Mushroom Cultivation Notes Pdf

[Catherin Bergan]

Thesemushroom cultivation notes are starting with the second stage of mushroom cultivation, which is substrate treatment. The material that we're growing mushrooms on needs to be treated in some way for it to be suitable for the mycelium to take hold. If you take the substrate and add the mycelium without treating it, other microorganisms are going to grow and that can negatively impact mushroom production.

The method of treatment all depends on the amount of nutrients available in the substrate. For instance, if you have a lot of nutrients in a substrate, you're going to have to use a more aggressive treatment method. If the nutrients are pretty locked up like in logs, then you don't really have to do anything. So just giving the mycelium a headstart in the logs and cutting the logs fresh is enough to give the mycelium an edge and get established before any other fungal competitors take over.

However, logs take a long time to incubate. It usually takes at least six months to a year, depending on the size of the log. However, with higher nutrient substrates like straw or sawdust, mycelium can take over in 10 or 14 days, but you do have to treat it a little more aggressively.

One key point here is a difference between clean and sterile. You don't need a sterile environment when using wood, wood chips, or straw. You can do these inoculations outside, in an ambient environment. You don't need a lab or to be extremely sterile in these situations. It's nice to wash your hands with soap and have a fairly clean table, but it's not imperative to be sterile. However, having a sterile environment is more applicable when you start using steam because you're using such a high-nutrient material that unwanted things in the air can very easily start growing on that. With steam, you're really wiping the slate clean. Nothing is really alive in there, so it's easy for things to get established quickly, whereas with the straw or wood there are still a lot of defenses up so it's not as easy for microorganisms to get in.

After we've introduced the mycelium, we're going into incubation. This is the point where you sit back, relax, and let the mycelium grow out. This stage is how I got super excited about mushroom cultivation. If you are doing a large amount of incubation, it generates a lot of heat, so you're going to need some sort of cooling. If you just have a good insulated building, you tend to not need heat even in the winter. The mycelium generates enough heat that it can kind of hold its own.

Once incubation is complete, the bags can be directly moved into the fruiting room. They can be placed in cold storage until you're ready to fruit them, so you could build up a surplus of these blocks and then put him in a walk-in cooler and leave them there for three or four weeks until you need them in the fruity room. After about four weeks, the blocks will start fruiting on their own, so it's good to keep the blocks in cold storage for no more than a month max.

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A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Toadstool generally denotes one poisonous to humans.[1]

The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence, the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap. "Mushroom" also describes a variety of other gilled fungi, with or without stems; therefore the term is used to describe the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota. The gills produce microscopic spores which help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface.

Forms deviating from the standard morphology usually have more specific names, such as "bolete", "puffball", "stinkhorn", and "morel", and gilled mushrooms themselves are often called "agarics" in reference to their similarity to Agaricus or their order Agaricales. By extension, the term "mushroom" can also refer to either the entire fungus when in culture, the thallus (called mycelium) of species forming the fruiting bodies called mushrooms, or the species itself.

The terms "mushroom" and "toadstool" go back centuries and were never precisely defined, nor was there consensus on application. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the terms mushrom, mushrum, muscheron, mousheroms, mussheron, or musserouns were used.[3]

The term "mushroom" and its variations may have been derived from the French word mousseron in reference to moss (mousse). Delineation between edible and poisonous fungi is not clear-cut, so a "mushroom" may be edible, poisonous, or unpalatable.[4][5] The word toadstool appeared first in 14th century England as a reference for a "stool" for toads, possibly implying an inedible poisonous fungus.[6]

Identifying what is and is not a mushroom requires a basic understanding of their macroscopic structure. Most are basidiomycetes and gilled. Their spores, called basidiospores, are produced on the gills and fall in a fine rain of powder from under the caps as a result. At the microscopic level, the basidiospores are shot off basidia and then fall between the gills in the dead air space. As a result, for most mushrooms, if the cap is cut off and placed gill-side-down overnight, a powdery impression reflecting the shape of the gills (or pores, or spines, etc.) is formed (when the fruit body is sporulating). The color of the powdery print, called a spore print, is useful in both classifying and identifying mushrooms. Spore print colors include white (most common), brown, black, purple-brown, pink, yellow, and creamy, but almost never blue, green, or red.[7]

While modern identification of mushrooms is quickly becoming molecular, the standard methods for identification are still used by most and have developed into a fine art harking back to medieval times and the Victorian era, combined with microscopic examination. The presence of juices upon breaking, bruising-reactions, odors, tastes, shades of color, habitat, habit, and season are all considered by both amateur and professional mycologists. Tasting and smelling mushrooms carries its own hazards because of poisons and allergens. Chemical tests are also used for some genera.[8]

In general, identification to genus can often be accomplished in the field using a local field guide. Identification to species, however, requires more effort. A mushroom develops from a button stage into a mature structure, and only the latter can provide certain characteristics needed for the identification of the species. However, over-mature specimens lose features and cease producing spores. Many novices have mistaken humid water marks on paper for white spore prints, or discolored paper from oozing liquids on lamella edges for colored spored prints.

Within the main body of mushrooms, in the Agaricales, are common fungi like the common fairy-ring mushroom, shiitake, enoki, oyster mushrooms, fly agarics and other Amanitas, magic mushrooms like species of Psilocybe, paddy straw mushrooms, shaggy manes, etc.

An atypical mushroom is the lobster mushroom, which is a fruitbody of a Russula or Lactarius mushroom that has been deformed by the parasitic fungus Hypomyces lactifluorum. This gives the affected mushroom an unusual shape and red color that resembles that of a boiled lobster.[9]

Other mushrooms are not gilled, so the term "mushroom" is loosely used, and giving a full account of their classifications is difficult. Some have pores underneath (and are usually called boletes), others have spines, such as the hedgehog mushroom and other tooth fungi, and so on. "Mushroom" has been used for polypores, puffballs, jelly fungi, coral fungi, bracket fungi, stinkhorns, and cup fungi. Thus, the term is more one of common application to macroscopic fungal fruiting bodies than one having precise taxonomic meaning. Approximately 14,000 species of mushrooms are described.[10]

A mushroom develops from a nodule, or pinhead, less than two millimeters in diameter, called a primordium, which is typically found on or near the surface of the substrate. It is formed within the mycelium, the mass of threadlike hyphae that make up the fungus. The primordium enlarges into a roundish structure of interwoven hyphae roughly resembling an egg, called a "button". The button has a cottony roll of mycelium, the universal veil, that surrounds the developing fruit body. As the egg expands, the universal veil ruptures and may remain as a cup, or volva, at the base of the stalk, or as warts or volval patches on the cap. Many mushrooms lack a universal veil, therefore they do not have either a volva or volval patches. Often, a second layer of tissue, the partial veil, covers the bladelike gills that bear spores. As the cap expands the veil breaks, and remnants of the partial veil may remain as a ring, or annulus, around the middle of the stalk or as fragments hanging from the margin of the cap. The ring may be skirt-like as in some species of Amanita, collar-like as in many species of Lepiota, or merely the faint remnants of a cortina (a partial veil composed of filaments resembling a spiderweb), which is typical of the genus Cortinarius. Mushrooms lacking partial veils do not form an annulus.[11]

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