PESTS AND DISEASES
Thready mycelium and beautiful coarse mycelium. Anaerobic casing soil.
In moist, warm conditions,
bacteria grow
faster, and the ideal bacterial
balance can get compromised.
water buffer, its function is to quickly absorb water and slowly release water. Together with the climate, this action is what determines evaporation in the growing room. If either of these parameters is not ideal, there is a serious risk of bacteria blotch. Bacteria are lurking everywhere, all the time! But we also rely on them too - Pseudomonas putida triggers the transition of mycelium from its vegetative stage to generative pinhead formation. What is important is maintaining the bacterial balance. In moist, warm conditions, bacteria grow faster. This is also evident during the cropping cycle - when surface stays ‘wet’ for too long, the risk of bacterial blotch is highest. By ‘wet’ I mean visible water droplets on the mycelium caused by steam, or a shiny casing soil surface after watering.
Casing as a buffer There are some points you should pay attention to during the growing cycle: casing soil functi- ons as a water buffer. Heavy, greasy casing that is over compacted during processing or filling will soon become anaerobic. You can take a handful of casing out of the bed, like in the photo. What you see is a solid ‘chunk’ of casing
10 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
devoid of mycelium. If you examine this chunk closely, you see it is not black, but brown. And if you smell the dark brown mass (bring it close to your nose!), it smells sour and acidic There is no air in this handful of casing, and it is unable to absorb any water either. This casing soil has effectively lost its capacity to function as a buffer.
Amount of CAC A tight cropping cycle uses a lot of CAC to stimulate rapid mycelium growth in the casing soil (this disadvantage only applies to compost-CAC and not/less to CAC inoculum). Compost is hydrophobic, which means it does not absorb water. It makes the casing dry out more quickly, which reduces the buffer effect. An additional disadvantage of CAC is that the mycelium is much finer in structure with more threads. This type of mycelium rapidly coloni- ses the casing, but also makes the casing dry out too quickly during the first flush. Coarse structured mycelium around the black, not anaerobic, 2-4 cm clumps of casing is opti- mal. How a growing room is filled - a process that also affects the structure of the casing and the amount of CAC - therefore has a major impact on bacterial blotch infections.
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