Have wanted some houseplants for my office at home, but it gets practically no light and every plant I have tried has suffered there. Decided to try a "decorative" mushroom instead. Figured the lower degree of natural light will be less detrimental.
This is Oregon Reishi (Ganoderma oregonense). Mixed a colonized bag of millet grain spawn into a sterilized bag of wood-based substrate on 10/31/2025, used impulse sealer to close mixed bag. Substrate bag was fully colonized by 11/05/2025. I used isopropyl to clean some pottery, opened the colonized sub bag, and packed the sub into each pot. Placed the loaded pots into a monotub which has a layer of perlite in it and a water/peroxide solution (didn't measure, just eyeballed it, much more water than peroxide). Set the monotub on top of a kitchen cabinet.
Once a day I went up and just briefly popped open the top to give a gush of fresh air. There are filtered holes in the lid for passive air movement, but I figured a quick open wouldn't hurt, especially after I could see that the mycelium had grown over the upper crust of the substrate. As needed, I topped up water in the tub and also added a splash of peroxide. Took until ~11/17/2025 for some lumps to start forming at the top of the pots.
When I checked Thursday 11/20/2025, those lumps had risen considerably from where they had been, and I saw orange pigmentation beginning to spread.
Just today (11/21/2025) when I went to check, pores have now formed on some of the larger lumps.
Gonna let these hang out in the monotub until they reach the tub's ceiling, then move one into my office and see how it does in there. The rest I will divvy out to interested friends and family c: I figure they will dry out eventually, but I hope when they do that they retain their shape and sorta just become dried "arrangements".
Their growth would probably look amazing in a timelapse!