GROWING GOURMET - Anto2ni.it

came a template for the cultivation of many
other mushrooms. A counter-culture book on
psilocybian mushroom cultivation by Oss &
Oeric (1976) (a. k. a. Dennis & Terence
McKenna) brought the concept of bottle culture
to the forefront of small-scale mushroom cultivators
in America. Currently, Asian growers
have adapted bottle culture, originally
designed for the easy cropping of Enoki mushrooms
(Flammulina velutipes), to the
cultivation of many other gourmet and medicinal
mushrooms, including Buna-shimeji
(Hypsizygus tessulatus), Reishi (Ganoderma
lucidum), Wood Ears (Auriculariapolytricha),
and some varieties of Oyster mushrooms.
The advantage of bottle culture is that the
process can be highly compartmentalized and
easily incorporated into the many high speed
production systems adapted from other industries.
The disadvantage of bottle culture is that
sawdust substrates must be top-spawned and
CROPPING CONTAINERS 205
grain spawn can not be easily mixed through
bottles containing sawdust. The bottles are
filled to within 2 inches of the brim with moistened
supplemented sawdust and then sterilized
for 2-4 hours at 15-20 psi. (The formula is the
same for bag culture of Shiitake and Enokitake.
Please refer to Chapter 17. )When grain spawn
is added at inoculation, and the bottles are
shaken, the spawn descends to a depth of only
a few inches. Hence, the mycelium quickly covers
the top surface layer and then grows slowly
downwards into the sterilized sawdust. This
results in imbalanced time frames in terms of
the age of the mycelium at the top vs. the bottom
of the bottle. The newly growing mycelium
near the bottom inhibits the formation of mushrooms
in the top layer of mycelium. The
discrepancy in age inhibits maximum mushroom
formation from the total surface area of
the substrate. When the mycelium is actively
growing out, the total mycelial colony can not
- - Bottle culture of Enoki mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes) on sterilized alder sawdust.
PDF compression, OCR, web-optimization with CVISION's PdfCompressor