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popok
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living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags
#22085515 - 08/13/15 09:30 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Photo 1, the problem Photo 2, the greenhouse I am making bags and logs of oysters (straw and coffee ground) the last few months, about 150 bag so far, and I kind of figure out a way of dealing with trichoderma during fructification, and live with it. First, this mold (photo 1) appear only at fructification stage, after one or two flushes, at the opening site (holes of the bags), and favor the "caves" around the opening site rather than the middle of it. It grows directely on mycelium, when it dries a bit, and loves miniature aborts. In the beginning, I was tossing bags at the first sign of trich, and re-sanitazing the whole 3mx4m fruiting greenhouse (photo 2), lowering moisture under 80% and CO2 ppm under 700, improving air circulation, then I realized I am loosing all my bags anyway. As I was only using a polyfill filter for my air intake, it was not possible anyway to unsure that my growing space is not excluding trich spores. I tried using vermiculite/lime casing to prevent the mold, but it required additional preparation and watering work and materials, and is not so well adapted to logs.
So I learned to live with trich, of course by operating the bags and removing the infected part as early as possible and treating the would with lime, salt, etc. This way I buy time because sooner or later, the mold will be back. That's what I will show in details in one example. This works only if you catch it early, on few cm2 of green, later it is too late, amputation or elimination may be required.
First, I expose the green area by cutting the plastic away (photo 3).
Photo 3
Often I cover the green area with a piece of moist paper the avoid spreading spores around. Then I cut around that area, at least at 1 cm from the green spores, with a cutter blade dipped in alcohol 95°. Straw is impossible to cut cleanly, but coffee is ok. Then I remove as one block (photo 4) and treat the wound.
Photo 4
In photo 5, I sprinkled lime inside and around the would, but I tried also salting, mixing lime and salt, and using a paste of both (by adding a bit of water) to plaster the area and around.
Photo 5
Finally, in photo 6, I close back the flaps.
Photo 6
As I said earlier, I buy some time, so I have to do this 3 or 4 times per bag, meanwhile it gives 4 or 5 flush. What do you think of this method ? And you how do you daily handle trich in similar situation ?
Edited by popok (08/15/15 03:57 AM)
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Mad Season
hookers and blackjack



Registered: 09/16/12
Posts: 12,666
Loc: Canada
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22087561 - 08/13/15 02:36 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I think that you should be working on cutting it off at the source instead of doing all this work.. you should be tossing after some flushes, before you even see green. Not doing what you're doing. Which is spore loading the whole thing. Read my improve your sterile techniques link in my signature to see how I overcome contaminations.
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Kizzle
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22088069 - 08/13/15 04:31 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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You might want to reevaluate your pasteurization method. Higher pasteurization temperatures tend to favor Trich so try to keep it low, like around 140F.
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popok
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: Kizzle]
#22088263 - 08/13/15 05:19 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I was expecting the "toss your 150 bags and start again with improved sterility" answer, thanks for the feed back anyway. Mad Season, nice tips for agar in your link.
Obviously I forgot to mention that most bags are filtered with tyvek sterilized in a pressure cooker inoculated in a glove box (the same I use for agar work with 0% contamn), holes cut only after full colonization, and few bags are pasteurized (I will try lowering temp), inoculated in open air with holes punched at the start.
If my substrate preparation was the problem, why does it only show at the holes and after the first flush open the flaps ? Why does it grow on dry myc rather than substrate ? Why it doesn't show when casing is used ? It does not make sense to me.
I guess another question is also does this extra work worth the subsequent flushes, and I feel it does. 4 months I've been doing this, no big outbreak due to spore load yet, I operate early enough, tens of kilos of mushrooms saved this way.
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Mad Season
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22088336 - 08/13/15 05:38 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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There's lots of reasons. All of them stemming from the fact the mycelium shit the bed. And if it does sooner than it should, it's a problem that should be fixed. bacteria(more bacteria) through improperly sterilized grains(I've upped my pc times and changed grains too many times to count, but I'm loving oats) or contamed agar, improper pasteurization (see kizzle above), improper hydration, hidden contams from improper procedures and there's many more stuff I bet you could improve on.
P.S. I didn't say toss them all. Just the ones with trich, and to always work on improving the conditions for the myc. The healthier the myc, the better things will be
Edited by Mad Season (08/13/15 07:00 PM)
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popok
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: Mad Season]
#22093440 - 08/15/15 03:49 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Thanks mad season for the links, especially about wet spot in grain spawn, of course there is always room for procedure improvement, that I will do.
But let me understand, you say that if the procedures are better and mycelium is healthier, it wouldn't grow trich when exposed at the holes with open flaps, even if air around is not filtered and contains trich spores and bacteria from outdoor, even if it dries a bit because of surrounding 75% RH 27°C. My experience is that the mycelium get yellow/reddish at these holes after opening them, before trich starts there too. Shouldn't I be more concerned about intake fan filtration to prevent spores in fructification space at the first place, and install a hepa or an electrostatic filter ?
Edited by popok (08/15/15 05:00 AM)
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Mad Season
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Registered: 09/16/12
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22094190 - 08/15/15 09:40 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I wouldn't you got what I was saying that when something contaminates early, it could have come from the environment. But in the same environment, something else doesn't. The reason is because one bag is weaker than the other. If you improve everything, things should last longer in the same environment. I've honestly not bleached/alcohol wiped anything for almost a year now. And even though it's summer, my contams are still really low. If you can get everything clean as a whistle right up until you spawn, ime you're guaranteed to win.
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Kizzle
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22095551 - 08/15/15 04:40 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
popok said: Thanks mad season for the links, especially about wet spot in grain spawn, of course there is always room for procedure improvement, that I will do.
But let me understand, you say that if the procedures are better and mycelium is healthier, it wouldn't grow trich when exposed at the holes with open flaps, even if air around is not filtered and contains trich spores and bacteria from outdoor, even if it dries a bit because of surrounding 75% RH 27°C. My experience is that the mycelium get yellow/reddish at these holes after opening them, before trich starts there too. Shouldn't I be more concerned about intake fan filtration to prevent spores in fructification space at the first place, and install a hepa or an electrostatic filter ?
Reducing exposure to airborne contaminants may help but molds needs to land on a source of nutrients to grow. Spores landing on fully colonized substrate are prevented from reaching the nutrients by the mushroom mycelium and won't grow. That leaves two major possibilities.
1. The mold is reaching the substrate before the mushroom mycelium colonizes it. It seems unlikely that's the case if it's only appearing where you make the holes. Although that doesn't rule out the possibility completely as different molds have different trigger for sporulation. One of which could be the sudden drop in CO2 that occurs in the areas where you make the holes. You mentioned that using casing layer seemed to prevent it so I don't think this is the case.
2. The substrate is not fully colonizing. Obviously your substrates are colonized but there could be gaps due to less obvious competitor molds that have colonized parts or bacterial contamination or because there are areas of substrate that simply don't support mushroom mycelium growth due to pH, ammonia content, etc. I should mention some people have trouble using coffee grounds. You might want to try some without just to see if it makes a difference.
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popok
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: Kizzle]
#22097572 - 08/16/15 05:08 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Another possibility is that mold spores could grow on the nutrients from spores released by the flush. I have seen it sporulate once on a spot of spores on the outside plastic of a bag. Whether they come from substrate or environment, could mold spores grow and sporulate on mycelium surface if it is unhealthy (like mad season say), full of mushroom spores or dryish ?
The two other possibility you mention kizzle, are also likely. My vermiculite/lime casing could be only inhibiting sporulation of a trich already there. And, yes, I noticed that pure straw or pure sawdust has much less often this type of problems.
Edited by popok (08/16/15 05:09 AM)
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Kizzle
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22100087 - 08/16/15 07:31 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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As a mushroom strain ages it does become more vulnerable to competitors, the mature mushrooms in particular are more likely to be infected by pathogens.
I've never heard of a mold growing on a sporeprint or anything like that but if it's in a place where moisture is also available who knows?
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popok
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: Kizzle]
#22123616 - 08/21/15 05:32 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I just came back from a visit to a professional mass producer of pleurotus ostreatus on straw. What surprised me is the way they deal with contamination. In the 8 fructification 80x20m airtight greenhouses, the situation goes from my kind of contams plus flies for the cleanest greenhouse, to overgrown bags with mold on 1/3 of bags with serious fly infestation for the dirtiest greenhouse. Each greenhouse is emptied, every 1-3 months, after 3 flushes, cleaned with just water (and no bleach), then filled up again in one or two weeks. In another site, pasteurization, inoculation, mixing and bagging are made in a totally automatic machines processing tons of straw at once each week. So their procedures and spawn are supposed to be perfect. But still they get a lot of contamns, much more than I do and live with it, with this empty/clean/refill cycle.
I can hardly make like them. I make bags little by little with only 1 greenhouse. For 5 months, it was never empty to bleach bomb it so I clean by spraying and mopping ground, walls, shelves.
Which make me ask, how and how often do you clean or empty your fruiting chamber, over months ? do you have several to rotate ? do you fill it all at once or over duration ?
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Kizzle
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: popok]
#22129389 - 08/23/15 01:40 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I just clean as I go but it seems like the more you're growing at once the the harder it is to keep everything sanitized. Some of the commercial farms actually steam entire rooms between crops.
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popok
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Re: living with trich or how to daily deal with trich at the holes of fruiting oyster logs and bags [Re: Kizzle]
#22129635 - 08/23/15 05:18 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kizzle said: I just clean as I go but it seems like the more you're growing at once the the harder it is to keep everything sanitized. Some of the commercial farms actually steam entire rooms between crops.
So you do like me kizzle. There is no build up of contaminant load over months if you clean as you go (and get rid of contamned blocks) ? Do you use bleach ? do you use the hose with full water or just wiping/mopping ?
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