Spore of the moment - Florida Weekly

Mushrooms from Stropharia Mushroom grow in all different sizes and textures. -COURTESY PHOTO

Anyone who has been to a green market lately can’t help but notice there is a fungus among us. Mushrooms of all sizes and shapes have been cropping up throughout Florida, bringing with them a growing number of fungi fans. From flavorful varieties coveted by local chefs to coffees and medicinal tinctures, to promising new research in the treatment of depression, mushrooms are making their mark all over the state.

Jor’El Schustrin, owner of Stropharia Mushroom Farm, knew very little about mushrooms when he watched a TED Talk by Paul Stamets, a mycologist widely considered a leading authority on the study of mushrooms, in 2015. “His big study is with Lion’s Mane mushroom, and it shows it promotes nerve growth in the brain and helps with cognitive focus,” says Schustrin. His stepfather had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and Schustrin wondered if mushrooms could help.

Schustrin ordered some mushroom supplements from Stamets’s company and, before long, his stepfather reduced his daily pills from 15 to three by taking the supplements daily. While the benefits were great, so was the cost. “It started getting really expensive, so I bought mushroom kits that you could grow at home,” said Schustrin. He started growing mushrooms in his condo, and soon his hobby grew. “The mushrooms overtook my condo. They went from the guest bedroom to the closets to the rest of the house.”

The team at Stropharia Mushroom. -COURTESY PHOTO

In 2020, Schustrin and his brother rented a 1,200-square-foot warehouse in Naples and opened Stropharia Mushroom Farm. “There was no mushroom farm in town and the whole health thing was going on with COVID, so we thought it might be a good time to bring something new to the area,” said Schustrin.

Today, the farm has expanded to 2,700 square feet and produces a mix of fresh mushrooms, powders, beverages, and tinctures. The farm distributes to chefs, bringing fresh, flavorful mushrooms to local restaurants. Schustrin is also a regular at local green markets where he sells products and cooks delicious mushroom offerings. “Lion’s Mane is very versatile as a meat substitute, so we do a crabless crabcake and a chicken nugget like a buffalo wing,” said Schustrin. “Blue Oyster Mushrooms have a mild, sweet flavor. We like to use them as taco meat or a shroom burrito where we spice them up like a breakfast sweet sausage.”

Schustrin also offers tips on cooking mushrooms. “I tell people to cook them in dry pans because the taste and texture are completely different. Then it’s really about how you season them.”

Like Schustrin, Daniel Waddell first started growing mushrooms at home. “I was doing vacation rentals during the pandemic, so that came to a screeching halt,” said the Fort Myers native. “I’ve always been fascinated by mushrooms, so I started growing them in my garage because I was bored.” Waddell learned growing techniques from online mushroom growers.

“The mushroom community is a beautiful group of people,” said Waddell. “Most industries safeguard their secrets, but people in mushrooms are really sharing.” Waddell started following Andrew Reed, a mushroom grower in Tennessee. “He makes videos offering up lots of information for free. It really inspired me.”

Waddell experimented with different types of mushrooms, including the rare cordyceps mushroom, commonly known as the Zombie Mushroom. “Cordyceps takes over the minds of insects and turns them into zombies in the wild,” said Waddell. Cordyceps have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine to boost energy, reduce fatigue and stimulate sex drive. “I turned them into a tincture,” said Waddell. “Energy is the biggest thing you notice. A lot of people with asthma also have huge improvements.”

Staff members prepare to bag a batch of mushrooms at Mind Cap Mushroom. -COURTESY PHOTO

When Hurricane Ian swept away all the trees on a property Waddell owned in Fort Myers, he hatched the idea of a mushroom farm. “I was cleaning up the mess, and I started thinking I could make this mushroom farm a real thing,” he continued. He constructed a 3,600 square foot building on the property, and in January 2025, he opened Mind Cap Mushrooms.

The core of Waddell’s business is the medicinal product line. His top seller is a four-pack of mushroom extracts, including Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Turkey Tail, and Reishi.

“Each of them has a different medicinal property, so the four together cover the whole spectrum of health,” said Waddell. Lion’s Mane supports brain health; Cordyceps are an energy booster and support heart health; Turkey Tail is known to strengthen the immune system; and Reishi has stress-relieving and sleep-enhancing benefits. While the extracts are made from mushrooms, the benefits of each cannot be achieved just by eating them. “You get almost no medicinal properties from raw mushrooms,” said Waddell. The extracts he makes are produced using a dual extraction method that ensures you get all the medicinal properties from the mushroom.

Waddell says it is important for buyers to understand what they are buying. “You can order something on Amazon and there is no regulation on it. Often, it is not even the mushroom they say it is. So, buying from a local, trustworthy supplier is important.”

Mind Cap’s freeze-dried garlic powder. -COURTESY PHOTO

For Joseph Chammas, owner of Gratitude Garden Farm in Loxahatchee, mushrooms are part of a wellness journey he has been cultivating since 2013. Chammas was working a high-powered job for a private equity firm when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. “I think I got sick based on the stress, the traveling, the poor diet, and the lack of purpose in what I was doing,” said Chammas. He focused on nutrition as a means of healing. “I was growing microgreens, and I started a garden in my backyard. I had two raised beds, then five, then 18, then every inch of my house had raised beds. I told my wife I wanted to open a farm.”

Gratitude Garden Farm sits on five acres and is a certified-organic working farm. The farm originally started just growing turmeric and mushrooms, but has since expanded. “We grow organic seasonal vegetables, pretty much anything you can imagine,” said Chammas. The farm’s produce is sold at farmers’ markets and mushrooms are sold wholesale to chefs.

Chammas has also created a unique wellness environment. “We are one of the only farms doing agritourism where we are allowed to have overnight stays and camping experiences on the farm,” he says. The farm has become renowned for its wellness retreats, which include everything from yoga and sound healing to gardening classes and farm-to-table dinners hosted by celebrity chefs. Cooking classes with mushrooms are often part of retreats. Guests stay in geodesic domes in the ultimate glamping experience.

Chammas also helps others get into the mushroom-growing business. He and Claudio Gomez, the farm’s resident mushroom expert, offer mushroom-growing seminars for farmers. “Our farmers have no idea how to grow mushrooms. They come over and spend the weekend, and we teach them how to do everything. They leave the farm knowing how to grow mushrooms and set it all up,” said Chammas. Farmers can also order pre-made mushroom grow blocks from Chammas’ block manufacturing facility, saving the time of having to make their own. Grow blocks are designed to replicate the natural environment where mushrooms grow.

Chammas says consumers are becoming more knowledgeable about the many benefits of the mushrooms they buy, but the mushrooms that aren’t for sale may have the greatest benefits of all.

At the University of South Florida, Dr. Ryan Wagoner is studying how psilocybin, found in Magic Mushrooms, might benefit people suffering from treatment-resistant depression. Best known for their psychedelic effects, Magic Mushrooms are categorized as a Schedule 1 drug along with LSD, heroin, and ecstasy. They are illegal in Florida.

Dr. Ryan Wagoner. -COURTESY PHOTO

The Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at USF Health in Tampa, Dr. Wagoner, first became interested in psilocybin as a novel approach to treating a condition commonly seen. “What fascinated me was that it was a novel invention that had not been well studied before,” says Wagoner. “Being at the forefront of something new really interested me. So, we started to work on the psilocybin trials.”

Wagoner’s clinical trials study the effects of controlled doses of psilocybin medication on people diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. “These are people who have tried other types of treatments before and either had an improvement, and it was short-lived, or had no improvement at all,” said Wagoner.

Wagoner explains that psilocybin interacts with receptors in the brain that control a person’s feelings. “Your brain is made up of many different receptors that help to regulate things like mood or anxiety. One of those receptors is serotonin. Serotonin is thought to have some interaction with how our mood is regulated,” said Wagoner. “Psilocybin hits that receptor and acts on it directly, creating effects which may elevate mood or increase a person’s ability to explore things in psychotherapy that people may have struggled with before.”

The data coming out of the studies is promising and Wagoner is hopeful that psilocybin treatments may soon be available to the public. “I think we are much closer than we have ever been before. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some of these substances get final FDA approval or not in the next year or two.” In the meantime, Wagoner and his colleagues are exploring what else psilocybin can do. “If it is helpful with this type of depression, we ask, might it be helpful in postpartum depression or other types of psychiatric conditions like PTSD?”

At the end of the day, getting a treatment to market that can help people is the ultimate goal. “I can see someone in a trial who is doing quite well on a particular medication, but what is even better is when we collect all of the data, and we can see there is a statistically significant impact across a wide variety of patients, and then seeing that medication come to market,” says Wagoner. “To me, that is profound.”