Growing Gourmet Mushrooms

For Beginners

Explore practical, low-tech methods for growing gourmet mushrooms using waste materials, and learn how to integrate them into your garden, pathways, and shaded spaces.

Half-day workshop
Location: Westport/South Frontenac
Date: April 18th, 2026 (1-4 p.m.)

Growing mushrooms doesn’t have to be complicated

Mushroom cultivation is often presented as something technical, requiring sterile labs, specialized equipment, and precise conditions.

But many of the easiest and most effective ways to grow mushrooms are much simpler.

With the right approach, you can grow delicious mushrooms at home using materials you may already have.

Workshop Focus

This is a hands-on, half-day workshop focused on simple, low-tech mushroom growing methods.

We’ll focus specifically on growing mushrooms using:

buckets
mulch beds
readily available organic materials

You’ll learn how to work with these systems in a way that is practical, adaptable, and realistic for everyday life.

We’ll also briefly touch on other methods (like growing on logs) so you understand the broader landscape, but we'll focus on the easiest, most reliable ways to get started.

What You’ll Learn

how mushrooms grow and what they need
how to choose a method that fits your space and materials
how to grow mushrooms using buckets and garden beds
how to use waste materials productively
how to troubleshoot common issues
how to safely grow and harvest cultivated mushrooms
how to think about mushrooms as part of a larger garden system

Mushroom Workshop Details

In this practical, hands-on workshop you'll see and work with real mushroom systems on our land while asking questions, taking notes, and learning to apply these methods at home.

What We'll Do:

During this hands-on workshop, we will:

learn about the needs and lifecycles of mushrooms (notes and worksheets provided)
tour our mushroom setups (buckets, beds, and other systems)
see how different approaches work in practice
take part in inoculating a garden pathway mushroom bed
learn how to apply these methods safely at home

Date: April 18th, 2026

Time: 1-4 p.m.

Location: 15 minutes from Westport, Ontario - near the North side of Frontenac Provincial Park (exact address provided after registration)

You'll Leave With: Detailed notes, hands-on experience, and your own mushroom bucket to spread into your garden or fruit as-is.

Value: $195

About Your Teacher

At the ripe old age of 2 years old, Brittany declared mushrooms to be one of her favourite foods in the world. As a child, she spent her time in the forest foraging for honey mushrooms and puffballs with her grandfather.

She has since graduated to geeking out over mushroom lifecycles and experimenting with different varieties and growing methods on her forest edge homestead near the (not so secret) back entrance of Frontenac Provincial Park.

Brittany will happily talk your ear off about growing gourmet mushrooms if you let her. Participants, beware.