I’ve been growing mushrooms on logs outside my home in the Pacific Northwest for a few years now. While many people do this successfully, I generally do it poorly because while you usually have to grow mushrooms with your hands, you have to make sure they get enough moisture and keep them out of the way in a spot with dappled sunlight, which means I often forget about them. I’ve had much better luck growing them indoors, using smart home automation.

Indoor mushroom growing kits have become popular in general and Johnnys Selected Seeds recently started selling kits from North Spore, where I get my mushroom spawn for my logs. They sent me a few indoor kits to try out. They don’t require much manual labor: all you have to do is mist the box with a light spray of water three times a day. Since I can’t even remember to water myself three times a day, I’ve turned to smart automations for help.

Like all mushrooms, the kits prefer a location out of direct sunlight. My currently unused seed station was the perfect spot. The goal of misting the mushrooms regularly is to keep them slightly moist, so I set up a humidifier in front of it. This humidifier has two features that made it perfect for this use. First, it is mechanical; when the power is on, the humidifier is on, without having to activate it via a digital button. Second, the humidifier came with a long, flexible tube that attaches to the main unit to conduct the moisture. (I have one of these units in my cheese cellar.)

I placed the hose directly in front of the mushrooms, plugged the humidifier into a smart plug, and set up an automation to turn the plug on for 30 seconds three times a day. (Through testing, I found that it takes about 15 seconds after turning on for the humidifier to produce enough steam to push the moisture out of the hose. 15 seconds of mist seems to be the equivalent of a couple of direct blasts of water.)