Rhizo Funga didn't start as a business idea. It started as a love of mushrooms — first as food, then as a fascination that quietly took over. I don't eat meat, and early on I realized mushrooms were something special: a protein-rich, endlessly varied food source that can be grown reliably indoors, year-round, even through the long winters in Whitefish, Montana. I started growing for my family, then for friends, then for anyone willing to take a bag of fresh fruits off my hands — including regulars at the yoga studio I belong to. In Whitefish, sharing from the garden is just part of the culture. This was the same idea, with fungi.

A library built one strain at a time

Before there were products, there was a culture library. I connected with grower communities online — the kind of places where people trade isolates pulled from wild fruits and share hard-won techniques. I started building relationships, trading cultures, and foraging locally: chanterelles and morels from the forests outside Whitefish. Back in the lab, I ran each strain through the full cultivation process — tracking performance data, cloning the top-yielding specimens, and crossing compatible isolates to develop genetics with consistent results and strong yields. Over time, I built a library I was genuinely proud of, with strains that held up in commercial production as well as home setups. Eventually, it made sense to make those genetics available to other growers too.

Tools born from real frustration

The products came the same way: from personal frustration, and the belief that something could be done better. After years of stopping mid-session to sterilize a scalpel — both hands occupied, no clean place to set the tool down — I decided to build a solution. The FlatTop came first: an induction sterilizer that was a genuine improvement over flame, but still required holding a button with one hand. So I kept refining. I found that the same ferrous properties induction relies on could trigger the coil automatically — no moving parts, nothing touching the tool. Then I added a timed sterilization cycle for consistent, repeatable results every time. The final piece clicked into place when I realized the act of simply setting a tool down could trigger the whole sequence. One motion. Hands free. A safe, clean resting place built right in.

The LabRat followed as an ergonomic evolution — with an angled insertion point facing the user, designed around the tools used most: scalpels, tweezers, inoculation loops. The FlatTop handles larger tools and syringe needles. Together, they cover virtually everything on the bench. After using them in my own practice and feeling how seamless the workflow became, I knew other growers would feel the same.

Still built here. Still personal.

Everything at Rhizo Funga is still built in-house, right here in Whitefish. Every email that comes in, I read myself. That's not a policy — it's just how this works. If you're willing to spend your money and put your trust in these products, you deserve real support. What feels second nature to me after years in the lab isn't always obvious to someone just starting out, and I never want someone to miss out on what a product can do because of something I could've simply explained. Reach out anytime. You'll hear back from the person who built it.

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