Basil’s fungi farm

Basil’s fungi farm We supply East Sussex with unique gourmet mushrooms, grown in the centre of Hastings at The Yard

It’s coming up quick!The Old Rectory Spring Fair was a fantastic event, so we’re really looking forward to being at thei...
26/08/2025

It’s coming up quick!
The Old Rectory Spring Fair was a fantastic event, so we’re really looking forward to being at their second event, the Summer Fair. It’s less than a week away and we’re busy preparing growing kits and nurturing our fresh mushrooms.
It’s in Hastings, so I hope to see lots of familiar faces turning up!

Because we’ve spent the whole of summer building, we’ve not managed to make it to very many markets.We’re super excited ...
26/08/2025

Because we’ve spent the whole of summer building, we’ve not managed to make it to very many markets.
We’re super excited to start getting out there again, and even more excited to be back at Water Lane. The First market we ever did was at Water Lane and we’ve enjoyed many weekends there chatting, drinking coffee and selling our mushrooms!
Take note of the date, we’d love to see you there!

Here’s one of our racks of Lion’s mane, ready for harvest by the end of this week. We’ve got lots of great batches like ...
24/08/2025

Here’s one of our racks of Lion’s mane, ready for harvest by the end of this week. We’ve got lots of great batches like this one lined up for a busy month.

We’ve been awfully quiet on social media recently, but immensely busy being the scenes.A quick run-down:We’ve moved prem...
20/08/2025

We’ve been awfully quiet on social media recently, but immensely busy being the scenes.
A quick run-down:
We’ve moved premises, still in .waterworksroad but a larger unit with more space to grow. It’s been an opportunity to build from the ground up, the layout is just how we want it and we’ve installed air systems which have dramatically improved growth.
We’ve built a new steriliser for producing substrate, it has a larger capacity than its predecessor, finishes in about a third of the time and looks good! We can produce more mushrooms and grow kits, and should save on electricity.
We’ve got a walk-in fridge, mainly for storing fresh mushrooms, but also for cold-shocking stubborn growing varieties.
Very soon our yields will be their highest ever, and we’ll be able to grow varieties that we haven’t previously managed. As mushrooms come back into season we’ll be working with all of our favourite restaurants.

Here’s a great crop of pioppinos we grew last week.It’s exciting as they were grown from start to finish out of our new ...
04/08/2025

Here’s a great crop of pioppinos we grew last week.
It’s exciting as they were grown from start to finish out of our new clean room and incubation spaces, one of the first batches of mushrooms that this is true for.
There was some lab work involved in isolating the mycelium before being able to grow a good crop of them.
Hopefully we can get more growing!

Last week was a big success, we did really well at the Wealden Times Midsummer fair.It’s the largest fair we’ve pitched ...
13/06/2025

Last week was a big success, we did really well at the Wealden Times Midsummer fair.
It’s the largest fair we’ve pitched at so far, and we put a lot of time into making it special.

-We launched a new range of Grow Kits, all featuring varieties which we grow ourselves at the farm, meaning we know they’re reliable, tasty and beautiful. The whole range will be on our website from next week.

-Shoppers helped themselves to almost 500 business cards, we know most of these will be doomed to the bottoms of people bags, but I was shocked by how many we went though!

-We spent 3 days talking to the public about mushrooms and got a really good sense of the questions people are likely to ask about our mushrooms and Grow Kits, and how we can better answer them.

-We built a stand especially for the fair. We like to think it represents the farm well; made from scratch, pretty to look at but slightly wonky.

-It gave us the confidence to take on more big events!

-On top of it all, we managed to keep up with all the orders from our wonderful wholesale customers.

✨Special thanks to Mick from .s.upholstery for helping by upholstering our display! It’s the cherry on top!

Thank you to for having us, and to everyone who came 🍄

A trolley full of beautiful mushrooms, all sold today at the Midsummer fair 🍄We’re really enjoying everyone’s reactions...
06/06/2025

A trolley full of beautiful mushrooms, all sold today at the Midsummer fair 🍄

We’re really enjoying everyone’s reactions to our display, lots of surprised faces!

Thanks to all of our wholesale customers for being patient with deliveries while I’m away, I promise I’m working hard!
One more day to go then back to business as usual.

Here’s a wild looking pioppino mushroom, it’s not the prettiest but it’s arguably the tastiest!
06/06/2025

Here’s a wild looking pioppino mushroom, it’s not the prettiest but it’s arguably the tastiest!

Is there a prettiest mushroom award??I’d like to nominate Velvet Shanks.This is a strain we cloned from the wild in Hast...
04/06/2025

Is there a prettiest mushroom award??

I’d like to nominate Velvet Shanks.
This is a strain we cloned from the wild in Hastings, it’s done exceedingly well in our grow room!

It has a unique, fruity flavour, crunchy stems and caps like jelly. It’s a close relative to Enokitake (Enoki) mushrooms and so can be used in similar recipes.

I’m quite happy just staring at it!

King oysters seem to be a lot of people’s favourite mushroom.They’re a slightly trickier one to grow. To get them perfec...
02/06/2025

King oysters seem to be a lot of people’s favourite mushroom.

They’re a slightly trickier one to grow. To get them perfect (like this one) our timing has to be spot on at multiple points.
They’re especially sensitive to air quality too, they like making our lives hard!

We’ve been growing some whoppers recently, with quite a few weighing in over half a kilo each. Our record stands at 800 grams.

They’re currently on the menu at

We’ve got a King oyster recipe coming soon, kindly written for us by the incredibly talented Kim from

Keep an eye out for it!

We’re very excited to be at the Wealden Times summer fair next week, the biggest event we’ve done so far!We’ll be alongs...
31/05/2025

We’re very excited to be at the Wealden Times summer fair next week, the biggest event we’ve done so far!

We’ll be alongside more than 200 other stalls for 3 busy days of selling our beautiful mushrooms and Grow Kits.

We’ll have a very special display showing off our new selection of Grow Kits, you can be one of the first to try a new variety!

Based in Rolvenden, Kent, it’s only a 30 minute drive from Hastings… hope to see you there!

Our new lab and incubation space is now framed out, not long now until we can move in!This is a big upgrade from our cur...
31/05/2025

Our new lab and incubation space is now framed out, not long now until we can move in!

This is a big upgrade from our current setup. It’s a space we’ve designed solely to facilitate growing mycelium in
(mycelium is what mushrooms grow from)

Since the very beginning when I was growing mushrooms in my spare room and selling them to .leonardsgrocery all of our mushrooms have been grown from scratch.

Starting from a Petri dish, we propagate mycelium out onto a series of different substrates such as grains, sawdust and straw, all of which have to be steam sterilised before we can do anything with them. The mycelium has to be kept warm and dark to grow across the substrate, this is its food. Only once the substrate is completely colonised by the mycelium can it be moved into our grow room to fruit mushrooms.

Growing mycelium takes a lot of work, we move a few tonnes of the stuff each week, probably the reason I’ve got a bad back!

But growing from scratch is the reason we’re able to grow such big, beautiful mushrooms. It gives us control over every step of the process.
It allows us to experiment with more unique mushrooms like our range of natives, and it feels honest!

This space will allow us to produce more mycelium, and to do an even better job of it.

Address

The Yard On Waterworks Road
Hastings
TN341RT

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