The Essential Step You Need To Take To Eliminate Pests In Your Mushroom Garden

There are many reasons why you may want to start a mushroom garden, from affordable access to healthy mushroom varieties to the high profit potential of mushroom crops. But there is an annoying downside that can come from growing mushrooms at home: pests. As you can imagine, when your mushrooms are feeding on rich, nutritious soil full of decaying organic matter, certain bugs and organisms are bound to find the growing environment just as attractive. Whether you have nematodes that are sucking the life out of your mushrooms, phorid flies that are peeking out of young caps (or worse, your harvest), or fungus gnats (also called sciarid flies) simply destroying your crop, there is one essential step you can take to eliminate them all.

In order to maintain your mushroom garden's hygiene, you need to take the time to ensure your garden is properly sterilized and that your compost and wood have been fully pasteurized. Fungus gnats and nematodes are among the most damaging pests found in mushroom gardens, and they both can start an infestation directly in your mushroom substrate. Good mushroom production starts with good mushroom substrate. It's widely known that compost is full of nutrients and helpful organisms that benefit many different types of gardens. But in a mushroom garden, it is especially important that you take care to remove unfavorable microbes from your substrate right from the start through sterilization or pasteurization.

Growing pest-free mushrooms isn't about deciding if you should intentionally grow mushrooms in your yard. It's about knowing how to grow a mushroom garden that not only provides the correct conditions for your chosen varieties but also eliminates and prevents harmful pests from ever taking over. It is much easier, safer, and less stressful to ensure your mushroom garden is free from pests from the very beginning than to try to eliminate pests after an infestation. Luckily, you can use sterile growth mediums to achieve this goal. However, it is important to know the difference between sterilization and pasteurization to ensure you are employing the best techniques for your crops.

Sterilization is a process that uses steam and pressure to kill living organisms and unwanted spores in mushroom substrate. The process is more intense and thorough than pasteurization, but it isn't always necessary. Generally, sterilization is only required in substrates with high nutrient content or high levels of supplementation. Sterilize your substrate if you are using grain, soy hulls, or manure.

On the other hand, pasteurization will do just fine if you are using substrates like straw, sugarcane bagasse, coco coir, hardwood sawdust, or cardboard. Pasteurization uses temperature to control the number of organisms living in the substrate. Unlike sterilization, pasteurizing won't completely eliminate all living organisms in your substrate, but it will reduce the harmful ones while leaving the beneficial bacteria.

There are countless types of substrates for container gardening and outdoor gardening alike. Whichever option you choose, you will need to prepare it properly by sterilizing or pasteurizing it before inoculating it with your mushroom spawn. Both options require temperature control equipment, but the process for each is quite different.

To sterilize your substrate, there are several different methods, but the important part is that you incorporate steam and pressure to reach a temperature of at least 250 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended period of time. You can achieve this using a pressure cooker or canner, an autoclave, or a retort. At 250 degrees, you will need to maintain the temperature for at least 2 hours. As the temperature increases, the required time will decrease.

To pasteurize your substrate, there are two common methods: hot and cold treatments. However, each method has several techniques you can use to achieve it. For hot pasteurization, you can use hot water steam, an oven, or fermentation to heat the substrate to temperatures between 149 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the exact technique. Generally, hot pasteurization takes a few hours, but fermentation using heat can take several days. For cold pasteurization, you can use fermentation or water baths to soak the substrate for extended periods of time. Fermentation takes about a week of soaking to kill harmful bacteria. Cold water baths with additives like lime, wood ash, soap, bleach, chlorine, vinegar, or hydrogen peroxide can be done in just under a day (usually up to 20 hours).