Saddle up and get ready to step inside Petrichor Mushroom’s reinvented shipping container and growing facility where they’ll be cultivating and selling a medley of exotic, funk-ified mushroom species you’ll be hardened to find on grocery store shelves. The urban farm/purveyor Petrichor—named to coincide with the ethereal word meaning “the pleasant, rich, earthy smell that comes after a rainfall on dry soil”—is run by best friend duo Micheal Shea and Howard Schmidt. The friendly foragers say mushrooms spring up from the moist earth like tulips all along the forest floor, or barks of dampened logs after a good soaking—themselves making spores that act as rain seeds to spread mycelium. The name certainly holds vernacular value to their pursuit.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN

Pet·ri·chor (noun)

— a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.

As Suncoast’s new, go-to source for organic, gourmet mushrooms, launched in March 2021, Petrichor has been growing a loyal following from the Bradenton and Lakewood Ranch Farmers Markets. And revered local chefs in town want a piece of their superfood specimens, too—chock full of endless culinary potential and adding an alternative vegan ‘wow’ factor to their menus. That doesn’t even include the almost-cult community of mycofiles (mushroom lovers), foragers, hipsters, vegans, vegetarians, health nuts and Eastern medicine fanatics alike who sniff out Petrichor’s slue of magic stuff. And to be clear, we’re not actually talking Psilocybin, the psychedelic shroom intended to bring a wandering, hallucinogenic trip into nature. But, the stuff they carry certainly possess their own magical nature within their chemical make-ups—reaping a long list of positive health benefits to feed our bodies and brains. For starters, they’re low in calories but high in protein and fiber, Shea and Schmidt explain before going into more nerdy discourse and detail. With over 10,000 varieties of mushrooms in the wild, and over 600 of them edible for humans, their multi-celled composition fluctuates in benefits by varieties—carrying a bounty of trace minerals and micronutrients such as potassium, copper and selenium, as well as antioxidants which help fight free radicals in the body and folate that aids in prenatal health. Recent studies even explore how mushrooms protect our brain cells and even fight off and cure cancer.

PHOTO COURTESY OF @PETRICHORMUSHROOMS

These trending conversations, as well as the popular, new documentary Fantastic Fungi on Netflix, surely helped spawn the high supply and demand of exotic mushrooms. Quickly upon launching, Shea and Schmidt were selling out of their fruiting fungi bodies as fast they cultivated them, quickly realizing they’d already outgrown their tiny converted room, measuring a mere 45-square-feet. They needed a more spacious habitat to continue their augmented journey in mycology. Upon urban farming permitting and funding, Petrichor will be transporting their nature-mimicking laboratory into a new humidity, temperature and carbon dioxide controlled space. A filtration system will continue to monitor the intake and exhaust so that the delicate fungi get just the right amount of fresh air. Though compact in its previous space, Petrichor was able to yield 500 to 600 lbs of fresh produce each month. Soon, they want to see that number proliferate to 1,000 lbs. Offering about 12 types of mushrooms currently, that number will also likely enhance once they’re able to move into the ‘spaceship,’ which will reside in their friend’s double lot property where their newly-opened food truck, Spare Kitchen, is parked near the Bradenton Riverwalk extension. Shea and Schmidt say they will be partnering with their friend often to cook up some of the fresh takes on mushroom-focused dishes for those who may be intimidated, or unsure, of how to utilize them in their own kitchens. Shea shares a fantastic bacon alternative the duo fries up with their Black Pearl Oyster Mushrooms—an engineered variety, cultivated to mimic the popular yet hard-to-grow King Trumpet—or, whipping up Lion’s Mane ‘crab’ cakes, giving you the flavor and mouth-feel of a real crab cake. The difference is in its brain-boosting and salubrious powers.  

PHOTO COURTESY OF @PETRICHORMUSHROOMS

Find Petrichor’s shroom babies occasionally on local restaurant menus such as Indigenous, Decks Plate, Ka Papa, Jennings Downtown Provisions and the soon-to-open Meliora. And, you don’t have to wait around for it to rain to source their robust, medicinal powders and teas of Chaga, Turkey Tail and Reishi, aka the “Mushroom of Mortality,” by catching them every weekend at the Saturday Bradenton Farmers Market or Sunday Farmers’ Market at Lakewood Ranch. There, funky Petrichor swag is up for purchase, as well as fresh and dried varieties from around the U.S. including—Wild Harvested Black Trumpet, Premium Porcini, Wild Harvested Matsutake, European Shitake, Wild Harvested Lobster and Morel (labels describe each mushroom’s unique tasting notes, texture and best type of dish to utilize them in). In the meantime, keep a lookout for the expected spaceship landing mid November where they’ll be opening its door daily to fellow earthlings.