About

My name is Ervin Kardos. I was born in 1985 and grew up on a mushroom farm in Hungary - a place where, in hindsight, the first spores of my fascination with fungi were likely sown.

After finishing high school, I began working at a spawn production company in Austria, where I gained hands-on experience and learned the fundamentals of mushroom laboratory work. In the years that followed, my path led me into the field of pedagogy and social work. Yet, throughout that time, mushrooms remained a constant companion. I collected wild strains, conducted experiments in my hobby lab, attended conferences, and constantly deepened my knowledge of mushroom cultivation.

In 2020, I began formal studies in Agricultural Science and Biotechnology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. While the program provided a broad and valuable scientific foundation, I was surprised to find that the cultivation of edible mushrooms was entirely absent from the curriculum. This gap inspired me to establish a practical laboratory and create a workshop series dedicated to teaching mushroom cultivation in an accessible and applied way.

In 2025, after several years of preparation, I founded Subterra Fungi - a space for research, education, and the exploration of fungi as vital agents in ecological and human systems.