Mushrooms for the Masses

Ile Oko operates in Jefferson Chalmers, a community that I know intimately, as I have been raised, educated and worked in it for 22 years. Ile Oko has been operating for 4 years now as a family garden, a market garden, and mushroom farm, at a combination of sites in the neighborhood totaling 2 acres.

We have have been able to share hundreds of meals with our community, offer tons of produce from these gardens, thousands of transplants, and dozens of mushroom starter culture. Over the years we have fine- tuned and our garden designs and practices through extensive engagement with seasoned and budding farmers, entrepreneurs, and community activists in the city and in other parts of the country. 

In continuing this hands-on tradition Ile Oko plans to build a mushroom culture lab to expand mushroom butts (usually discarded stems) into thousands of pounds of gourmet and medicinal mushroom for our community. Our mushroom lab could do the feat of expanding 1 oyster stem butt into 1 thousand pounds of mushrooms in 3 months. In conjunction with our newly added tree nursery it will allow us inoculate, plant, harvest (mushrooms) and harvest again from fruit trees.

This reintroduction of these keystone species back into the environment will improve the biodiversity and more importantly begin to bioremediate toxic waste sites all around the city. 

Once funds are recieved Ile Oko mushroom contractors and myself will install the lab equipment. After that begins our plan promotion of a mushroom expansion day for the community.

Mushrooms are a valuable keystone species and have been virtually untapped in their potentials food, mycoremediation, medicine, and habitat restoration.