Grand Rapids, Michigan
The only job
is eating them.
Fully colonised blocks, sealed here and shipped alive. Nothing to mix, nothing to sterilise, nothing to mist, nothing to buy on top. Put it on a shelf and let the monster work.
9Days, average, to flush one
900gFirst flush, 5 lb chestnut
0Things for you to do
01 / The whole job
Three things happen.
You do one of them.
Every other kit hands you a spray bottle and a list. This is the list.
It arrives finished
Not a kit and not a job. The block is inoculated, grown out and fully colonised here before it ships. There is nothing in the box to assemble.
You put it somewhere
Upright, out of direct sun, anywhere between 15 and 24 degrees. A shelf, a countertop, the top of a bookcase. Then you close the door and go to work.
It does the rest
Between four days and three weeks it breaks. You twist the cluster off and cook it. Then it does it again, usually twice more.
02 / The range
Eight blocks.
Same amount of work.
One shelf, one twist
Everything on this site was photographed off our own shelf.
No stock photography, no borrowed flushes, no renders passed off as fruit. If it is in a photograph here, it grew in Grand Rapids and somebody ate it.
03 / What actually happens
Three weeks,
start to plate.
The honest version, including the four days where it looks like you have been sold a bag of nothing.
The full care guideDay 0
It lands
Cold box, solid white block. Stand it up and walk away.
Day 1 to 4
Apparently nothing
The part that makes people interfere. It is finishing colonising and building the density it needs to afford a flush.
Day 5 to 9
Pins, then a bouquet
Pinheads at the shoulder of the block, then a cluster you can count, then one you cannot.
Day 9 to 14
You pick it
Twist, do not cut. First flush on a 5 lb chestnut averages about 900 grams.
Two weeks on
It comes back
Flush two is roughly sixty per cent of flush one. You still do nothing.
04 / Owners
People who did nothing,
successfully.
Verified
I genuinely did nothing
Put it on the bookshelf next to the router and forgot about it. Nine days later there was a bronze bouquet the size of a football. I have killed every houseplant I have ever owned.
Marisa D.Ann Arbor, MI
Verified
Second flush was bigger than the first
Did not expect anything after harvest one. Left it alone like the card said and it came back harder. Third flush was smaller but still free food.
Devon R.Chicago, IL
Verified
The photos do not do it justice
It looks like a white waterfall. Everyone who came to the flat asked about it. Tastes like crab, which I did not believe until I cooked it.
Priya S.Toronto, ON
05 / Michigan
Violet sky,
amber horizon,
gold in dark water.
The colours on this site were not chosen in a design tool. They were sampled off two photographs: the Blue Bridge at the moment the sodium lamps come on, and Detroit at blue hour with the horizon still burning.
Which, entirely by accident, is the same palette the monster on the seal was drawn in. So the city and the brand share one set of colours, and everything you are looking at is built out of them.
The Michigan story06 / Journal
Grow logs and
method notes.
Day nine, and nobody did anything
A chestnut block was photographed every morning from the day it left the lab. Here is the whole run, including the four days where nothing visibly happened.
Grow log4 min
Why we tell you not to mist
Every other kit ships with a spray bottle. Here is the actual reason ours does not, and why spraying an intact bag is at best useless.
Method5 min
The cold truck problem
Why blocks only leave here Monday to Wednesday, and why we will email you and hold your order rather than send it into a heatwave.
Shipping3 min
Open the box. Stand the bag upright somewhere out of direct sun, between 15 and 24 degrees. Cut nothing, add nothing, spray nothing. When mushrooms appear, twist them off. That is the entire instruction set and it fits on the card in the box.
Nothing. The bag has a filter patch that runs the gas exchange and a substrate that already holds all the water the flush needs. Misting an intact bag does nothing except wet your shelf. Every kit that asks you to mist is asking you to fix a problem it created.
A kit is parts and a job. This is a finished block. It is inoculated, grown out and fully colonised here before it ships, so the work that a kit hands to you has already happened. There is nothing to assemble and nothing to get wrong.
Blocks leave Grand Rapids Monday to Wednesday so nothing sits in a depot over a weekend. Order before 11am ET on a Wednesday and it goes that day, otherwise it goes the following Monday.
Yes. Every block on this site is a gourmet or functional culinary species that is legal in all fifty states. There are no restrictions and no age gate on this line.
Restocks and nothing else
Lion's Mane sells out most weeks. We will tell you when it is back.
No newsletter, no drip sequence. Restock notices only.