Button mushroom is very popular food in many parts of the world. However, it needs special environment for production as well as substrate and casing soil which most of the time need to be imported hence increasing production costs. We have tried different organic wastes as mixture to replace the traditional horse manure based substrate. In order to encourage the expansion of mushroom cultivation specially for small scale farms, we need to lower the cost of production specially the cost of substrate and casing soil. Therefore..
If any of you has an experience with unconventional substrate for growing button mushroom, please share it with us.
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Hello,
I'm not sure if it helps, but still decided to tell a bit how do we solve it.
If there is not a button mushroom farm-only but the household where plantation and various farm animals, it can be possible to grow mushrooms on unconventional substrate without buying it.
In Russia we traditionally do the following in the small households. We carefully collect all the drawn organic matter from the household (i.e. manure from household animals, cultivated plant residues, weeds removed from soil, paper, food residues, etc) in the special boxes. As the box fills by waste, we put the layers of sawdust or grass on the surface periodically (several times per season) to form their layers among the waste layers. At the end of the season we cover box and stay it intact for the winter or even longer. Next season we fill the adjacent boxes with wastes, and the compost from the old box can be finally used as a substrate.
I'm not sure if the yield can be high enough in your view, but in my opinion it is ok.
Finally, in my experience, the button mushroom can fruсtify well on various substrates, even on heterogeneous substrates (maybe some of them like diverse 'diet', but sure the choice of the mushroom variety(s) adjusted for the certain conditions is also an important factor.
There is a considerable number of unconventional substrates to be used for A.bisporus production. First, the term conventional may designate the conventionally used horse manure based, that is the main substrate used in european countries. this is also called ”natural” substrate. possibly the term ”unconventional” designates the “synthetic” compost. That is any type of substrate or compost without horse manure.
therefore, unconventional or synthetic substrate may be prepared using any kind of lignocellulosic material, subjected of course to composting ( as button mushroom is a secondary decomposer fungi).
these materials are present as agricultural wastes and can be selected based on their availability at a certain local level. the most available local wastes will be the least expensive. Moreover, implementing lignocellulosic materials to form a compost mixture for A.bisporus will be coupled by determination of the final C:N ratio of the composted mixture to be suitable for the subsequent mushroom growth.
Button mushroom cultivation not so easy to cultivation compared to other mushrooms like oyster and milky. We also still growing mushroom on conventional substrates like wheat straw. but according to me it may grow on the other substrates having simpler form of the energy source. it may also grown on the agricultural wastes or crop residues which are not useful.
Khem Raj Meena Maria V. Kozlova Zeina el Sebaaly I was wondering what you are using as your casing layer to start the fruiting of the mushrooms? In Europe mostly peat/peat moss is used but its quite an unsustainable product. So I was wondering if you used something else? Or if you didn't need it?
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