As you make your way north into Gainesville on U.S. Route 129, a unique kind of farm may draw your attention.
An inconspicuous grey and beige warehouse sits near Athens Street and Old Country Dump Road, but directly in front of the building rests a rock with a banner pinned across it which reads “Green Box Mushrooms.”
Green Box Mushrooms, owned by Elizabeth Moon and John Moon, has been growing mushrooms for Northeast Georgia on a commercial level since it opened in fall of 2019.
The indoor mushroom farm currently grows about 1,000 pounds of oyster mushrooms each week, but the facility can produce nearly 1,000 pounds a day if demand requires it.
Green Box acts as a sister branch of DDLEACHE, an established king oyster mushroom grower in South Korea. On top of this, Green Box works with Kennesaw State University’s mycology department, and they receive additional assistance from the Korea National College of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Elizabeth Moon said she and her husband were looking for something to do for their retirement when a friend of John Moon’s suggested looking into the mushroom farming business.
“We eat mushrooms every day, however, we never thought about farming per se because both of us were corporate IT folks,” Elizabeth Moon said.
Elizabeth said she originally had some reservations when her husband brought the idea to her attention.
“I even told him, I said ‘I’m not going to be digging in the ground and farming in my retirement age’,” Elizabeth Moon said.
John Moon later went on to explain that mushroom farming is more mechanically based and achieved through a lot of machinery rather than manual labor, resolving Elizabeth’s reservations.
After studying up on the business of mushroom farming, John Moon traveled to Korea and studied with a mycologist at the Korea National College of Agriculture and Fisheries, leading up to the establishment of Green Box Mushrooms.
According to Elizabeth Moon, the two picked Hall County as the home of their business because of the business-friendly atmosphere.
“[The county was] very helpful, giving us a lot of information of these are the things to do, and giving us direction. They’ve been very informational for us,” Elizabeth Moon said.
The Growing Process
The process of growing oyster mushrooms at Green Box takes about 60 days, and sustainability is a key factor throughout that process, according to Elizabeth Moon.
The first step in the process involves mixing the substrate for the mushrooms, which is the material that the mushrooms will grow in. Green Box uses peanut hulls and wheat bran for the substrate, both of which are purchased from the United States.
The peanut hulls and wheat bran are placed into a large mixer and are mixed with water. The final product is then deposited into reusable plastic bottles according to Elizabeth Moon.
Elizabeth Moon said unlike Green Box Mushrooms, some mushroom farms use disposable plastic bags instead of reusable plastic bottles during the growing process, which creates waste.
After the bottles have been filled with substrate, they are then placed into a pressurized sterilization machine where they are cooked for six hours. After this, the bottles of substrate are inoculated, which is essentially the process of introducing a mushroom spawn to each bottle. The inoculated bottles then sit in a temperature-controlled germination room in complete darkness for 45 days.
“So it’s kind of getting it to spread its roots, is what I call it, because first you go ahead and plant the seed, then you let it spread its roots for 45 days,” Elizabeth Moon said.
Once the bottles have finished the 45-day germination period, they are then taken to a refrigeration room, where the mushrooms begin sprouting and fully grow within 10 to 15 days.
After the oyster mushrooms have been harvested, Green Box sells them to local restaurants and markets. The public can also take a tour of the facility and pick their own batch of oyster mushrooms every Saturday morning.
John Moon said Green Box focuses on growing oyster mushrooms due to their high demand within the Asian community, but they are also popular among vegans and vegetarians.
“The oyster mushroom takes on a meaty consistency when it’s cooked, which makes it a great option to replace entrees that have meat, but for vegans or vegetarians. It’s also a little higher in protein than some of your other mushrooms,” said Randy Ash, a supervisor at Green Box.
The next step in the process is emptying the bottles to get them ready for the next batch of mushrooms. The used substrate is removed from the bottles using a machine; however, the substrate does not go to waste.
According to John Moon, the used substrate is a good compost material, so Green Box Mushrooms packages and sells the used substrate to local farms.
After the bottles have been emptied and the compost has been packaged, the 60-day oyster mushroom growth cycle begins again.
This 60-day timespan was problematic for Green Box Mushrooms’ first harvest, according to John Moon. Green Box began growing their first batch of mushrooms when they opened in November of 2019, and 60 days later, when their first mushrooms were ready to harvest, news of COVID-19 began popping up.
“So, we [were] right at the point, trying to get the first harvest, and then COVID started hitting us,” John Moon said.
Elizabeth Moon said they needed to go out and sell mushrooms to restaurants and markets directly, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought those plans to a halt.
Currently, Green Box Mushrooms has expanded the sale of their mushrooms to some supermarkets in the region, but they are still not quite where they want to be, according to Elizabeth Moon.
The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are not stopping Elizabeth Moon and John Moon from dreaming big, however.
John Moon said he has a vision for the future of Green Box Mushrooms that involves the creation of a “farm theme park,” where people can come to pick their own crops or learn about growing different types of produce year-round.
