Pasteurize your own straw with hydrogen peroxide to make mushroom-growing medium.
Growing your own medicinal or gourmet mushrooms at home can be a rewarding pastime and can save money as well. Experienced mushroom growers may prefer to grow their own mushrooms from mycelia, small vegetative bundles of immature mushroom cells. However, mushroom mycelia can have difficulty competing with bacteria and other contaminants, and so it is necessary to pasteurize the mycelia-growing medium before introducing the mycelia. Fortunately, you can pasteurize your own medium at home using the hydrogen peroxide method. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Soak oat or wheat straw in a clean bucket for one hour. Add room-temperature water to cover the straw. Leave the straw undisturbed while soaking.
2. Drain the straw and rinse thoroughly with cool, fresh water. Drain the rinsed straw and place it in a clean 5-gallon bucket.
3. Add 1 gallon of fresh water to the bucket and mix in 1 liter of hydrogen peroxide. Stir once to mix the water-hydrogen peroxide solution. Allow the straw to soak in the solution overnight.
4. Drain the straw and rinse thoroughly with fresh water at least three times. Place the pasteurized straw in sterile glass jars and add mycelia to the straw substrate. Add 1 cup of mycelium spawn for every 1/2-gallon of pasteurized straw substrate.
Tags: fresh water, hydrogen peroxide, Drain straw, Drain straw rinse, pasteurized straw, rinse thoroughly