ABCs OF MYCOLOGY part 1 “Learning The Easy Way”

Booming Acres is proud to offer  ‘The ABCs of Mycology’. In this series, we will highlight words and phrases throughout the alphabet. These words and phrases will all be what we consider to be important in the world of mycology, shining light on some of the things that help new growers succeed, veteran growers excel, and hobbyists continue having fun with mushroom growing! With this being the first installation of the series, we’re going to jump straight in with our first three issues, the ABC of the Mycology ABCs! 

To start with, we have:

Aseptic Technique In Mycology

Aseptic technique is technically a medical term apparently, I’ve only known of it within the world of mycology, but I think it’s interesting that I’m starting this series on something that technically isn’t mycology-specific! So much of what we do in mycology borrows from other industries, whether it be brewing equipment for processing grains, pressure canners and cookers for sterilizing mushroom grains, and concrete mixers for mixing our mushroom substrate, It’s a hobby of borrowed tools and skills, and what we learn with mycology can be applied to so many other aspects of life. 

So anyways, aseptic technique. There are 5 main principles of aseptic technique

-Knowing what is dirty

-Knowing what is clean

-Knowing what is sterile

-Keeping these 3 conditions separate

-Clean contamination immediately

In mycology, knowing what is dirty, clean, and sterile is obviously important. If we know our inoculant is clean, and we apply it to sterile media, we’re going to be successful. If we know what is dirty such as paper towels or improperly prepared grains, we can avoid contamination. Keeping the good things separate from the bad things is a simple enough procedure, but something a lot of folks get mixed up. Some people think oh if I mix something bad with something good maybe I’ll still get something out of it. When it comes to procedures requiring aseptic technique, this isn’t going to be the case. You can’t put a little bit of moldy genetic material into a bag of grain and expect it to do well. You can’t let moldy grains sit around in your grow area and expect things to stay clean. You’ve got to keep track of what you’re doing, be mindful of the things you’re doing, know what’s what, and you’ll be more likely to succeed. 

Knowing what materials you work with are clean and sterile is a major factor for mushroom growth. In our case, we verify that our All In One Bags, our grains, and our substrate are sterile by using temperature monitoring equipment, verifying that each run is sterile. For the average home grower, knowing the temperature and length of time for a sterilization run of a pressure cooker is going to be enough to ensure sterility. What a lot of people don’t think about then, is how do the genetic vendors verify sterility.  The answer to that unfortunately, is that a lot of them don’t! The internet is full of bad actors who are just interested in making money as fast as possible, pumping out material they haven’t verified, and relying on the fact that they can just blame the grains the person or vendor made, and they won’t be blamed for the issue. If your genetic material isn’t coming from a trusted vendor who can show you how they harvest their spores or produce their liquid culture, and show you how they verify the cleanliness of that product, you’re breaking one of the first rules of aseptic technique, you don’t know what is dirty, clean, and sterile. Luckily with our products, you can rest assured that we make absolutely certain that what we send is going to be sterile when it leaves our facility! Occasionally a package will be damaged during shipping, but we replace those products no questions asked, as any good vendor should! 

I want to point out that what some folks think is good aseptic technique is far from it. Some people think dousing a bag with iso alcohol is going to sterilize their bag, then they reuse a syringe tip they’ve had sitting in a baggy for 3 months since their last grow. Some folks think if they wear gloves when they’re handling their jars or substrate bins they’ll avoid contamination, then they wipe their sterile syringe tip straight out of the packaging with a paper towel with some isopropyl on it. I’ve seen too many people trying to remove mold from a monotub sitting near a bunch of other monotubs hoping they’ll get something out of it. All of these things break the principles of aseptic technique and can result in a failure of the current project and risk the success of future projects as well. 

So remember, know what is dirty, know what is clean, know what is sterile, keep these things separate, and clean anything dirty immediately. Following these guidelines you’ll have proper asepctic technique, you’ll level up your mycology skills, and you’ll keep growing more and more every run! 

Our next word in the series is-

Bacteria

What is bacteria? To put it simply in relation to mushroom growing, bacteria is a contaminant! Bacteris are single-celled organisms, they tend to reproduce quickly, and they’re not something you want growing alongside your mushrooms or mycelium. Sooner or later, every grower runs into bacteria, whether it’s lipstick mold (which is actually bacteria in most cases!), some kind of bacillus causing wet rot, or any number of random bacteria that infects a project. Bacteria is a part of life, you’ve got plenty of bacteria all over your body, in your body, and flying around in the air all around you. For the most part, bacteria is not going to be something to worry about in day-to-day life, but in the case of mycology and mushroom growing in general, we avoid bacteria not because it’s necessarily bad for our projects, but because it’s bad for us! You don’t want to be growing a nice batch of oysters next to some bacteria, because you eventually plan to eat those mushrooms, and consuming high amounts of bacteria can make you sick, or worse. The mushrooms, however, will be fine putting spores out no problem! 

The most common bacteria mushroom growers will run into is in the form of wet rot, which actually has nothing to do with things being wet at all! Wet rot is thought to normally be a bacillus bacteria, typically introduced during inoculation either picked up during the inoculation, or from the inoculant itself. This bacteria grow on the outside of grains when introduced to them, pulling moisture from the grains and reproducing in the liquid. Eventually this moisture turns a murky color, a sure sign of contamination, and can cause a sweet or sour smell to come from the infected material. The moisture that the bacteria is growing in is where the contamination gets its name from, wet rot, it’s a rot present in the moisture. The moisture has nothing to do with the bacteria being present, it does not cause the bacteria to appear, and without the bacteria there would be no rot, just wet! 

The best things to beat bacteria infections is going to be cleaning your genetic material with agar. We sell agar including antibiotics, which helps keep bacteria from growing quickly, giving you time to take transfers of healthy mycelium and do transfers to more agar, saving your genetic material from the trash! Beyond antibiotics, you can utilize proper cleaning procedures to avoid bacteria getting into your projects. This means regular cleaning with bleach or ammonia-based cleaners, disposing of any contaminated projects in your work area, and keeping a generally clean work area free of food or grain waste, no random substrate hanging out giving bacteria a moist warm area to hang out in. Following proper aseptic technique is pertinent for avoiding bacterial infections! 

In closing, bacteria is something we live with just fine, as do mushrooms and mushroom mycelium. However to have successful, safe mushroom growing projects, we want to do our best to avoid bacterial contamination. Avoiding bacterial contamination can be as simple as testing your genetic material on our agar, following proper inoculation methods, and keeping a clean work area for all your mushroom-growing projects. 

Finally for the last word of this blog, we’ve got-

Contamination! 

Yes, another cleanliness-related word to kick off the ABC’s of mycology. It’s almost like being clean and sterile when growing mushrooms is important or something…

So what is contamination? Well, similar to weeds, contamination is something growing where you don’t want it to! A rose in a tulip field is a weed, trichoderma in a grain bag is a contamination! Basically, all contaminants have their place in life, trichoderma is useful for growing plants, yeast is good for making booze, and there’s plenty of bacteria that can help our digestive systems. What isn’t good though is growing something we can’t positively identify, didn’t intend to grow, and could be harming or stealing from our mushrooms or mycelium. 

In nature, mycelium and mushrooms grow just fine along other funguses, molds, and bacteria. With our grows however, we want to keep things to only growing what we intend to grow, we don’t want something growing in our homes or grow facilities that may cause health problems for the growers, or possibly be stealing food from our mushrooms. Worse yet, some contaminants such as trichoderma can physically harm our mushrooms or mycelium by using enzymes to actually eat them before we get the chance to! 

This section is going to be a short one, contamination is something that every grower should be acquainted with and at some point will be introduced to. The most important thing regarding contamination in general is being able to identify contamination. If you’re ever questioning something your best course of action is to play things safe, quarantine your project and let things grow and see if what you think is the start of something bad actually turns out to be a contaminant or not. Sometimes early growing mycelium can look like cobweb mold. Sometimes though, you see some nice growth coming up in your project, then the next day you look again and it’s all green! Being able to identify the tell tale signs of different contaminants is very useful for growers. In the case of trichoderma, the earliest signs will be a powder sugar looking growth on top of your grain or substrate. Once you see this, you’ve got less than 24 hours before the growth turns green from the spores forming on the surface of the growth. I described how to identify wet rot in the previous section, and for yeast you’ll notice a sweet alcohol smell. Once you notice any of these conditions in your grow, it’s going to be best to dispose or at the very least quarantine the project to avoid spreading any contamination. 

Alright so that’s the beginning of our Mycology ABC’s! I plan to have this be a weekly release for the time being, most likely alongside our other blog presentations, but we’ll see how that works out for me, we might make it a biweekly situation. If anyone has suggestions for other ABC’s, please be sure to drop us a message, email, or comment! 

Good luck out there people, I hope your grows are all Booming!