The Peroxide Experiment.

One of the goals I have in starting a mushroom farm is increasing my knowledge base and sharing that with anyone else who is interested. There is a lot of information about mycology out there. Hell, I only live a few miles away from Paul Stamets. 

But I have trust issues. I can read all the studies and understand all the chemistry, but there is just something about performing experiments yourself that seals the deal. So, I have a few ongoing right now and plans to share all those here and on my eventual website. The first I'm going to share is about peroxide.

I believe R.R. Wayne, PHD pioneered much of this research and I do owe quite a bit of gratitude to that. But again, trust issues. I've read a bit of his material. 

The theory is that hydrogen peroxide will not damage healthy mycelium, but will kill the bacteria and molds that will cause contamination in your grow. I recently bought a golden oyster kit from Root Mushroom farm and had one of my kids grow it out. The boy, who shall remain nameless, grew it less than enthusiastically. So it grew out pretty poorly and ended up contaminated. I tried to salvage things by creating a liquid culture so I could try again, but my technique was a little lacking that day or whatever and the culture was contaminated too. 

Eww.

Now, if I'd have thought about it, I would have performed an experiment with that, but I didn't do you get this one. 

As soon as I saw mycelium growing, I inoculated a couple of grain jars and waited. I checked the grain jars before I checked the liquid culture and spotted the contamination. 

Again... eww. 

I was not happy about this. So, I decided to try to salvage the spawn. That picture on the picnic table was taken July 28th. Shortly after I took the picture I poured in some peroxide. Without getting too scientific, I poured in "enough". It was enough to see that the peroxide had contacted the major spots of contamination. Then, I waited and watched. 

I took the next picture August 1st. 

You can see that the mycelium has greatly overtaken the contamination. I was still a little unsure and waited some more. I took another picture today August 5th.

It appears as though the mycelium has almost completely forced out the contamination, but not entirely. I plan on fruiting this bucket away from my main grow area out of a sense of caution, but I think it might make it. Just because science, I dosed again tonight with peroxide. Again, I used "enough." 

Time will tell. Hopefully this will be enough evidence for me and I can start using peroxide as a saving factor in contaminated grows in the future. Of course, using a flow hood instead of a cruddy still air box would be nice, but I ain't made of money. 

Someday.