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| ADVANCED GRAIN JAR TEK-Growing Mushrooms W/O Compost by Jonathan Silver
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ADVANCED GRAIN JAR TECHNIQUES - The Secrets of Growing Mushrooms Without Compost
by Jonathan Silver
RIPPLE Publishing Co. Green Bay, WI
Copyright 1982 by Ripple Publishing Co., P.O. Box 8486, Green Bay, Wisconsin, 54308.
The publisher does not advocate breaking the law. The material contained in this book is not intended for the cultivation of those species of mushrooms that are restricted by law.
“Goddamn, well I declare, Have you seen the light?”
PART I - PRELIMINARY TECHNIQUES
The initial phases of fungal growth in the fresh jar are often unnecessarily troublesome-even for experienced growers- and have been considered by some to be the most difficult steps in the whole growth process. The problem with these first steps is contamination: fresh jars must be kept absolutely free of every sort of contaminant until the mycelium has had a chance to establish itself in the jars, just like a baby must be protected from harm until it has had a chance to establish itself in the world. Because of the fact that contamination first makes its presence known to the grower only in the fully processed jar and not in the moment when the invading organisms enter the jar, the problem of contamination has remained unsolved, at least in the literature. It is simply not apparent to the grower who is suffering from contamination problems how the invaders got into the jar and what exactly should be done in the future to prevent them from doing so again.
Foreign microorganisms are invisible to the naked eye and can come from anywhere, during any step of the initial processing of jars. In response to this unseen plague, growers have promulgated many rituals which have been designed to rid them of this problem of contamination: cover the jars in the pressure cooker with aluminum foil, wrap the vent
with Lysol soaked cloth, don’t use large-mouth jars, make someone else clean jars, etc. Sometimes it almost gets down to incantation and hocus-pocus. However, unless you are working under very unusual circumstances, all this is unnecessary and makes the processing work cumbersome and excessively complicated. The real problem is that too many growers
waste too much time trying to guess the sources of these invisible contaminants instead of engaging in the necessary detective work that would actually identify them. There are unusual cases - far too many of them - but my experience has shown that more
often than not the problem of early contamination can be tracked down to a few primary causes.
In other words, don’t waste your time with a lot of useless trial and error if you are having problems getting to where you can case jars, because you can pinpoint the difficulty right away using the test—jar method. The reasoning goes like this. Problems in running grain jars through with mycelium can only be caused by one of two things: either the
contaminant is already present in the jar at the time of inoculation, or it is introduced into the jar during the process of inoculation. If the contaminant is already present in the jar at the time of inoculation, then it either survived the sterilization or entered the jar in transit. To find out which of these possibilities is actually the case, simply take a couple of jars from each batch that you prepare in the pressure cooker, carry them to your inoculation booth, and set them aside. If no bacteria or fungi appear within two weeks, then your cleaning routine and sterilization time are satisfactory, and no contaminants are entering during normal handling. This is what you can expect to happen, because unless you are excessively sloppy about the cleaning and washing of jars or working in an extremely dirty environment, early contamination problems invariably lie in the inoculation procedure.
Although it is possible to prepare an entire batch of test—jars in this way, a small sample taken from a set of jars which are then inoculated and incubated will allow you to compare the outcome of the finished product with that of the sample test—jars. This is essential to the method, since you can only interpret the results of the test in the context of the overall results of the particular set of jars which are being tested. Moreover, only a smell sample is necessary to check jar preparation prior to inoculation, because it has been my experience that if jars are cleaned, together, cooked together, and transported together, then even a small sample will adequately reflect the characteristics of the entire batch. This is not true for inoculations, however, because unless you already have a high—quality glove box and know how to use it, inoculation is a far riskier operation and more subject to uncertainties and fluctuations than cleaning and sterilization.
If a test—jar does become contaminated, however, then you must look at the contamination to see where in the jar it is occurring before you can determine its cause. Fungal or bacterial growth which appears on the top surface of the grain but not on the sides
or the bottom indicates that the contamination entered the jar through the lid after the jar was removed from the pressure cooker. This is a common problem when working in a dirty environment——it can cause inoculated jars to go bad even if the inoculation itself was successful.
If the test—jar has not been shaken, and this should not be done unless you’re looking specifically for handling problems, as it will make it impossible to identify those contaminants left over from sterilization, then any colonies of microorganisms which break out on the bottom or on the sides of the jar must have survived the sterilization. Slime mold, in particular, will spread more quickly across the bottom of the grain block than the top, since the top tends to dry out and thereby inhibit bacterial growth. If any residual bacteria is left in the jar after sterilization, it will gravitate downward and usually appear first along that trough of soaked grains which runs around the perimeter of the concave bottom of the jar. Blue—green mold, on the other hand, will prefer the top, and it may sometimes be unclear whether it survived the sterilization or entered the jar after wards. In assessing the cause of contamination in this way, be careful to avoid cracked jars, since contaminants can enter the interior of the jar through even small cracks and thereby throw off the results of the test.
There are three basic results which may be observed in test jars, and which may be used to identify (with some degree of certainty) the source of contamination if contamination is occurring in the final, processed jars:
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Test Result Contamination Occurs During
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Clean Jar Inoculation
Surface Conta- Handling and transporting
mination
Bottom Conta- Cleaning and sterilization
mination
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There are several ways to limit contamination from entering the jars during handling and transporting, if this turns out to be the problem. If the inoculation booth is some distance from the place where the jars are sterilized, then transport the jars immediately, while the pressure cooker is still hot and the lid still intact. Handle the jars using rubber gloves which have been washed with disinfectant and spray the air with disinfectant prior to handling them outside of the booth. After inoculating them, distribute the mycelium throughout the jar by shaking the jars while they are still in the sterile atmosphere of the inoculation booth. Keep the lids tightly screwed down during incubation and cover the jars with clean plastic sheets.
If cleaning and sterilization are a problem, try performing a series of washes and rinses - each time with fresh soap and water - instead of one long, meticulous wash with the same solution. Use a good vegetable or bottle brush - preferably a separate one for each stage of the cleaning process - instead of a sponge or rag. Sterilization time may be increased beyond one hour, if necessary, without significantly reducing the yield, as long as the grain is undamaged. Grain should be cooked like any other food. If the grains come out thin, dry and shriveled, then add more water at the start. If they stick together and are almost impossible to shake apart, then reduce the amount of water. Observe the color and
shape of the grains. If they are dark brown, or if there is a dark residue coating any part of the inside surface of the jar, this indicates that they’re beginning to burn, so either add more water or shorten the cooking time. Properly cooked grains will be round and plump, will have a smooth, clean appearance and a light color. After awhile, you should be able to tell if you’re cooking the grains to perfection with a single glance. This is very important if you’re going to get the most out of your jars.
Pinpoint the problem immediately. Use the test jar method instead of wasting your time exploring dead ends and devising useless rituals involving jar preparation. Then stop wasting your dine making bad inoculations. There is only one way to solve inoculation problems, and that is to build or invest in a good glove box. Many people claim that this isn’t absolutely necessary, and it *isn’t* if you don’t mind a lot of failures, or if you are only interested in an occasional crop for personal use, but it *is* necessary for the serious grower who is trying to make the most of his or her garden.
A good glove box isn’t necessarily an expensive one. GE makes germicidal UV—lamps which fit into ordinary fluorescent fixtures and are available through any electrical supply house or electrical contractor. They cost about $20—25 for a 30—watt bulb. Gloves which are specifically designed to fit microbiological glove boxes are available through distributors of laboratory equipment, though disposable, arm—length, surgical—type gloves can often be
purchased very cheaply through surplus scientific outlets or hospital supply companies (usually listed in the telephone book under “Physicians’ and Surgeons ‘ Equipment and Supplies”). These can be taped to the outside of the box with duct tape and replaced when worn or ripped. They work quite well and, besides costing almost nothing, they have the
added advantage of being more comfortable and allowing greater freedom of movement than the heavier, more permanent type of glove.
Once a suitable glove box has been procured, the initial stages of grain—spawn culture should be straightforward. However, before you can reasonably expect to achieve and sustain a 90—100% success rate at this point, you must be aware of a few common
sources of contamination which can plague the owners of even the most sophisticated glove boxes.
First, you should be especially careful when using Lysol as a germicidal agent. The bottled concentrate, though quite potent when fresh, becomes inactive when exposed to the air for any length of time and leaves a greasy, residue in which bacteria can apparently survive in a dormant state. These bacteria can then be transferred to plates and jars
during the inoculating procedure. Therefore, it is imperative that you wash the inside of your glove box frequently with hot soap and water to remove this coating before it accumulates. Then let the inside surfaces dry until it is time to process the next batch. Wooden boxes should be painted with chemical—resistant, two—component epoxy paint so that the surface can be wiped clean and this greasy deposit cannot soak into the wood. Lysol should always be stored in tightly sealed containers and never kept for long periods of tine. Don’t underestimate this source of contamination, because once it gets started, it can consistently destroy entire batches of plates and jars.
The second main source of contamination in the inoculation booth is traceable to the impurity of the inoculum. Once a plate has been run through with mycelium, fungal spores and bacterial cells may enter the plate and not be visible. This often occurs while storing the plates where they are subjected to air currents or dampness. Jars obtained from these inoculants will become polluted even though the inoculant appeared to be perfectly clean.
Remember, these invaders are totally invisible when they are located on the surface of a healthy colony of mushroom fungus. Do not mistake the various yellowish discolorations which sometimes appear on the surface of certain colonies as they become older, nor the tiny darker droplets which one can sometimes observe nestled atop the white filaments of the mushroom fungus, for this type of contamination. These deposits are the accumulated toxins and waste products excreted by the mycelium as a result of metabolism, and they vary according to the particular agar medium being used. Although they are a sure sign that the colony is getting old and is perhaps no longer a very suitable inoculant, they are not an
indication of contamination. Once again, there is no way to know if there are invaders present in a plate full of mycelium except by transferring the colony to a fresh growing medium where these contaminants can begin to grow along with the mushroom mycelium. If your plates are frequently sprouting contaminants while they are growing out, you can bet
that contaminants are continuing to enter the plates after they are fully grown out, only now they are no longer apparent.
There are a couple of things that you can do to minimize this sort of contamination. Most importantly, always use freshly inoculated plates which have not been handled very much. Use these plates to inoculate other media before the colony reaches the edge of the plate, since, with careful handling most contaminants which sneak under the rim of the
plate cover will reside in this area. If the main fungal colony has not yet occupied this area, these invaders will usually germinate and become visible, thus warning the grower as to their presence. Secondly, keep all plates stored in a relatively low humidity environment. This will keep bacteria at a disadvantage, since bacteria grows well and spreads quickly whenever there is a lot of moisture present. Bacteria entering a dry plate will produce only a
small colony which spreads very slowly, allowing it to be identified and removed. The same bacteria entering a wet plate, on the other hand, will quickly engulf the entire plate.
PART II
PART 2 - GROWING PRINCIPLES OF THE CASED JAR
Introduction
Once you have successfully grown a healthy strain of mycelium out in the grain jar, you’re still a long way from having mushrooms. The time required for this first step to complete itself is only 6—10 days, while the cased jar will continue to grow for another 6—10 weeks, during which time all of the most important events will take place--lateral branching and fusion of hyphal tips, the manufacture and stockpiling of essential compounds—— and all of the advanced structures will develop: rhizomorphs, primordia, pinheads, and finally mushrooms. Obviously, then, this second phase of growth occupies the far greater portion of the life of the mushroom fungus.
However, there is another reason why you should focus your attention on the cased jar. Those of you who have been growing for awhile know that each cased jar represents a lot of work: washing, soaking, scrubbing, cooking, inoculating, incubating, casing. The mycelium in that jar is at an advanced stage in the growing process. In other words, too
much has already been invested to let it amount to nothing. You know that every cased jar which fails to flush is a huge waste of time, money, and effort; yet it is precisely here where many growers go wrong.
The cased jar is the most critical phase for the mushroom mycelium because, like green plants, the fungus is more demanding, more sensitive to adversity, and more subject to collapse when it matures. Young mycelium can take more abuse, adjust to wider
temperature fluctuations, exist longer without fresh air, and tolerate dryness better than an old one, yet still come back and start growing wildly. In fact, there is absolutely no need to furnish the uncased jar with additional air, water, or light. Only the temperature needs to be controlled. But the mature organism can easily be damaged by such deficiencies and thus never fruit.
So it is now, in the period of time between the application of the casing soil to the harvesting of the last flush, that you must pay the greatest attention to the demands of the jarred mycelium in order to ensure the health of the forthcoming crop. If 90—100% of your jars are not surviving long enough to produce rich, bountiful flushes, then you are WASTING YOUR TIME. A potent, freshly germinated strain will often push up a few mushrooms even under the most adverse conditions. But as a strain is grown out on culture plates over a period of many months, it can get very touchy and difficult to fruit in jars, just like a single jar gets touchy when it is at an advanced stage of growth. When this happens, it is most important that the grower adjust the actual growing conditions existing in his or her garden to match, as nearly as possible, the ideal conditions most suitable to the mushroom fungus. Then even the most hoary mycelium will often pop up a nice set of happy faces.
The Nature of Contamination and Its Causes
All jars die in the end and become filled with contamination, whether they fruit or not. Many growers attempt to prevent this by keeping foreign spores out of the jar. This is ridiculous. Once the fungus has permeated the grain, it is pointless to try to maintain the sterility of the jar, since it is destroyed the moment the lid is raised and the casing soil is applied. From that moment on, it is up to the fungus itself. Everything that you’ve been trying to do up to this point, namely trying to keep the jar clean and free of contamination, must now be forgotten. The mycelium is, for the first time in its life, well—equipped to assume responsibility for its own well—being in keeping invaders at bay. The mycelium has natural defense mechanisms which are very effective in all but the most extreme cases of infection. They require no external help or outside intervention.
Every clean, healthy jar which goes bad does so for one reason and one reason only: the mycelium is unable to get what it needs to live. Slowly it gets sick and weak, and eventually dies, turning into dead, organic matter which is rich in nutrients. As soon as this happens, and even long before this decay has actually killed the mycelium, the mycelium
becomes a suitable growing medium for other fungi. Foreign spores which were lodged in the mass of the once thriving mycelial block and which were prevented from growing by the various antibodies and chemical inhibitors manufactured by the functioning mycelium, now find themselves in an environment conducive to growth. They immediately germinate and
begin devouring the dead mycelium, often spreading quickly over its surface since it is no longer able to defend itself. The predator becomes the prey; the eater becomes the eaten. The mushroom mycelium, which originally consumed the grain which the grower had placed in the jar and which grew to fill the entire jar, now becomes itself consumed by a competing organism which, in turn, grows to fill the entire jar.
The problem is not the presence of foreign spores. In nature, the mushroom mycelium lives in the most unclean environments imaginable, surrounded by competing organisms and exposed to all sorts of contaminants. Even in the home garden, it is not only hopelessly impossible to keep invaders away, but, more importantly, it is completely unnecessary.
Therefore, if this is what you’ve been trying to do, you must restructure your entire approach to the problem of contamination. Once again, the problem is not in maintaining sterile conditions, but in maintaining the health of the organism. If you make your organisms suffer, if you make it hard for them to stay alive——let alone grow and multiply——and if you force upon them conditions which they find intolerable, then they will become weak and defenseless and all you will have done will be to have made an easy meal out of them for some other ugly, undesirable fungus.
Among all of the possible invaders which might conquer a cased jar after it has been abused to the point where it can no longer continue to function, only two are commonly observed. Each of these has, in turn, a common cause which, given the growing conditions commonly encountered by home growers, can account for virtually every case of infection by that organism. Of course, there are exceptions. However, because of the unique circumstances created by the combination of the glass jar and the indoor environment, it is possible to pin down some of the acute problems of this growing method which are usually responsible for the decline of the fungus in the cased jar prior to the onset of contamination. Two general relationships may be stated as follows:
1. Blue—green mold appears when the mushroom mycelium is desiccated by excessive dryness in the air.
2. Slime mold (bacteria) appears when the mushroom mycelium is suffocated by lack of air and excessive amounts of water.
Once the many applications of these rules are fully understood, they may be used effectively to diagnose problems in a particular garden simply by observing the specific types of failures which occur.
Mycelium breathes air just like higher organisms. If this air is dry——and even relatively humid air is dry in comparison to the mycelium’s needs——it will cause the mycelium to gasp and choke, and this will place stress on it even when it does not kill it. The same is basically true for human beings, even though our bodies are well equipped to minimize water loss since our skin is a very effective moisture barrier. Unfortunately, mycelium does not have the high amount of specialized tissue that we have. Its cell walls are more like the mucous membranes in our mouths. Imagine falling asleep at night with your mouth wide open and your mucous membranes exposed to ordinary room air for eight hours. This terribly uncomfortable feeling which is associated with the desiccation of the mucous membranes in our mouths must be something like what the mycelium experiences when exposed to the same air. Partially humidifying the air only prolongs the drying process and does not stop it. Under such conditions, the mycelium soon starts hurting, becomes crippled, and begins to decay.
When this happens, the mushroom mycelium does not succumb to slime—mold, because slime—mold is strictly a high humidity organism. Like thost bacteria and fungi commonly encountered in the home, slime—mold is hurt by the dryness as much as——and
probably more than——the mushroom mycelium. The blue—green molds, on the other hand, have the ability to thrive under such conditions, and are often found growing indoors on stale, dry bread or on the dry surfaces of shriveled fruits and vegetables. These molds are a real problem for the home grower, not because their spores are more prevalent in the
atmosphere than those of other fungi, but because the dryness in most homes favor them over other fungi. This is why the appearance of blue—green mold is a good indicator of the problem of excessive dryness: it shows that conditions are too dry for other organisms to get started.
Even relatively high humidity levels in the atmosphere are totally inadequate for the needs of the mushroom fungus. Given the desert—like air which exists during most of the year inside homes and apartments over much of the country, it’s no wonder that most home growers fail to consistently produce abundant crops: they are attempting to grow mushrooms under conditions which are totally foreign to them. Even when they have minor successes, the crop is normally inferior, like taking an indigenous strain of marijuana and moving it into a climate which is completely unlike that of its native land. The plants simply don’t do as well.
The problem of dryness becomes acute in grain jars as the jars get older. As the fungus eats the grains in the jar, they are broken down and incorporated into the mycelial tissue so that the space originally occupied by the grains becomes gradually filled with living hypae. If the mycelium is strong, these hypae will exert a centrifugal force from the expansion of new growth and press against the sides of the jar, forming a rather smooth and rubbery surface. A vigorous mycelium typically exhibits this sort of hydraulic pressure, as if it were bloated after a full meal. But as the growth rate slackens, either in the natural aging process or from some inadequacy in the environment, the mycelium contracts and falls back upon those spaces originally occupied by the grains. In this weakened state, the outer surface of the block falls away from the sides of the jar, thus creating an air space. If the air is too dry, the separation will aggravate the effects of this condition, since now the mycelium will lose moisture through the newly exposed surface and the overall rate of water loss will be accelerated. If you try to water the fungus by misting the top of the casing layer, severe drying will still occur on the sides. It is here where blue—green mold will appear first as an indication of the excessive dryness.
In really severe cases of dryness, blue—green mold will occur sooner in the younger cased jars which have not yet significantly shrunk. In these instances, the mold will appear initially along the boundary surface between the top of the mycelial block and the bottom of the casing soil layer and therefore will not be visible at first. Since the mycelium is growing tightly up against the sides of the jar, there is very little air exchange in this region and consequently very little water loss, which is now confined to the top surface. As a result, blue—green mold will sometimes appear first on the mycelium which has broken out on the top surface of the casing soil and sometimes on the periphery of the boundary between the casing soil and the mycelial block. This phenomenon invariably signals the worst dryness, and often occurs while attempting to incubate cased jars in styrofoam boxes in the winter. Many times entire crops are lost this way within a period of a few days, usually within a short time after casing.
The sequence of events leading to contamination in these examples has the following pattern: first, the mushroom mycelium is weakened by some adversity in its environment which prevents it from properly carrying out its vital life functions, and second, another organism begins to grow in its place because the actual conditions inside the jar are more suitable to that particular organism. Each of these two steps really arise from one and the same determinant, namely dryness. This same pattern, however, also applies to slime mold, another organism which commonly replaces the mushroom mycelium in home gardens, only now the determinant is extreme wetness.
Slime mold thrives under wet, anaerobic conditions——a pair of conditions which are as intolerable to the mushroom mycelium as extreme dryness. Excess water and lack of air are often found together because water is an effective barrier to the diffusion of atmospheric gases. If water is allowed to accumulate around the mycelium, it will simultaneously suffocate the mycelium and allow bacterial growth to supercede it. This is a common problem when spraying jars with a fine mist of water because even the slightest verspraying will saturate the casing soil, drown the hypae which are interwoven with it, and perhaps suffocate the entire mycelium. Slime mold will then quickly spread across the casing and
begin moving downward, causing the top portions of the mycehial block to rot.
This may also happen if you start with a casing soil mixture that is too wet; however, there is a simple way to produce sterile casing soil which has precisely the right amount of water in it. Prepare your usual mixture, soak it with water, and let it stand so that the peat will have time to incorporate the water. Add more water, if necessary, until the soil becomes very heavy and sloppy, place it into quart jars, and process the jars along with the next
batch of grain jars. The cooking will extract some water from the soil and incorporate the rest into the soil. When finished, the soil will have exactly the right amount of water to inhibit, bacterial growth and at the same time promote early mycelium growth into the casing; therefore, it can be applied directly to the grain jars. Never spray additional
water on it, as this will disrupt the water balance in favor of the bacteria and cause the jars to smell bad within a few days. You’ll also notice the same bad effect if you replace the bids after casing, since this will cut off air flow to the casing and quickly generate bacterial colonies.
Slime mold will also occur if you’re using too much grain for the particular size of jar that you have on hand or if you’re not shaking the jar sufficiently after inoculation to separate the grains and provide air spaces. It will usually appear in the jar after a few weeks, first forming at the bottom of the jar and then expanding upward. This happens
because air cannot diffuse down to the bottom of the jar through all that mass of mycehial tissue which, in the young jar, is pressed up against the sides. As a result, the mycelium at the bottom cannot breathe and gradually suffocates. The bacteria, being anaerobic, has the advantage over the mycelium in this region of the jar, successfully competes against it, and gradually takes over. This condition, once it has become apparent, can only be salvaged by cracking the jar and transferring the mycelium to a larger container which will permit air to reach it from all sides. The increased air flow will mean faster desiccation of the mycelium, so you must be careful when doing this to increase the humidity proportionately to avoid having the mycelium attacked by blue—green mold.
A similar thing happens when using jar filters which have become soaked with water from condensation or some other source. As soon as this condition is discovered the filters should be removed IMMEDIATELY and allowed to dry out. The water in the filter forms an impenetrable barrier effectively cutting off the air flow and sealing the jar shut.
Left unattended, a mature jar will collapse and begin to be attacked by bacteria in about a week. The collapse will be most severe at the bottom of thejar where bacteria will start to grow and rapidly advance upward causing loss of the jar, as it cannot usually be revived with subsequent aeration. The damaged mycelium will assume an ashen discoloration
and a thin spider—web appearance.
Less severe cases of air starvation do not immediately kill the mycelium but merely prevent it from fruiting. This often happens when attempting to incubate jars with the lids still on, even though they are not tightly screwed down. The mycelium receives just enough air to execute vital functions and hence does not immediately succumb to slime mold
as might be expected, but cannot accumulate the necessary store of complex compounds that it needs to fruit. Instead, vegetative growth continues as far as possible without the appearance of higher structures beyond rhizomorphs. The mycelium, not secure enough to attempt the laborious task of pushing up mushrooms, continues to grow and spread across the surface of the casing layer and up the sides of the jar in thick, bulbous, uniform layers which cannot be knocked down by spraying. Once this process has progressed to the point where the casing layer is buried beneath layers of mycelium, no fruiting usually occurs though sometimes a few small mushrooms may be coaxed out of the jar.
The Inadequacies of the Spray Method of Watering
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It should be apparent by now that the main causes of contamination center around one crucial problem inherent in the grain jar method of growing mushrooms indoors: how to keep the mycelium from drying out while still allowing it to breathe freely. Of the four environmental factors essential to rapid growth——temperature, light, humidity and fresh
air——the first two are less important but easier to control while the last two are critical and very hard to control.
The glass jar is the main reason for all this difficulty. A jar is closed on all sides but for
the small, circular opening at the top. The mycelium which sits at the bottom has only this small surface through which to breathe. With no opening at the bottom, there is absolutely no provision for drainage. Imagine attempting to water a house plant in such a container: over a long period of time you would inevitably begin to over— or under—water it.
In contrast, a well—drained pot with light, porous soil, is self—regulating, retaining just the right amount of water while allowing the roots to breathe freely. The glass jar, for all its defects at this stage of the growth process, is indispensible in keeping the young mycelium clean and free of contaminants. Nonetheless, it creates a very different situation from that which a thahlus would encounter in nature where it would be surrounded by porous
materials that would serve the dual function of diffusing air to all sides of the mycelium while
maintaining just the right moisture content, as in the case of the well—potted plant, The glass jar, on the other hand, works against the grower in all these respects.
Spraying the surface of the casing soil with water, given this closed system, is an inadequate means of achieving the level of humidity necessary to stop desiccation and a bad solution to the inherent problem of grain jar culture. In the first place, desiccation of the mycelium is regulated by the amount of water that is suspended in the air and not by the stagnant water contained in the casing layer. At normal growing temperatures, the evaporation of water from the casing soil cannot occur fast enough to even approach ideal conditions. If the air surrounding the mycelium is not carrying as much water as it can possibly hold, then some water will leave the mycelial tissue to fill this empty space.
Only 100% R.H. can bring the evaporation rate to zero, since if the air already holds as much water as it possibly can——and this is the meaning of 100% relative humidity——it iS impossible for more to leave the mycelial block and enter into the atmosphere. In the second place, spray misting creates serious problems of its own. The thinnest layer of water on the upper surface of the casing soil blocks the mycelium’s only mode of access to the outside world and creates a partial air lock, throwing the mycelium into a critical life and death struggle.
The mycelium does not need to have water sprayed directly on it; it only needs to protect itself from water loss by breathing moist air. Water that has collected at the bottom of the jar or that remains in the casing layer is of no use to the mycelium and does not significantly increase the moisture content of the air inside the jar once the lid has been removed. These accumulations of water only serve to drown the adjacent portions of the mycelium and thereby promote the rapid spread of slime mold. Of course, stagnant water does not always cause slime mold to appear; it is a matter of whether or not the mycelium can breathe when such water is present. Nonetheless, surplus water is unusable and undesirable as far as the mycelium is concerned. Therefore, any attempt to spray jars in order to solve the problem of desiccation is inefficient and self-defeating. Such water cuts off the air supply to the fungus as it percolates downward. Either the casing is overwatered along with the upper portion of the mycelium, or the mycelium becomes too dry. Although it is possible to strike a delicate and precarious balance which would limit both deleterious conditions, this compromise can be tricky and unpredictable. For the serious grower, the risk is not worth the potential and almost inevitable failures.
Primordia, in particular, are extremely sensitive to the presence of even the tiniest amounts of excess water in the casing soil. At this critical growth stage, the lightest misting may damage them and thereby destroy the forthcoming crop, yet a light misting, unless it is performed continuously, will have hardly any effect on the slow, ongoing process of desiccation. You, the grower, are faced with the dilemma of either, watering the jar and per-
haps drowning the primordia, or letting the jar dry out and be overrun with blue—green mold. If you do end up damaging the priinordia, the mycelium will have to form primordia all over again and this will set the jar back at least one week during which time slime mold will multiply rapidly and, most likely, prevent the jar from ever fruiting. If you choose, on the other hand, not to water the jars at this critical point, the mycehium may not be able to
tolerate the dryness of the air——even if it is very humid——and blue—green mold will spread rapidly across the surface of the mycehiUin. Obviously, there is no way to win unless you try to walk a very thin line between these two disastrous results.
Fortunately, there is an easy way between the horns of this dilemma, because desiccation can be stopped WITHOUT SPRAYING THE JARS WITH WATER. The answer lies in charging the air itself with vaporized and finely atomized water. In fact, this is what the advocates of the spray method are really trying to do. Most of them admit that more light
mistings per day are better than a few heavy ones; however, such reasoning is endless: if two mistings per day are better than one, then three mistiflgs are better than two and four are better than three. The grower is once again asked to strike a compromise, not between high humidity and drowned mycelium, but between the quality and quantity of the crop which the grower wants and the amount of work which the grower is willing to invest. As the number of daily mistings increases and the amount of spray applied in each misting decreases, the undesirable effects of the spray method diminish and it becomes more
effective. Unfortunately, to make the method work, you must be tied to your garden in this way on a daily basis. Since the mistings are light, their effect does not last long, and if the grower is absent for just a few of them, serious drying will occur. However, there is no need to allow oneself to be drawn into such a predicament since the continuously water—charged atmosphere can be provided more effectively by an altogether different means. Such an atmosphere is the ideal limit case of the spray method of watering as that method is made more effective by more frequent sprayings, though it is a perfection which in practice the spray method is never able to approach except on the condition of infinite labor.
Since spraying is a periodic application of water which forces the mycelium through cycles of wetness and dryness, it cannot achieve the constant humidity levels required for fruiting. Instead of encouraging fruiting, these fluctuations in humidity stress the mycelium and set the stage for the growth of other organisms which are more comfortable at these extremes and have the advantage over the mushroom mycelium under such conditions. Although it is possible to reduce this stress somewhat by spraying the jars several times each day with smaller amounts of water, as this will tend to lessen the swings in moisture content, the grower must pay a high price for this questionable improvement. All in all, the
spray method has little to say for it in view of the frustration and aggravation which it brings to those who attempt to use it. Providing the growing chamber with a constant, dense charge of warm, tropical fog and thereby never having to spray jars directly establishes a self—regulating system which furnishes just the right amounts of water and fresh air to the
mushroom mycelium without stressing it. Such a system also has many unforeseen advantages.
Since the water—charged atmosphere closely approximates ideal conditions for the mycelium, fruiting occurs earlier. The mycelium does not grow out across the surface of the casing soil and therefore does not have to be knocked down with spray. Instead, primordia form as soon as enough hypae penetrate the casing layer to support these higher structures, resulting in an earlier crop. This crop almost always appears where it should be, on the surface of the casing soil rather than growing up along the sides of the jar or winding along the bottom where it cannot be harvested without cracking the jar or damaging the mycelium. The variations in humidity and moisture level and the inevitable periods of dryness integral to the spray method of watering make the top surface of the mycelium uninhabitable and drive the mushrooms down to the bottom where things are more constant and where more water has accumulated. The water—charged atmosphere, on the other hand, attracts the mushrooms to the top where they are free to grow without being compressed into a small, tight space and where they can be picked easily. Since the casing is never overwatered and bacteria are thereby never encouraged to overrun the casing, the mushrooms that develop out of these surface primordia are cleaner and healthier and have fewer bacterial colonies on them. Such colonies quickly attack the flesh of the caps and stalks of young mushrooms causing splitting, scaling, and in severe cases, discoloration and deterioration of the tissue, turning it into a brown, slimy mess before the mushrooms are mature. Young mushrooms should never be sprayed with water as the flesh is hydrophilic and quickly becomes soggy and heavy. This makes the tissue susceptible to bacterial attack, dilutes the metabolites that are stored there, and accelerates decay. The mature mushrooms are therefore less potent and do not keep very well when refrigerated. They also do not dry very well, since it takes such a long time for all the water to be extracted from them, so the mushrooms decay and begin to turn black before the drying process is
completed.
The quality of crops that have been heavily sprayed is generally very poor. The undesirable effects of the spraying multiply as the mushrooms mature, first becoming critical in the primordial stage of growth but worsening as pinheads and mushrooms begin to form. This conforms to the idea espoused earlier that the sensitivity of the mycelium to adversity increases as the mycelium gets older. The dire consequences of spraying cannot be assessed and fully understood until the end of the growth process when the jar dies. By then it is too late to remedy the loss and the effort that has gone into the crop has been wasted. Finishing badly is very different from starting badly where a new start is more easily had, but it is only here at the end that one is able to evaluate the virtues and defects of a
particular method. It is my opinion that by the time this end rolls around, the spray method has destroyed more jars than it has saved.
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__________________ NamasteTemet Nosce |
04-24-06, 22:03
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