Introducing Cultivar

Grow bountiful
mushrooms at home.

The first standalone mushroom cultivation appliance designed for meaningful food production. Intelligent enough to guide you, beautiful enough to display proudly, and honest enough to be fully unlocked and easily repairable. Welcome to the world, Cultivar.

Join the waitlist See how it works →
25+
cultivar species
~15 min
per week
~3 lb
weekly harvest
Grove5 Cultivar — the home mushroom cultivation system
$899
Free shipping · 2-year warranty
Lion's Mane· Pearl Oyster· Shiitake· Golden Oyster· Chestnut Mushroom· Reishi· White Beech· Almond Agaricus· King Trumpet· Pink Oyster· Maitake· Coral Tooth· Elm Oyster· Turkey Tail· Bitter Oyster (Bioluminescent)· Blue Oyster· Phoenix Oyster· Pioppino· Nameko· Blewit· Tarragon Oyster· Cordyceps· Red Reishi· Brown Beech· Abalone Mushroom· Black Pearl King Oyster· Lion's Mane· Pearl Oyster· Shiitake· Golden Oyster· Chestnut Mushroom· Reishi· White Beech· Almond Agaricus· King Trumpet· Pink Oyster· Maitake· Coral Tooth· Elm Oyster· Turkey Tail· Bitter Oyster (Bioluminescent)· Blue Oyster· Phoenix Oyster· Pioppino· Nameko· Blewit· Tarragon Oyster· Cordyceps· Red Reishi· Brown Beech· Abalone Mushroom· Black Pearl King Oyster·
Your new ritual

15 minutes per week.
Fresh mushrooms whenever.

Fresh gourmet mushrooms don't keep. They're meant to be eaten within a day or two of harvest, at peak flavor and nutrition. Growing your own is the only way to get that quality on your schedule. Cultivar was designed from the ground up to make at-home mushroom cultivation more intuitive than you'd ever think possible.

Fresh mushroom harvested from Cultivar
1
Week 1–5
Inject & Load
Pick your species, inject the culture syringe into your pre-sterilized grow bags, and load them into Cultivar.
~5 min
2
Week 5–6
Colonize
Cultivar monitors progress via its camera. When the mycelium is ready for fruiting, you get a notification.
Hands-off
3
Week 6–8
Fruit
Cut an x in the bag, move it to the fruiting chamber. Cultivar handles the rest. First signs of growth appear within days.
~5 min
4
Week 8+
Harvest
Harvest when Cultivar says it's ready. With bags at every stage, expect 2–4 lbs of fresh mushrooms every week.
~5 min
Want to save on supplies, experiment with custom recipes, or go fully hands-on? Mix and sterilize your own substrate bags in Step 1 with a Cultivar recipe and a home pressure cooker.
Our philosophy

Form follows function.
Here they agree.

Growing mushrooms at home has long been possible. We have done it in closets and basements and grow tents for decades. What's been missing is a system that turns the vigilance of cultivation into a beautiful, quiet ritual. Cultivar tends the mycology. You tend the Cultivar. The mushrooms, in time, nurture you.

Cultivar — fruiting chamber open Cultivar — colonization chamber open Cultivar — doors open
Honest materials
Glass where glass belongs, so you never have to open a door to know your grow is healthy. Polypropylene where it counts, because it wipes sterile in seconds and outlasts almost anything else. Every material earned its place. Cultivar's beauty is a byproduct of getting the materials right.
Designed around your life
Not the other way around. Cultivar tells you what it needs. The rest of the time, it's tending your grow. A great cultivation system should disappear into your routine, not become one.
Built to outlast us
Every part published. Every spec open. Every component repairable or replaceable by anyone, anywhere. We designed Cultivar to work, whether we exist or not. Because that's what honest hardware looks like.
What's inside

Everything you need.
Nothing you don't.

Cultivar is a bridge between organisms. Every one of Cultivar's sensors and systems exists to tend the mycology while keeping you tuned in. Here's the craft of that attention.

12MP Sony sensor camera
Cultivar's vision module provides real-time mycelium colonization estimation, harvest timing alerts, and gorgeous snapshots and timelapses of every grow.
NDIR CO₂ sensor
Fungi use CO₂ to sense their world. High levels tell them to keep growing. A drop tells them it's time to fruit. Cultivar uses a true CO₂ sensor, not an estimate, to speak their language fluently.
Integrated humidification
Ultrasonic cool mist rises through the unit from the base reservoir. Large enough to run for weeks without refill. Or connect to a water line for even more hands-off operation.
Humidity + temp sensors
Per-chamber environmental monitoring keeps Cultivar informed around the clock. Species-aware targets mean the system always knows what your specific grow needs.
LED Touch Ring
A flush glass surface with no buttons, labels, or seams. The diffused LED ring translates Cultivar's status and needs into an intuitive and beautiful language of light.
6500K fruiting light
Mushrooms don't need much light, but they need the right light. Recessed 6500K LED strips trigger healthy fruiting without overwhelming your mushrooms or heating your chamber.
WiFi module
Connect to your home WiFi to check on your grow, adjust settings, or pull timelapses and snapshots from your phone, tablet, or laptop. No app store, no account, no subscription.
HEPA filtration
Filtered air in, filtered air out. Every breath through Cultivar passes through HEPA filters, keeping your grow protected and your home's air clean.
Apartment-safe

Breathe easy.
Cultivar is a tidy roommate.

Cultivar's intake and exhaust pass through H11 HEPA filters rated to capture 95% of particles at 0.3 microns. Grow anything, anywhere while knowing your air stays clean.

Cultivar cleanup is engineered to be simple. Grow surfaces wipe sterile in seconds with isopropyl alcohol and the humidifier reservoir is removable and fully dishwasher safe.

Clean air
Filter grade HEPA H11
Capture rate 95% at 0.3 µm · Virtually 100% of spores (2-10µm)
Replacement interval 3–6 months
Clean everything else
Interior surfaces Wipe with isopropyl alcohol
Humidifier reservoir Removable · dishwasher safe
Grow bags Single use · no cleanup
Spent substrate Compost or discard
Built-in intelligence

Scan the bag.
Skip the logbook.

Every Cultivar grow bag has a printed BagTag code. When you put the bag in Cultivar, it's camera scans it and automatically knows what's inside — species, recipe, timing, everything. From that moment on, every bag is tracked automatically. No labels, no guesswork, no spreadsheets, no logbook.

BagTag will be an open standard, so you can print your own labels for any substrate and species.
A Grove5 grow bag with printed BagTag code
Load it
Place the bag in Cultivar. Its camera recognizes each BagTag and tracks bag positions in six degrees of freedom.
Forget about it
From colonization to fruiting to harvest-ready, Cultivar follows the BagTag through every stage.
Cultivar Select

Everything you need.
Delivered monthly.

Culture syringes, grow bags, and substrate — sourced from trusted mycology partners and shipped to your door. Choose from over 25 species each month and pick the plan that fits your growing style.

Fresh mushrooms grown in Cultivar
Easy Start
Complete · Everything included
$99
per month · shipping included · cancel anytime
  • 12x pre-sterilized BagTag grow bags, ready to inject
  • 3x liquid culture syringes, your choice of species
  • Early access to new and experimental strains
  • ~15 min/week
  • ~12 lbs of fresh mushrooms per month (~$8/lb)
Essentials · For Hands-on growers
$29
per month · shipping included · cancel anytime
  • 12x empty BagTag grow bags, add your own substrate
  • 3x liquid culture syringes, your choice of species
  • Proven substrate recipes for each species
  • Home pressure cooker required for substrate sterilization
  • ~12 lbs of fresh mushrooms per month (~$2.50/lb)
FREE · Bring Your Own
$0
no subscription · no commitment
  • Use any grow bags, substrate, or cultures
  • Print your own BagTags
  • Best for experienced growers with existing supplies
  • BagTag labels must survive 95% RH and should be applied post-sterilization. Use waterproof label stock.
Built to last

Every key part
repairable.

Every replaceable part has published specs, standard connectors, and no proprietary lock-in. A worn-out component should never mean a trip to the landfill.

Grove5 Cultivar in home environment
Under 2 minutes · no tools
Humidifier transducer
Twist-locks into the humidifier body. Ships in a 2-pack because hard water is real. Use filtered or distilled water to extend transducer life.
Under 5 minutes · 3 screws
Sensor stack
Three screws, one connector. Sensor boards are designed in-house and replacements are always available in our parts store.
Under 10 minutes
Glass fruiting panel
Dimensions published in millimeters with full hinge spec. Any local glass shop can cut a replacement. We sell them too, but glass is a great thing to buy locally.
50,000 hours rated
LED lighting strips
Rated for the life of the system at continuous use. If they ever fail, three screws and one connector. Standard LED strips from any supplier will work.
Under 5 minutes · 4 screws
Circulation fans (×2)
Standard size and voltage used in thousands of electronics. Source replacements from us or any fan supplier. Published specs make it easy.
Under 5 minutes · ribbon cable
Camera
Standard ribbon cable connector. Replace a failed camera in minutes with any compatible module.
Privacy respecting

Your grow works
without us.

Cultivar runs on your home WiFi and works with any phone, tablet, or laptop. It doesn't require an app store, user account, internet connection, or software subscription to keep working. The only cloud you need is the humidity in the fruiting chamber.

Grow logs, timelapses, settings, recipes — everything lives on Cultivar locally. Nothing leaves unless you choose to share it. And the full software stack is MIT-licensed open source. If Grove5 disappears tomorrow, Cultivar keeps growing.

  Grove5 Cultivar Most "smart" devices
Software license Open source Proprietary
Cloud dependency Runs locally Required
Software updates Optional · easy rollback Forced
Company shuts down Device keeps working Becomes e-waste
Your data Belongs to you Stored on servers

Join the first
harvest.

The first batch of Cultivars will ship to a select group of founding growers. Join the waitlist and we'll let you know as soon as units are ready.

First access when units ship
Early-bird pricing
Free US shipping at launch
2-year warranty standard
No deposit required

No payment or commitment · we'll notify you when your unit is ready

The first Cultivars ship to the waitlist in order. Join to secure your spot.
You're on the list.

We will be in touch when the first units are almost ready. You're among the first on the waitlist, and we're excited you're here.

Grove5 Cultivar Grove5 Cultivar — colonization view
Grow the Grove Together

Waitlist signups signal demand, allowing us to commit engineering resources and prioritize community features.

1,000 signups
LED Personality
Current. Cultivar's LED ring breathes green during colonization, flickers as pins form, sweeps bright at harvest, and flashes red for issues.
Goal. A full library of expressive LED animations, plus an open API so the community can write and share their own. Because Cultivar should have personality, and yours should be yours.
1,000 signups
LED Personality
Unlocked
5,000 signups
Advanced Vision
Current. Cultivar's vision module tracks colonization progress and harvest readiness.
Goal. Early contamination detection and harvest weight forecasting vision models, running locally on Cultivar. Catch problems before they spread and get more accurate harvest timing recommendations.
5,000 signups
Advanced Vision
Unlocked
10,000 signups
Digital Nose
Current. Two Bosch BME690 gas sensors analyze total VOCs and VSCs in Cultivar's air, providing potentially useful anomaly detection.
Goal. Mycology contamination has a smell before it has a color. Trichoderma, bacterial blotch, and cobweb each produce distinct VOC profiles days before they're visible — but no public dataset exists to train models on them. With enough participating users opting to share BME690 data, we hope to change that.
10,000 signups
Digital Nose
Unlocked
Join the harvest. Join the waitlist

Get in touch

Questions, feedback, collaboration ideas. We actually read these and we'll get back to you within a couple of days.

We respond from a real inbox · no auto-replies

Message received.

Thanks for reaching out. We'll get back to you soon.

About Grove5

What you grow in your home is none of our business.

That's not a privacy policy. It's a design decision we made before we wrote a single line of code.

How can we do this?

The sad truth is that most data collection happens because it's cheap. Collecting user data costs pennies per year but can potentially be monetized for dollars per year. Those are the returns investors like and push for.

Luckily, we tell investors to stuff it early and often.

The slightly longer answer is that we never needed your data to build good software. Cultivar needs to know what species you're growing to set the right climate parameters. Cultivar needs to know your substrate to predict colonization timelines. It doesn't need to know it is you growing it.

So we built a system that knows the first two things and is architecturally incapable of knowing the third.

Not because a regulator required it.
Not because a lawyer advised it.
Not because it's good marketing.

Because what you grow in your home is none of our business.

What we actually know

  • Opt-in anonymous sensor signals that improve our grow models
  • Hashed batch IDs for quality claims
  • Customer data required to fulfill e-commerce orders
  • That's it

What we will never know

  • What you grow
  • When you grow it
  • How much you harvest
  • What wine pairing goes well with your latest batch

Why this makes us better

We can't be hacked for data we don't have.
We can't be asked for records we never kept.
We can't be pressured by investors to monetize what we never collected.

The architecture enforces the philosophy.
The philosophy drives the architecture.
They're the same thing.

The honest version of a privacy policy

Most privacy policies are written by lawyers to limit liability. Ours is written by engineers to limit collection.

The difference is: one tells you what we do with your data. The other explains why we don't have it.

We prefer the second kind.

On investors

We're self-funded. That's not an accident. The moment you take money from someone who expects data monetization returns, you've made a promise that conflicts with this philosophy. We made the other promise first.

What you grow in your home is none of our business.
We mean it. We built it that way. And we're not changing it.
— Grove5
P.S. If we ever do try to change it:
  1. Check to make sure we aren't being held against our will in a basement somewhere.
  2. Fork the git and call it Hacktivar.
Cultivar in the right hands

Discounts for those
doing beautiful work.

Cultivar's DNA is food as connection, shared knowledge as power, and community as resilience. If one of these is you, or if you know someone it fits, send us a note or pass it along.

Educator
Teaching mycology, biology, sustainability, or food systems? Cultivar belongs in classrooms and mycology labs. Reach out with a quick note about your program.
Community food project
Growing mushrooms for a food bank, mutual aid group, or community garden? We want to help that food reach more plates.
Makerspace or hardware library
Running a community makerspace, tool library, or repair cafe? Cultivar was built for shared hands. Let's put one somewhere members can learn on it.
Resilient spore
Left with a beautiful paperweight from a certain home mushroom cultivation company? Some systems promised the world and delivered disappointment. We'd like to welcome you to honest hardware and open software.
Contact us with a few sentences about your situation.
Honest Batch registry

Quality you can verify.
Privacy you don't have to.

Every Grove5 substrate bag is checked against our open quality registry the moment you scan it. If we learned a batch didn't meet our standards after we shipped it, you'll know before it enters your Cultivar — and we'll replace it. No questions asked.

How it works
1
Your phone caches a public quality registry — a simple list of any substrate batches we've flagged for issues. Problems are rare, but they happen: insufficient sterilization, faulty bag seals, manufacturing defects. The registry is open on Grove5's git repository and anyone can read it or suggest issues.
2
When you scan a BagTag, your phone checks the batch ID against that list. Locally. On your device. Nothing is uploaded to our servers.
3
If your bag's batch ID appears on the list, Cultivar tells you what the issue is and walks you through getting a replacement. No receipts. No customer service queue. No questions asked.
The registry comes to you, not the other way around. Grove5 never sees what you scan, or what you grow.
Demo · available at launch
Refills & Replacements

Every part below will be available from day one. Compatible third-party specs are published openly so you're never locked in.

H11 HEPA filter (4-pack refill)
Pre-cut · twist unlock
0
$8.00
Humidifier transducer (2-pack refill)
Quick connector · no tool replacement
0
$14.00
Colonization sensor board
BME690 · 3 screws · wiring harness
0
$35.00
Fruiting sensor board
SCD43 + BME690 · 3 screws · wiring harness
0
$75.00
Glass fruiting panel
Tempered glass · dims published · hinge included
0
$85.00
LED Ring
5V DC · 3 screws · 1 connector
0
$18.00
Circulation fan (40mm x 10mm)
12V DC · 4 screws · standard form factor
0
$18.00
Camera module
OV5640 (2K) · ribbon cable · per chamber
0
$32.00
Estimated total $0.00
Free shipping at $55+

This is a preview. The parts store opens when the first Cultivars ship.