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.

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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 ~11/15/2025 for some lumps to start forming at the top of the pots.

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When I checked Monday 11/17/2025, those lumps had risen considerably from where they had been, and I saw orange pigmentation beginning to spread.

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Just today (11/21/2025) when I went to check, pigmentation is markedly increased and pores are now forming on some of the larger lumps.

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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 it I hope when they do that they retain their shape and sorta just become dried “arrangements”.