking at a low 
temperature (like 200F or 90C) until it is mostly dry. That is hot enough to kill the fungus, 
but kept low enough that we don't burn or degrade the material. The assumption here is 
that if we keep the temperature below the boiling point of water (212F or 100C) it will 
bear minimal risk of compromising the material. But this is very much open to 
experimentation, and I hope we can soon share reports of the behavior of mycelial 
materials treated at various temperatures! 

INNATE WATER RESISTANCE 

10   
Fungal cell walls are composed of chitin, polysaccharides, and proteins. Chitin itself is 
highly water-repelling and resistant to degradation, and lends mycelial materials an 
inherently water-repellant surface. A mycelial surface without cracks, pores, and holes is 
likely to withstand water fairly well on its own. With that said, fungal materials certainly 
are capable of absorbing water given prolonged contact. 
 
A very useful avenue of experimentation would be to assess what growth conditions, 
substrates lead to the most strongly hydrophobic and degradation-resistant materials, 
and if additional mechanical steps like burnishing would be capable of increasing the 
durability of the surfaces.  

WEATHERPROOFING TREATMENTS 

Mycelia and myceliated materials tend to be strongly hydrophobic. But it is well worth 
experimenting with additional treatments to convey stronger ability to resist the 
elements, and specifically water. Especially for surfaces that are less smooth. 

The material can be impregnated with hydrophobic substances like oil or wax, at the 
surface level or all the way through. Or, if it is a structural element, it could be covered 
with some kind of plaster. You can use pure oil, pure wax, blended combinations of 
them, or emulsions (like homemade beeswax lotion). Experiment! The rest of this section 
will refer just to "wax" for simplicity, but read that to mean any combination or blend of 
wax and oil. 

Any natural material that is waterproofed by some kind of surface treatment will require 
periodic retreatment. Keep an eye on the material, and re-treat it if the surface is 
becoming less water repellant or if you have reason to believe it is soaking up water. 

Soap / Alum 

http://gluedideas.com/content-collection/A-Treatise-on-Masonry-Construction-1909/Metho
ds-of-Waterproofing-Concrete_P3.html 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284345081_Study_on_water_proofing_cement_
mortar_and_concrete_prepared_with_soap_solution_and_rice_husk_ash 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadelakt 

https://www.hammockforums.net/forum/showthread.php/82187-Waterproofing-with-Alu
m 

11   
Hot wax 

You come with applying the wax to hot fungal textile. You can rub in the wax 
immediately after heat treating while it is still hot, or you can use a hair dryer to heat the 
fungal textile and keep it hot while rubbing in the wax. 

Oil 

You will want to choose a non-drying, non-volatile oil so that it does not get gummy or 
evaporate away. You can use linseed oil, but that may not be the healthiest for 
applications with skin contact. 

Water/Oil Emusions 

This will be a creamy, lotion-like material that is made by combining oil or wax and 
water. You can rub it in to the fungal textile, then let the water evaporate leaving behind 
the oil and wax impregnating the surface of the material. Here is a recipe: 

From 
http://www.naturalbeautyworkshop.com/my_weblog/2011/05/emulsion-the-mag
ic-trick-of-creams-and-lotions.html 

To create a basic emulsion formula, try working with this simple formula: 

1 part Emulsifier 

3 parts Oil / Vegetable Butter 

6 parts Water or Hydrosol 

The emulsifier part can be 100% Emulsifying Wax, or a combination of 80% 

Beeswax, 10% Borax, and 10% Liquid Lecithin. Try experimenting with the 
amount of water, oil, or emulsifier you have to create unique textures. You can 
also try switching Beeswax for other waxes, such as Candelilla, Carnauba, 
Bayberry, or Floral Wax.   

To create the emulsion, start by heating the waxes and oils/butters together, 
along with the lecithin, if you are using it. In a separate container, heat the 
waters along with the borax, if you are using it. When both phases have 
become hot, and the waxes have fully melted, begin whipping the water phase. 
Slowly pour a very thin stream of the oil/wax mixture into the water phase 
while continually whipping. After the ingredients are fully combined, continue 

12   
 to whip the mixture for at least a full five minutes. The mixture should become 
thick and opaque.   

Depending on your ingredients your mixture can vary in texture and 

appearance wildly. Achieving a stable emulsion may also require some 
tweaking of these ratios depending on the ingredients you choose.  

Pine tar 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_tar 

http://www.survival-manual.com/pine-tar.php 

PLASTICIZING 

Mycelial materials can be hard and inflexible when dry, and if a softer material is 
desired they can be "plasticized", for example if making flexible items like fungal textile. 
The technical term from the world of chemistry refers to the process of making a 
material less brittle and hard, and more soft and pliable. This can be done with simple, 
non-toxic materials, does not mean we are turning the material into plastic, and is 
certainly not anything like the plastics that cause environmental problems! 

Briefly, when we harvest mycelial material it includes long chains of fungal mycelia, rich 
in chitin, and cellulose and other material from the substrate. These are very large 
molecules, and bind tightly along their lengths - this is what can make the material hard 
and inflexible. To plasticize it, we introduce smaller molecules that will slide between 
those long molecules and act almost like hinges, or like lubricating grease. They allow 
those long molecules to move more independently, so the material as a whole can bend, 
flex, and give without cracking. 

Before the mycelial material is dry, water performs this lubricating function. This is why 
mycelial materials must be dried before become firm or hard. There are several 
problems with water as a softening agent, though! First is that it can make the material 
too soft at first, but evaporates quickly, leaving the material quite hard. The second 
problem is that water provides conditions for growth of mold and bacterial 
decomposition. Water is no good if we want the material to function for more than a 
very short period of time! We need plasticizing agents that will not evaporate, and will 
not mold. 

13   
Fortunately, plasticizing biological materials is not a new problem challenge, and has 
already been well documented. Glycerol is a natural chemical that is often used as a 
softening agent in bioplastics. It will not evaporate, it is stable at room temperature, it 
behaves well at freezing temperatures, and it is soluble in water, which makes it possible 
to get it soaked completely into mycelial materials. 

There are reports of mixtures of oils and waxes being used to plasticize kombucha 
scobys after they have been dried. By selecting and blending oils and waxes, and rubbing 
them into the surface, you can achieve a variety of different material properties 
(experimentation required here!). This works well for kombucha scobys because they 
are generally quite thin when dried. But care must be taken when selecting the oils and 
waxes, because the wrong kinds will get gummy or harden up in time. For thicker 
mycelial materials, like the ones we are targeting when making mycelial textiles, it might 
be difficult to get the softening oils and waxes all the way through the material. 
Therefore oils and waxes will probably not offer the consistency and performance of a 
glycerol-based process. 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877412006449 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014305710004763 

NATURAL ADDITIVES 

Because glycerol dissolves water-soluble and oil-soluble compounds, it can be used as a 

carrier to give you a lot of options that you can experiment with to adjust the final 
properties. You can make herbal glycerites, for example, by steeping plant material in 
the glycerin before using. For example, you could make a glycerite with cedar needles 
which would lend a fresh, woodsy smell to the final product while making it more 
resistant to decay. 

Once a mycelial material has finished growing, it can be saturated with a glycerite and 
then dried, leaving behind glycerol and whatever you added to it. 

=== SECTION 4: BASE MATERIALS === 

Textiles 

14   
Why fungal textiles? 

There are incredible possibilities because of the way that fungal fruiting bodies and 
mycelia are naturally strong, antimicrobial, lightweight, and can be inexpensively grown 
in many shapes, sizes, and forms. Fungi can easily be harnessed to grow materials very 
similar to leather, and with experimentation we can surely grow other products that can 
be used in place of textiles. 

Throughout human history, the production of textiles has come with large amounts of 
labor, and as a result the production of shoes and clothing has demanded a large portion 
of human energy, especially in colder climates. Fine textiles, like linen, require an 
intricate process from the planting and harvest of flax, through multiple steps to extract 
high quality fiber, then finally spinning and weaving. 

Clothing can made of animal skins with less work, but the processing and tanning of an 
animal hide is still an involved process. And it is incredibly land-intensive to produce 
clothing via animals: the ecological footprint of our animal industries to provide meat, 
leather, and other products is already devastating. Responsible, ecologically integrated 
animal husbandry can be an incredible force for vibrant ecosystem health, but that isn't 
the kind of animal husbandry that we generally get. 

In modern times we have machines and synthetic chemicals carrying most of the weight, 
so we have access to clothing and shoes that are incredibly cheap and accessible 
compared to even the recent past. But this has come with the downsides of exploitation 
of workers and clothing that is toxic to dispose of and accumulates in landfills and sheds 
plastic microfibers into our waterways. 

Fungal textiles offer an alternative: a way to use low-cost plant material that can be 
easily grown in abundance anywhere (straw, corn husks, and other fibrous or woody 
materials) and convert it into an array of textiles with various properties. From thick and 
hard to thin and supple, as we optimize our techniques for growing fungal textile we will 
be more and more able to tune to exactly the properties we want. 

WARNING! This section includes speculative and experimental information. As of yet, 

there is little public information about how to grow mycelial textiles. Much of the 
information in this section is unproven as of yet. Experiment, and share your process 
and results! 

Applications 

15   
 - Clothing 
- Shoes 
- Accessories (handbags, wallets, belts) 
- Storage / transport bags 
- Waterproof wrap / cling wrap / sandwich wrap 
- Roofing or structural wrap 
- Furoshiki (Japanese-style reusable wrapping "paper") 
- Use your imagination! 

How fungal textile grows 

[ add discussion of liquid culture and soft culture surface harvest techniques ] 

To grow fungal textile, we prepare a substrate from materials that the mycelia will grow 
through. Once the mycelia have grown to the desired degree, we take the resulting 
combination of substrate and mycelia and heat treat it to kill the fungi and halt further 
growth. The mycelia can be allowed to fully consume the substrate leaving pure or 
almost pure mycelia, or it can be terminated while some of the substrate is intact, giving 
flexibility in the makeup of the substrate/mycelia balance. It may then be dried (it can be 
heated and dried at once by baking), and then processed with oils, waxes, or other 
techniques to give the desired strength, elasticity, color, texture, smell, etc. 

Textiles need to be thin. Either a layer of mycelia/myceliated substrate can be cut off of 
the sides, top, or bottom of the textile, or the entire substrate layer can be made thin and 
harvested as a single piece. 

There is another kind of fungal textile that is grown with yeasts and bacteria, and instead 
of being formed of mycelia is formed of a cellulose and polysaccharide biofilm created 
by the monocellular polyculture that makes up kombucha tea. Scobys from kombucha 
can be dried, then treated with waxy oil to impart flexibility and water resistance. 

Compound substrates 

You can lay down layers of substrate materials - for example, if making the sole of a shoe, 
you could put down shredded rubber pieces mixed with shredded paper to give a layer 
of tough, cellulose-feeding mycelia integrated with rubber, and above that put a layer of 
carbohydrate-enriched sawdust to provide a more uniform surface, and grow softer 
mycelia on the richer carbohydrates. There are endless possibilities! 

Partially digested substrates 

16   
Again using shoes as an example, you could make fungal textile for the side walls of the 
shoes by colonizing grass or straw with mycelia. Grass has been a traditional natural 
insulating material in footwear for millennia, as it can provide a degree of insulation 
along with excellent breathability and water shedding. You could use mycelia to knit the 
grass together, and once it was cohesive enough terminate the mycelia to largely 
preserve the character of the grass. 

A similar approach could be used with retted but unspun natural fibers, such as from 
flax or nettle plants. Again, there are endless possibilities! 

Growing a substrate (using kombucha scoby as mycelial substrate) 

Kombucha scoby textiles are not water repellant like mycelial materials, but they are 
incredibly tough. You could grow a scoby (a cellulose mat), and then sterilize or 
pasteurize it and use it as a substrate for mycelia. If left partially digested, you could 
balance the quantity of scoby remaining with the quantity of mycelia grown, and look 
for an application-specific balance of toughness to water resistance. 

Spongy & Rubbery 

[ not written yet ] 

Hard 

[Thanks to Elise Elsacker, Kristel Peters, and Winnie Poncelet of Magma Nova for their 
open source Fungi Materials Manual, which is excerpted to form this section.] 

Summary description of the process

There are five phases for growing an object made from mushroom material. ​First​, we need to ​prepare
everything we will use. This means ​sterilising ​or ​pasteurising ​all the ​tools ​and ​resources​. ​After that​, we
will make the ​mixture ​in which the mycelium will grow, the ​substrate​, and put it in a ​mold​. ​Third​, the
mycelium will ​grow in the mold for about 10 days, depending on several conditions. ​Next​, there is a
second growing phase outside of the mold​. ​Lastly​, we will ​harvest ​the object and ​dry ​it.

17   
Sterility
First off, it is important to note that you need to work as hygienic as possible. This means you must
disinfect everything the material will touch. You can disinfect things with rubbing alcohol (70%) or other
products sold for this cause, like disinfecting wipes. To sterilise them, rub the bowls and spoons etc. you
use with alcohol, as well as the table you work on. Wear gloves and rub the gloves with alcohol.
Whenever you touch a non-disinfected surface, you must disinfect your hands again. Sterilise your
hands before every ‘action’ you do.
Try not to lean above the materials with your hands or face, so that particles like dust can’t drop on your
experiment.

Equipment and ingredients

Depending on your location, you might or might not have access to this. Usually, you will find all the
necessary hardware in a DIY biolab.

- Mold of your choice. You will need a foil to cover it if you don’t have a lid. The mold has to be
metal or plastic, else you will need to cover the inside with plastic foil (eg. a wooden mold)
- Mixing bowl
- Coffee grounds
- Woody substrate (hemp, saw dust, fine straw…), enough to fill your mold
- Cooking pot
- High pressure cooker (or better, an autoclave)
- A vertical gas fire, like a camping fire (or better, a bunsen burner)
- Cloth bag (like a white pillow case)
- Mushroom spawn (seeds), buy at local supplier or at www.mycelia.be
- Stove
- Water
- Plastic gloves
- Alcohol (70%) or other disinfecting product
- Thermometer
- New, fresh plastic bag

Step by step:

Preparation

Sterilising and pasteurising the materials and resources. For simplicity, we will be using hemp fibres
throughout this manual. The recipe is the same if you switch it with sawdust, fine straw or other woody
substrates.

18   
 1. Mix hemp fibres with coffee ground in a bowl. ​The amount of coffee you will need is about
1/10th of the volume of your bag. This does not need to be precise.

2. Fill a cloth bag with the substrate (mixture of hemp and coffee)​, put it in the cooking pot and
fill it with ​water​. The hemp needs to be fully ​submerged​, so don’t use too much hemp. The
hemp will absorb some of the water, so make sure it stays submerged.

3. Put the ​cooking pot on the stove and bring it to a ​boil​. This can take a while due to the large
amount of water to be heated. Let it boil for ​30 minutes​.

4. After 30 minutes, ​remove the cooking pot from the stove ​and pour away the water. If it’s still
too hot, ​let it cool as soon as possible. From this point onward, the substrate is pasteurised. In
other words: most micro-organisms are dead, except for the most temperature resistant ones.
This means that you should keep the substrate closed off from the air as much as possible (keep
the lid closed) and avoid contact with surfaces (hands, utensils, …) that are not disinfected.

5. The substrate will cool off faster if you remove it from the cloth bag. Try to remove the bag
without exposing the substrate to the air too much and do it calmly, but fast. Close the lid and
let them hemp sit in the cooking pot to cool off.

6. The ​next steps ​will need to be done in ​rapid succession ​to avoid unnecessary risk of
contamination. If you need to place foil in your mold or need to put certain materials within
reach, now is the time. ​Read the steps before you start​.

Making the mixture

Be more aware of disinfecting hands and materials whenever you use them from now on. Don’t leave
lids open unnecessarily, to avoid contamination. See pictures below.

7. Working sterile: put on your ​gloves and disinfect ​them whenever you touch the substrate or
mycelium mixture. ​Anything ​you use from now on has to be ​disinfected​. When something
disinfected touches something that is not disinfected, you must disinfect it again. ​Anything ​you
do from now on where a lid is off or when something that was previously sterilised or
pasteurised is in contact with the air, you should do in the ​vicinity of a vertical flame​. The
reason for this is that the flame creates an upward air flow which prevents organisms from
falling into your experiment. Ignite the flame 5-10 minutes before you proceed, to allow for a
steady airflow to form.

8. When the substrate have cooled down until about 30-35 °C, we can prepare the mixture.
Disinfect the thermometer if you will directly touch the substrate to measure the temperature!
Disinfect ​your ​mixing bowl ​and place it in the vicinity of the flame.

9. Prepare the mold in the vicinity of the flame. ​Cover the inside of the mold with foil​, this helps a
lot with removing the object from the mold later on. ​Disinfect the mold and foil and make sure

19   
 you have ​everything you need, sterilised, within your reach​, including some foil to put on top
or the lid if your mold has one. Every inside surface of the mold has to be disinfected. From now
on until step 12, you must keep going without pause, because of the exposure to bacteria and
fungi in the air.

10. Place enough ​substrate ​to fill your mold in the ​mixing bowl​. Add ​mushroom spawn ​at ​1/10th of
the volume​. Mix everything well and make sure to ​break ​the ​mushroom spawn chunks ​into
little bits. The more ​homogenous ​the ​mixture​, the better. Don’t take too long, because the risk
of contamination rises the longer you are mixing.

11. Put the mixture in your mold. ​Press it gently​, but not too much. If the mixture is packed too
tightly, the mycelium can choke and die. It can also produce too much heat and effectively cook
itself.

12. Cover the mold ​with plastic foil or lid (sterilised!). This ensures no dirt or unwanted guests get
inside the mold and it helps to prevent evaporation of water. If too much water is allowed to
escape, the substrate will dry out. Use painters’ tape to shut off any holes in between the foil
and the mold, to prevent insects from getting in.

20   
Step 9: Disinfecting the mixing bowl and table. Step 10: Making the the mixture: substrate + spawn

Step 11-12: Filling the mold (coffee and seeds are not visible in this picture)

21   
First growth phase: in the mold

13. Place the mold in a ​dark ​environment at ​20-30 °C​. The ideal temperature is about 27°C, but if
you feel you have made some mistakes working sterile, a lower temperature might be more
suitable. The mycelium will still thrive at 20 °C (although it will take a little longer) and
contaminants will be slowed down in their growth. The mycelium is very receptive to his
surroundings. In your home that circumstances are different, so it is also normal to allow some
time to the mycelium to adapt to his new habitat. Therefore, don’t move your object too often,
and make sure the growing conditions remain as constant as possible.

14. This growth stage will take anywhere between ​5 and 14 days depending on a long list of
conditions. Light, temperature, amount of spawn, species, type of substrate, nutrient additives
and moisture all have an impact on the growth stage. There is no clear end of this stage. If you
can see ​mostly white​, with ​no more brown spots (or whatever colour your substrate was at the
start) it’s likely time to ​remove your object from the mold​. The mycelium will have formed a
nice white layer of fluff. If there are brown or yellow spots or wet spots on your white layer, you
have waited for too long. If there are not too many, nothing is lost though, just proceed to the
next step.

22   
 Step 14: When the object is fully covered in a white layer, it’s ready for the next step

Second growth phase: outside of mold

15. There is no need to work sterile at this point. Washing your hands is enough.

16. Open the mold and ​carefully remove the object​. The object is probably still quite fragile (that is
the point of the second growth phase). All the water makes it heavier and unable to support its

23   
 own weight. If you covered the inside of your mold with foil, you should be fine. Get a new,
clean plastic bag and place the object in it. Close the bag.

17. Let the object grow under the ​same conditions you used during the ​first growth phase​. This will
take another ​5-7 days​.

Step 16-17: This cast of a face shows the difference before (left) and after (right) the second growth
phase

Harvest and drying

18. After about a week or when you see the object is completely white, you can ​open the bag​. The
object will still be fragile, but a little less than when you first opened it. Be careful and support it
with your hands.

19. Put the object on a ​grill ​or a ​plate ​and put it ​in the oven at 60-80 °C​. Depending on the thickness
of your object, this can take 2 hours to a long time. ​Turn the object ​around every hour or so to
allow water to evaporate from every side​. If you cannot dry it in one run, you can leave the
object sitting in a cold oven for a day or so. Just make sure there is a way for humidity to escape,
or other organisms will start growing on your object.

24   
 20. Some objects that are quite thin, can just be dried in the open air at room temperature or close
to the central heating.

21. There are a few ways to ​check if your object is completely dry​. The ​surface ​cannot be springy,
but ​must be rigid​. The ​air ​in the oven or around the object ​must be dry​, not humid. The ​smell
will change from foresty, food-like to ​musty ​when you heat the object. When the object is
cooled down, all smell should disappear.

22. Congratulations, you have ​your very own biodegradable mushroom material object​! 

=== SECTION 5: ATTIRE === 

Accessories 

[ not written yet ] 

Bags & Purses 

[ not written yet ] 

Footwear 

[ not written yet ] 

Outerwear 

[ not written yet ] 

25   
Underwear 

[ not written yet ] 

=== SECTION 6: STRUCTURES === 

Catalan Vaults 

[ not written yet ] 

Cob 

[ not written yet ] 

Decking 

[ not written yet ] 

Fencing 

[ not written yet ] 

Greenhouses 

[ not written yet ] 

Insulation (Sound) 

[ not written yet ] 

Insulation (Thermal) 

[ not written yet ] 

26   
Plaster 

[ not written yet ] 

Roofing 

[ not written yet. Talk about colonized thatching, slope, burnishing, pine tar etc] 

Siding 

[ not written yet ] 

Structural panels 

[ not written yet ] 

Tiles 

[ not written yet ] 

=== SECTION 7: OTHER APPLICATIONS === 

This section is designed to serve as a reference to give you a basic direction for growing 
the different items that fungi can produce for us. There are several broad entries, such as 
"Leather", and specific entries, such as "Beehives".  

Bat houses 

[ not written yet ] 

Beehives 

[ not written yet ] 

27   
Birdhouses 

[ not written yet ] 

Cork 

[ not written yet ] 

Coolers 

[ not written yet ] 

Cutting boards 

[ not written yet ] 

Dinnerware 

[ not written yet ] 

Down 

[ not written yet ] 

Filters 

[ not written yet ] 

Foam 

[ not written yet ] 

Furniture 

28   
[ not written yet  

Horse Tack 

[ not written yet] 

Luggage 

[ not written yet] 

Mattresses 

[ not written yet ] 

Mesh 

[ not written yet ] 

Paper 

[ not written yet ] 

Planters & Pots 

[ not written yet ] 

Transparent sheeting 

[ not written yet ] 

29   
   

30   
 

Appendix A: Making Airport Lids 

Start with a mason jar lid. We will just be 

working with the metal insert, so remove the 
band and set it aside. 

Use a paper hole punch to punch two holes in 

the lid on opposite sides. Try to get a ¼ inch 
punch, but ⅛ inch will probably work as well. 
You can also drill holes or use a hammer and 
nails to punch holes, but a paper hole punch is 
the safest and easiest way. 

When you are done the holes should look about 

like this. Pictured are ⅛ inch holes, but ¼ inch is 
better because it allows more air exchange and 
a larger port for injections. 

31   
 

Next we will stuff one of the holes with polyfil as 

a filter. This will allow carbon dioxide and 
oxygen to diffuse through the lid, but will filter 
out bacteria, mold spores, and other 
contaminants. Shape a little hook into the end of 
a paperclip or other piece of wire and feed it 
through the hole. 

Take a tuft of polyfil, snag it with your hook, 

then pull through the lid until it is quite firm. 

You want it to completely fill the hole and be 

firm so that it does not pop out, but if you stuff it 
too tightly into the hole it will interfere with gas 
exchange. 

See that tidy little fluff? That's what you are 

looking for. 

   

32   
 

Now we will make the injection port, using high 

temperature silicone that will stand up to 
repeated cycles of heat sterilization. 

Make a little ring around the hole to ensure a 

good seal, then fill in the center. 

Now there will be a somewhat mishapen blob.  

Take a small piece of paper and gently press it 

straight down into the caulk to make a nice flat 
surface. 

This will form the caulk into a disk about an 

eight inch or quarter inch thick. 

33   
 

Some small amount of caulk will have come 

through the other side. 

Add a little more caulk so you have about the 

same amount as on the other side, and then 
gently press another piece of paper onto this side. 

You now have RTV silicone on both sides of the 

lid, surrounding the hole for injections, and a tuft 
of polyfil. Set the lid aside in an area with good 
ventilation to cure. 

Once the silicone is cured, you can peel off the paper, being careful to not pull the caulk 
away from the lid. You may need to wet the paper and gently scrub it off to fully remove 
it. 

   

34   
Appendix B: Eight-week workshop syllabus & notes 

About this section 

The purpose of this is to share notes from an 8-week workshop that is being taught (or 
was taught) in the Fungal Materials group. This can be used directly as-is, or adapted and 
modified to serve your needs. Feel free to offer this or derived workshops in person, 
online, for free or for money, or in any other way that is useful to you and the people you 
are serving. 

Workshop outline 

Week 1: Introduction to fungal materials. How to construct airport lids 

Week 2: Growing textiles. How to grow kombucha and prepare grain spawn. 

Week 3: Hard, mold-grown fungal materials. How to make a planter pot. 

Week 4: Introduction to polysaccharides. How to grow mycelial textiles. 

Week 5: Fungal materials for structures. ?? 

Week 6: Waterproofing and weatherizing 

Week 7: Spongy fungal materials - cork, rubber etc. 

Week 8: Review, and whirlwind tour of possibilities!! 

Week 1 script notes 

Welcome to week one of the fungal materials.org workshop! My name is Jason Padvorac, 
and I'm honored and glad to have you here. 

If you are watching this video after the workshop has ended, no worries! You can follow 
along at your own pace. The lessons will all be listed at 
http://fungalmaterials.org/2018-workshop-1 

At any point, come on out and join the discussion in our Facebook group by heading over 
to ​http://fungalmaterials.org/group​. Feel free to share questions, comments, feedback, 
and especially pictures of what you are making! 

35   
Today we are going to go over how the workshop will run, briefly cover what fungal 
materials are, and talk about why they're so awesome. We'll have a quick preview of the 
next lesson and then go over today's homework assignment. If you follow through the 
eight weeks of this workshop and do the homework assignments, at the end you will 
have a basic mycology lab set up in your kitchen you will understand how to grow fungi 
for material purposes and also for food, and most excitingly you will be growing and 
creating things from fungi that you can use in your everyday life. 

Let's dive right in! 

HOMEWORK 

Each week I will upload a video much like this one that covers some aspect of the theory 
of fungal materials and also the teaches you a specific skill for growing your own fungal 
materials. This is a hands-on workshop, even though it is online! We are going to start 
with some basic skills for cultivating fungi, and by the end you will be making your own 
objects out of fungi. 

Each Friday at 4 PM Pacific standard time I will do a live question and answer session 
and the Facebook group at Facebook.com/groups/fungalmaterials. Of course you can ask 
questions at any time in the group and I and others will be there to answer you but it's 
nice to have life conversations sometimes too. 

And homework! I've mentioned this several times already it's really important if you 
want to learn this, and put it into practice yourself, follow along with the homework! 

WHAT ARE FUNGAL MATERIALS 

Now it's time to talk about the subject at hand: what are fungal materials? When people 
think of fungi what first comes to mind is mushrooms. That's the most visible part of 
fungi most of the time, and it's the part that we typically use for food and for medicine. 
Fungi also have growth below the surface, much like the roots of plants or trees. Fungi 
send their mycelia - long thin threads of it - into the substrate they are growing on, into 
the food that they are consuming. 

Mycelia that contain chitin the same hard material that forms insect exoskeletons. Chitin 
is very similar to keratin, the stuff that makes our fingernails. 

Mycelia can bind and knit their substrate together quite tightly. If you've ever seen 
Gullivers travels or read Gullivers travels you may remember the liliputians - the tiny 

36   
little people that at one point trap Gulliver and bind him tightly with their thin little 
ropes. Because they use so many ropes, even though they are so thin and fragile 
individually, they make him completely immobilized. Mycelia form meshes and webs 
that function much the same - each individual tiny mycelium is not much on its own, but 
when they interlock and spread and surround and go through the substrate they can 
completely transform it. 

When we are creating from the materials first would prepare a substrate. This will be the 
food for the fungus, and our choice of substrate will significantly shape the properties of 
the final material. 

Then we add fungi. There are various ways to inoculate the substrate with fungi, most of 
what we will be doing is taking little pieces of mycelia sometimes growing on grains, 
sometimes growing in a liquid nutrient solution, and we will add this to the substrate. 

After the mycelia have grown to the point that we want, we will harvester the material. It 
must be dry before being usable, and sometimes they are heat treated to kill the fungus 
and make sure there will be no more fungal growth. There are a variety of ways to 
process the materials after this point, but we will talk about those later. 

The basic process for making any fungal material is to prepare the substrate, grow the 
mycelia, and then harvest. 

FUNGAL MATERIALS ARE AWESOME 

But why are we doing this? Why are we trying to make stuff out of fungi? Because they're 
awesome that's why. 

First fungi can take things that are otherwise just waste or suitable for a compost pile 
and turn them into things that are useful for us in day to day life. We can turn straw into 
a lamp or we can turn various things into structural materials, we can take sawdust and 
turn it into bricks. 

Related to that fungal materials fit beautifully into local economies and ecologies. 
Because fungal materials can be created with a large variety of agricultural products, 
they can be created with locally grown materials. And because they are biodegradable, 
when we're done with the things that we created with fungi, they can go into a compost 
pile to create fertile soil, instead of going to a landfill to create toxic waste. I'm over 
talking about toxins, fungi are all natural! Unless you add toxins to the things your 
produce with fungi they will be toxin free. 

37   
Through most of human history, the production of clothing, structures and all the other 
physical things that we need has been incredibly labor intensive. We lacked the 
technology and the knowledge to make things easily. The industrial revolution 
happened, and we suddenly have the technology and knowledge to make things with 
incredible ease. Machines could make things for us. But now we are beginning to see the 
cost of that kind of centralized extremely powerful technology. Like the disruption of 
local economies, the rise of things like sweat shops, and the environmental and health 
devastation that comes from the enormous use of harmful chemicals and the enormous 
use of energy that occurs with industrialized processes. 

Creating things with fungal materials is a beautiful example of something called 

appropriate tech. We are using knowledge and science and technology to make our lives 
easier, but in a way that is human scale. Ordinary people can easily make from the 
materials in the kitchen or their shed or the garage. We're capturing that is that 
technology can give us, but we're doing away with many of the problems that we paid for 
with high-tech. If we want a sustainable future on this planet for us for our children the 
name of the game is not high-tech the name of the game is appropriate back. 

On the materials are naturally customizable by changing the substrates in the growth 
conditions and how are processed Mathur words, we can make things that are hard like 
bricks, or like lumber. We can make things that are flexible but tough like cowhide, or 
thin and supple make textiles. We can make things that are soft and spongy like rubber, 
things like Cork, we can make all kinds of different things by simply varying the recipes 
that we used to make them. We can transform whatever starting materials we have this 
so-called waste products, into whatever kind of output we're looking for, within certain 
constraints. 

Like I mentioned earlier on the materials on their own or completely non-toxic. Unless 
you add toxins, or unless you're using a poisonous species of fungi which wouldn't make 
too much sense to me. 

The chitin in mycelia is naturally water repellent which makes fungal materials 
naturally hydrophobic. They are not completely waterproof, you need to do some more 
treatment of them for that, but they are water repellent. 

If you've ever tried to burn a rotten log, you know that materials infiltrated by fungal 
mycelia are naturally fire retardant. This is especially important for clothing, for 
structural elements, and for household items. And that's most of what we will be creating 
with fungal materials! 

38   
Fungal materials can be lightweight. The fibrous mesh nature of the mycelia is very 
efficient at providing strength. 

And that mesh nature also makes fungal materials very good at insulating. They're good 
for thermal insulation, and they're good for sound insulation. 

Because we are growing these materials, we can simply put them into a mold, and grow 
them in any shape would like! If you wanted to make something out of wood, you have to 
mill or carve the wood to the ship that you wanted. With on the materials we don't have 
to! 

And because these are natural grown materials, they have an innate beauty to them. And 
as we learn more about working with fungi to create materials, we will learn more and 
more tracks for her missing that natural beauty and combining it with our designs. 

Fungal materials to solve a lot of problems for us. Pollution problems environmental 
problems economic problems. And they create new canvases for us to experiment with, 
to create new kinds of clothing, new kinds of structures, and new kinds of art. 

We often divide human history into ages - the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and 
now the industrial age. The physical substances that we use for our tools, clothing, and 
shelter define the kind of world that we create and live in. We are now creating the 
foundation for the fungal age. 

And the next lesson we're going to talk about fungal textiles, and kombucha textiles, and 
get you started growing your own grain spawn. This grain spawn is what you will use to 
seed your substrates, to start the fungi growing. 

Time for homework! 

Let me encourage you again to do the homework. It's simple, and then expensive, and 
you can do this yourself. If you run into any difficulties let me know and I will help you 
figure it out. 

There are some readings for the first lesson available at from the 
materials.org/2018-workshop-1, and then click on lesson one. One of those readings is a 
PDF about setting up your lab, and as a list of supplies. Start assembling the things that 
you will need. If you have or can get a pressure cooker, that will make your work easier, 
but it is not required. What you will need is a liquid culture syringe. There is a list of 
vendors linked to from the workshop lesson on the website. 

39   
The last part of your homework assignment is to make some air/port lids, you will need 
these next week to make your jars of grain spawn. With that, I'm going to turn my 
camera on and show you how to make them. 

Week 1 homework 

The first homework assignment is to open up the fungal materials guidebook, and read 
these sections: 

> Introduction 

> Section 1: GROWING FUNGI > Getting started 

> Section 1: GROWING FUNGI > Lab Setup 

 
Get started procuring the items you don't have on the checklists in the lab setup section! 
You will also need some liquid culture syringes - these are syringes that contain solution 
that is completely sterile except for mycelia, and you'll use these to start the fungi 
growing on your projects. 

40