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  • From: "Paul A. Bock" <bockpa AT plesh.com>
  • To: "'Market Farming'" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] weeds from mushroom compost
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 12:38:41 -0400

" I never thought of mushroom soil and they are just over the
mountain from me. was there any problems with weeds after applying
this?"

In my ongoing quest to learn about the mechanisms of compost making I fell
into a lot of literature about mushroom cultivation. If the people you
intend to get mushroom compost, a.k.a. "spent substrate", a.k.a. mushroom
soil, etc are a serious mushroom producer they probably produce the common
commercial "white button Agaricus". Maybe they also would market portobello
mushrooms. (another Agaricus species) All these Agaricus species tend to
grow on a manure/wheat straw substrate. To prepare the compost to get the
best mushroom yields they compost the materials in special rooms and/or
containers up to temperatures in the range of 140-160 F for at least a day
if not more. They do this to get the compost ready for the species of
mycelium they are going to introduce to it and so they want to kill nearly
everything else, including competing fungi. Most weed seeds would not be
able to survive this. Now I don't think they sterilize the stuff after they
gave gotten a couple of mushroom flushes out of it, and so whatever mushroom
mycelium strain was grown would probably still be in the stuff and if you
layered this stuff with more manure and other organic goodies, you might end
up with a flush of those mushrooms on a cool rainy day. I AM NOT SAYING
THAT IF MUSHROOMS COME UP THAT YOU COULD EAT THEM, IDENTIFY THEM FIRST.
also the mushroom species typically grown commercially are saprophytic (sp?)
meaning they eat stuff already dead and dying. You probably won't be
introducing a BAD fungus that would kill your plants or something.





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