Texas Tech student, Wolfforth farmer reveals how Google got him into agriculture

It started as a Frenship High School student's question on Google: How can I grow carrots better?

Eight years later, the now Texas Tech graduate student has become fluent in the language of plants and mushrooms.

Ethan Carter, owner of E3 Farms in Wolfforth, started his backyard garden after his family moved from Houston. E3 officially began in 2016 when he was 14 years old.

"I got into all this by Googling how to grow carrots better, and that led me into growing things on purpose and intensively," Carter said. "I realized I like plants, and I like growing a lot of them."

Between three greenhouses, rows of outdoor crops, an indoor microgreens space, and a separate building for mushrooms, Carter's family business offers more than 20 different types of produce.

“Since then, I’ve ran it with the help of my family,” Carter said. “We’ve built it out from there, slowly adding to it. We started with salad greens and root vegetables, then added microgreens, greenhouses for tomatoes and peppers.”

His mother helps wash produce for the markets, his sister assists with deliveries and his father helps build equipment.

“I’m not good at building anything out, but I can speak plant,” Carter said. “We’ve built most of the stuff here with his help, and my grandfather helped me with some of it, too. My mom and my grandmother, they do the Wolfforth Farmers Market together.”

E3 Farms produce can be found on Saturdays at the Wolfforth Farmers Market, 8924 County Road 7100 in Wolfforth, the Lubbock Downtown Farmers Market, 511 Ave. K in Lubbock, and at the monthly Midland Downtown Farmers Market, 404 N. Colorado St. in Midland.

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What goes into and out of E3 Farms? Research projects, mushrooms and more

At the Wolfforth farm, there are three greenhouses. One works as a plant nursery and the other two grow a variety of items, most of them on purpose.

“A lot of the random plants you see (in the greenhouses) are from us dumping microgreen flats,” Carter said as he pointed out a random sunflower. “We have a lot of accidental plants out here. There’s some accidental leeks and corn.”

The corn will be part of his summer “mad science” experiment, utilizing huitlacoche, a fungus also known as corn smut. This is only the latest addition to his catalog of mushrooms, which includes Lion's Mane, Bear's Head, Shitake, and several oyster variants. Carter is also planning to add Turkey Tail and Beech mushrooms.

"We got into mushrooms by accident," Carter said. "A year before we got into it, I saw other people doing vegetables, and another guy who was growing mushrooms. He was like, 'hey, I'm done. Here's a textbook and where I got my supplies.' We went from there."

It took several rounds of trial-and-error for Carter to find the best way to grow mushrooms. Some of the earlier iterations used cottonseed hulls soaked in bleach and water, then straw and hydrated lye, straw and steam, until he settled on creating a fake log with sawdust blocks. His shitake mushrooms are grown in wheat-bran blocks.

"The trial-and-error side of it is my favorite part, because I like figuring out how they work," Carter said. "It's almost like learning a new language. I'm learning to speak mushroom."

The blocks are placed in barrels with boiling water and steamed for 10 hours, essentially pasteurizing them. Once they have cooled, the blocks are mixed with oats hosting one of the mushroom varieties. One of the new experiments Carter is currently testing is creating liquid spore cultures using water and honey from the E3 beehives.

"The easiest way I've been able to explain this if you've ever done sourdough bread, sourdough is also a fungus, yeast," Carter said. "Basically we're using the oats as like a carrier for all this mycelium."

The mixed bags are then placed in a room, currently housing about 30 types of mushrooms, with tall shelves along the walls to allow the process to begin. Bags will be cut and the mushrooms will grow through the hole, since mushrooms feed on oxygen. The blocks are then housed in one of the two 60-degree tents within the building.

“All this stuff, I learned off of YouTube and trying to figure out how to grow stuff,” Carter said. “Most of this came from a retired Air Force engineer in El Paso who is passionate about mushrooms. Then the other big farm I learned from is in Arizona. With the technology we have today, we can grow where we want if we have enough air conditioning.”

Carter plans on incorporating some of the mushroom blocks into the soil next year.

"I see a lot of people incorporating mushrooms into planting operations to generate extra CO2 to boost plant growth," Carter said. "They kind of work together."

Another section of the farm is part of his ongoing research project for his Masters Degree at Texas Tech. Carter takes his classes remotely, often listening to lectures as he pulls weeds.

“Dr. Singh, he’s been helping me set up all of the research projects, and we’re custom tailoring some courses, because I’ve kind of done all the ones I need to for organic ag,” Carter said.

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Carter also recently expanded with 33 acres of former cotton fields near Meadow and put in a well. He plans to plant perennial crops, fruit trees and shrub crops, including pomegranates. In addition, E3 has beehives.

People can keep up with E3 on Facebook, Instagram and visit ethansearthlyedibles.com.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech student, E3 Farms owner details operations