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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Peroxide Method For Raising Reishi Mushrooms

/ On : 3:11 AM

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By Jacob Hansen

Many people are deciding to try their hand at growing the reishi mushroom at home, after already cultivating various other exotic and edible plants and organic mushrooms. There is a cultivation method that uses peroxide, applied during different times of the cultivation, which is very popular as it eliminates many possible problems including glove box, sterilization and laminar flow hood.

Instead of using pressure sterilization, it is possible to just do a ten minute steaming to make the sawdust spawn medium from the wood pellet fuel, when you use peroxide for a cultivation technique. For growing medicinal and gourmet mushrooms, this is among the fastest ways to create your own mushroom spawn, which may then be cultivated in your house rather than needing to use a laboratory that has been sanitized. This also means that you are no longer limited to producing only the quantity of spawn that will fit in a small pressure cooker, seeing as you could use any number of large pots, provided they have snug fitting lids.

There are several benefits to growing organic mushrooms utilizing the peroxide form of cultivation, including the fact that you no longer have to heat or sterilize the substrate or supplements for the sawdust cultures to be ready to use. However, in order for the reishi mushroom to be edible and non-toxic, you will need to use peroxide compatible starting materials, such as certain nitrogen supplements and wood pellets for fuel. You can also use plastic buckets that have lids or trash bags rather than using the more expensive bulk substrate, patch filter bags.

Quite a few of mushrooms require a denser substrate which is achieved by means of sawdust based substrate which is tightly packed. Adding peroxide to the cultures helps to keep them from becoming anaerobic (not needing oxygen) because the mushroom mycelium decomposes the peroxide, which in turn releases oxygen.

Peroxide does kill the reishi mushroom spores so that makes it possible to grow the agar cultures inside the same enclosure or building that is used to fruit the mushrooms, even when the mushrooms create a higher spore load. Another benefit to using peroxide is that mushrooms grown this way do not contain any contaminants and are grown without encouraging the creation of any new type of resistant strains. Most people prefer to use the 3% solution as it contains no odor, and it is non-allergenic, readily available and inexpensive. - 24553

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