Cultivating Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms | PARAGRAPHIC

A day and a half ago this thing was the size of the tip of my pinky there have been stories of toxic waste being cleaned up by fungi without fungi we would be invaded by waste there would be no life on earth ganoderma lucidum strict aroma although it is known as the fungus of Immortality is antiviral, antibacterial, has been shown to shrink and stop tumor growth. Yes, we make about 180 bags per cycle and we do it three times a week. Yes, this used to be done at my house. Yes, we have some shiitake

mushrooms

. here they are ready to go there are thousands of ways these guys can save our world make our environment much better living growing

mushrooms

and mushrooms it's like a balance between science and art I'm going to take a look inside my uh this is the spawn incubation bar media room and I'm just going to select some crops for today and take a look at some of my spawns.

Today I will take small pieces of tissue from these plates and place them in nutrient media broths. Basically to expand the mycelium, my name is Michael Crow and I own southwestern mushrooms. Here we grow a wide variety of

gourmet

medicinal

mushrooms. There we simply dropped a couple of pieces of Cordyceps mycelium tissue. Mycology is the study of fungi and basically the growth of different fungi. People don't realize that there is such a wide variety of fungi. Different molds and fungi start from spores instead of seeds. Two compatible spores mate and form mycelium. The mycelium starts. We plant it in a Petri dish and from there we grow it.

We transfer healthy sections of mycelium into sterilized grain bags here we have organic wheat berries that we use from there the mycelium will spread and devour whatever food source it is running on. Complete colonization occurs. You will see a nice, big, healthy bag of white mycelium that you can get. shredded and used to inoculate between 20 and 30 of our production blocks without a good spawn, you don't have mushrooms, a lot of people will get involved and try to grow mushrooms because they have grown like many plants before thinking. which you know will be basically something similar but it's definitely totally different you're germinating spores in petri dishes you're growing the mycelium you're making transfers to sterilized grain substrates instead of soils, yes, this is our production area this is where our substratum.

We use a mixture of oak wood sawdust plus added supplements like organic wheat and certain seed holes to basically formulate our substrate and get maximum efficiency from our mushroom bags. They are filled to about 10 to 12 pounds and then from there we go to the sterilization area where the substrate will be sterilized for an extended period of time to make sure that we eliminate any competing microorganisms or molds or fungi. Nothing is needed, everything is sterile, so it is not necessary. To use any type of pesticides or any type of fertilizer or additive, you have to be very careful and make sure that you are only growing the mushrooms that you want.

This is the sterilization room, this is where we sterilize all of our substrate and here we can sterilize up to 1600 pounds of fresh substrate at a time and basically steam comes out and sterilizes it at a high temperature of about 212 degrees, if it's not sterilized properly it will will take to inoculate and we find many contamination problems and mold that grows more than its mycelium. We have our spawn right here. This is a California reishi, so we're going to take our spawn and split it up, separate each individual grain and allow it to become a vehicle for our mycelium, so I'm going to take a scalpel and then heat sterilize it.

The hepa filter here basically gives us a clean workspace to do our inoculations, so we'll get a sterile airstream. He's looking, I get it. I'm pretty good at eyeballing it, so that's what I do, so yeah, the bags are placed in front of the flow hood, they're inflated with a little bit of that sterile air, and then they're sealed tight, so now our bag is inoculated and we're just going to want. shake it well my bag is ready people think that all mushrooms grow in the dark on dung we have wood loving mushrooms mushrooms that can grow on insects and species of mycorrhizal fungi that can connect with different plants this area is our incubation area Shiitake Shiitake generally takes eight weeks before we can enter the fruiting room.

We can see that the mushrooms at this stage start to like popcorn. As the mushroom starts to mature, you let the blocks mature and they start to turn brown and this is a block that's ready to go into our fruiting room, it's ripe and ready, overall, a lot of people, a lot of new growers. They will mistake the brown color for contamination, but in reality it is just the mycelium maturing and preparing to produce a good crop of mushrooms, and yes, this way. we have some freshly inoculated blocks, we can see the mycelium starting to jump out of the grain it was inoculated with and looking for sawdust to basically break it down and use it as a food source in the wild, you would find oyster mushrooms growing on the sides of trees, so here we try simulate that form of growth with this block inside which is oak wood sawdust and the bag acts as an artificial tree bark, so when we make an incision on it, it just acts like in nature, when the mycelium starts to protrude at the points correct and to receive the correct levels of O2, that sends the mushrooms Once it completely devours its entire food source, the mycelium sends signals to produce mushrooms, basically, the mushrooms will begin to set in a few days.

To see a bunch of little mushrooms forming all over the block, they will usually have like a stem and a cap under the cap will be the gills and the gills are responsible for producing all of the spores that the fungus will use to continue. In the life cycle we grow mushrooms that in nature you would find them growing right in the forest, right on the sides of different trees, so we try to give these mushrooms a little bit of light stimulation similar to what you would get. in a shady part of the forest, what we do is, when our blocks are ready to go into the grow room, we hit our blocks with our hands to basically stimulate the tree to fall in the wild to make the mycelium grow once the tree or branch hits the ground.

In the soil, the mycelium would be surprised and produce the mushrooms because it basically thinks its life cycle is coming to an end. That's what mushrooms do. They are basically nature's great decomposers. Their job is to break things down and turn them into organic material that can be reused by the environment. There have been stories of toxic waste cleanup by fungi. Fungi can break down oils like the planet's immune system. Also plastics in the environment without the fungi we would be invaded by waste basically there would be no life On Earth, fungi are very crucial for the environment and the ecosystem.

I started when I was about 15 years old. I got interested in fungi, bought a couple of books and became really fascinated with the whole process, how something can start from spores, which we really can. I didn't see with the naked eye the fact that I could devour things at such a fast rate and produce these mushrooms when I was 16 years old. I was growing mushrooms as a hobby and got really hooked on the process, so I started this business afterwards. uh selling some stocks and cashing out my 401k so I wanted to continue working with mushrooms for life I guess and make it a career so I'll harvest the mushrooms by just cutting them as close to the base of the block as possible and then From there we can go ahead and pack everything in the next warehouse and get everything to the desired weight: creminis, mushrooms and portobellos.

Those are secondary decomposition fungi, so those fungi want like manure or compost based substrates that you wouldn't want. "You want to keep that stuff under the same roof just because you don't want any kind of cross contamination getting into your crops, so yeah, we're just specializing in wood-loving species, meaning species that basically break down hardwood into nature". You will find them growing like fresh trees or basically recently fallen trees. Those strains are like shiitake oyster mushrooms. More

medicinal

species like turkey reishi tell lion's mane that you find maitake growing on oak trees or certain hardwoods. Additionally, the medicinal benefits they offer are much greater than what you would find in a portobello or kamini mushroom, these are the mushrooms that contain those anticancer and antitumor benefits, those benefits that improve the immune system, aminomodulators, they are antiviral, antibacterial proportions, specifically they are Used in chemotherapy and cancer treatments it has been shown to reduce and stop tumor growth.

Many people who have compromised immune systems can use certain mushrooms like shiitake, for example. It has been shown to dramatically increase the production of helper T cells needed to help fight infections and keep your body safe this is called ganoderma cecile this is a species of reishi from Palmer Woods near Michigan and this mushroom is primarily used for its benefits medicinal, we can take it and prepare it in tea or make tinctures with it and use it for health. Properties Many mushrooms have their own unique health benefits that can only be obtained from that mushroom. It has been used by oriental medicine for approximately 4000 years.

Shiitake, for example, produces a polysaccharide called lentinin which is something you can only get from shiitake oyster mushrooms. produces a compound called levostatin which naturally reduces blood pressure lion's mane produces harissanas and urenasins which can stimulate nerve growth factor in the brain well, here is our lion's mane, also called marinaz heresy, it is a wonderful dental fungus, the mushroom is a medicinal mushroom and also a culinary delicacy known for the fact that it can improve cognitive function increase memory basically allowing people to recover from traumatic brain injuries helping people deal with alzheimer's dementia we have some regulators who love our lion's mane powder and all of our products.

It actually all started with the farmers markets and everyone was really surprised by the quality of our mushrooms and from there chefs started asking us about mushrooms so we started to deal with chefs and now our mushrooms are reaching grocery stores and restaurants. Statewide, reishi is definitely an intensive crop, so we'll just cut each antler at the base of the block. It's like a reishi forest down there, but patience and time, and then right there we have the cut. and we've got a little bit of sawdust stuck on it, so I'm just going to trim it off.

It shows that it really breaks down the substrate into almost a pulp like matter ready to start composting into the soil, yes this is the most aggressive ratio We have to grow mushrooms and it's like a balance between science and art. You have to understand the science and the art is basically being able to execute your crop the right way if you have a passion and want to do it. Make it a business, then you know, don't let anything stop you.