After pasteurization the straw is left to cool best shroom movies and is also invested with generate of the species of mushrooms you want to cultivate. It’s being pressed in blocks or bags and they’re packed within one day after inoculation. After entering the bags or blocks of substrate, they incubate at the mushroom planter who ordered them. The blocks or bags that are produced in this way, are called phase 2 substrate bags or blocks.
The part below describes the process in specialized terms. It’s a quotation from civilization of mushrooms, edited byL.J.L.D. van Griensven
“ The composting process( phases I and II together) is a veritably complex process which isn’t yet completely understood in all its details. A mesophilic microflora begins to develop in the starting material, which consists of straw, water, minerals and an N source( for illustration, steed ordure or toaster funk ordure).
This microflora breaks down carbohydrates( in particular polysaccharides), so that heat is released. Through the corruption of proteins, ammonia is also produced, which causes the temperature to rise, and the straw softens through the action of the ammonia. still, the ammonia attention mustn’t rise too high, for this would be poisonous for the microflora. As the temperature rises, the mesophilic microflora is replaced by a thermophilic microflora, but the corruption continues.
Corruption products of polysaccharides and proteins( including organic acids and ammonia) go into the intermediate metabolism. From this, new cells are constantly being formed, again containing polysaccharides( the cell wall) and proteins( the cell content).
Some of this microflora is in turn broken down again, while another part of it assists with the corruption. The result is a constant change and a race of generations ofmicro-organisms. ”
Some substrate directors offer the possibility to do a large part of the incubation at their position. When you order phase 3 substrate, you get bags or blocks that are ready to jut( primordia phase of regenerating) in days after they arrived. You’ll pay further for these blocks, but the advantage is you don’t have to stay. J Or at least veritably little. One week after entering the blocks, you can anticipate a full crop.
At rotterzwam we typically make our own substrate from coffee grounds. But with all the nimbus dimension and the lockdowns, people where working from home and clearly not working at the office nor drinking coffee at the office. Our coffee input went from5.500 kilo per month to nearlynothing.However, we demanded to switch substrate, If we wanted to keep dealing mushrooms.
We choose to buy phase 3 substrate. It means we’ve to concentrate on harvesting
only and use the spare time we created by not making substrate our tone, in finishing the always long list of chores that you have on any product point. So far, it has worked great for us, but we’re eager to switch back to making our own substrate again.
Last but not least in the list is to make your own substrate. This what we’ve done so far. Only after the fire( that destroyed our ranch) in May 2017 and now with the nimbus dimension and lockdowns, we’ve resorted to buying substrate because the show must go on.
Mushroom growers that make their own substrate.
generally resort to unicorn bags or perforated tubular antipode bags. This has to do with the raw material used for the substrate and the quantum of substrate you make. The more you make and the bigger your bags, the sooner I anticipate you to switch from unicorn bags to perforated tubular antipode bags.
The image over shows ‘ unicorn like ’ bags from SacO2( a spin off from Mycelia from Belgium). We experimented with them for our substrate, but the results weren’t good. They’ve a sludge on one side of the bag, making the mycelium growth in the not filtered side, pause significant with the filtered side. My conjecture is that they’re best for generate and not for substrate. But at that time in our development, we were still experimenting and learning.
When making your own substrate, there are a lot of fresh choices to make.
Choosing your raw material( s), drawing your raw material, pasteurization( hot or cold), high pressure sterilization, a mixing machine, a bag padding, kind of bags, hang or stand your substrate bags etc etc. We’ll cover those motifs in a after blog post.
Making your own substrate is giving us great satisfaction. You turn waste into taste and commodity of use for society. And not commodity trivial but a necessity of life. Food! A product that fits in a life that’s acquainted more on factory- grounded proteins. commodity that you and I know is going to be more important by the day.