Many people know Mr. Steve Moll as the Upper School Dean of Students. Others know him as a math teacher or a track coach. Apart from all of this, Mr. Moll has another passion: growing and selling his own mushrooms.
In 2020, during COVID-19, Mr. Moll started growing mushrooms, thinking that it would be an easy and fun hobby.
“I was fishing with a friend of mine, and he was talking about how easy it was to set up. But I realized it wasn’t that easy. It was very technical,” Mr. Moll said. “Eventually, I dove into it and really went down the rabbit hole of growing mushrooms, creating a process and learning from my errors.”
There are a lot of potential pitfalls when it comes to growing mushrooms. For example, the spawn can easily be introduced to harmful bacteria, a lack of oxygen and humidity, which can drastically hinder the growth of the mushrooms.
“You have to be very clean. You are fighting all sorts of microbes and bacteria that are intruding on your mycelium,” Mr. Moll said. “When any sort of bacteria gets in there early, you don’t know that, and then your bag turns into mold.”
Mr. Moll kept growing mushrooms and learned, through many mistakes, how to slowly optimize his method of growing mushrooms.
“You’re getting this bag of white material and you cut a slit into it. A week later there are three pounds of mushrooms growing out of it,” Mr. Moll said. “The success after making so many mistakes was really a rewarding experience and also learning about something I knew nothing about.”
Mushroom growing is surprisingly complex, but there are a few key steps that can drastically simplify the process. You need to inoculate grain, then inoculate the substrate, cut the bag open and introduce it to humidity and oxygen, and then the mushrooms will grow in a little after a week.
“I started off small with a little tent that I sprayed with water. I failed with that because there wasn’t enough oxygen,” Mr. Moll said. “Fast forward, I built a 10×16 room in my basement and covered everything in plastic. I used a 30-gallon bin with a pipe and a fan. I put a Halloween fog machine for humidity, a bunch of sensors, and a huge air fan to blow out spores and bring in oxygen.”
As Mr. Moll started increasing his mushroom production, he started to sell his mushrooms at farmers markets during the weekend.
“It is super cool being at these farmers’ markets. You meet so many different people, both vendors and customers,” Mr. Moll said. “I was learning about different people’s lives and building friendships with people I have never talked to. The conversations and the social piece of it was just very cool.”
Sadly Mr. Moll has slowed down his operation, after his basement flooded and because it was very time-consuming, but he still grows mushrooms at a smaller scale.
I would love to go back, but the hardest part is time,” Mr. Moll said. “I’d love to get back into it when I have more time because it was something that I really enjoyed.”