Determining the Feasibility of Compost Production from Agronomic Waste and Wood Byproducts through Mushroom Cultivation Techniques for the Small Farmer

Determining the Feasibility of Compost Production from Agronomic Waste and Wood Byproducts through Mushroom Cultivation Techniques for the Small Farmer

Summary

Mushroom cultivation is a method by which fungal tissue (mycelium) is cultured on semi-sterile, nutrient-rich media. The mycelium can then be used to inoculate hardwood logs or straw/sawdust bags. This project is examining the feasibility of producing a high quality soil amendment from wood waste products using commercial mushroom cultivation techniques. Such techniques have been used worldwide to manage agronomic waste while obtaining a profit, while the byproducts of mushroom cultivation have been shown to have considerable value as an environmentally benign soil amendment. This project is trying to answer the questions of how much time and money is required to utilize this technique for small-scale, diversified farms.

Objectives/Performance Targets

This project will test the feasibility of small-scale farmers using this technology by:

• Documenting the budget for the process, both in expenses and returns.
• Charting the number of hours expended in the cultivation process.
• Measuring the amount of compost produced.
• Testing the finished compost for nutrient content.

Accomplishments/Milestones

This project has established a laboratory and grow-room facility, produced several crops of mushrooms on various substrates, established a cost of production based on materials and sterilization costs, submitted several compost samples for analysis and presented material and data to agronomists and mycologists.

While most of the planned work has been completed, refinement of several sensitive processes under varying environmental conditions continues. For example, moisture content, the duration of sterilization or pasteurization, pH, ambient contamination and incubation can all be affected by shifts in such environmental factors as temperature and pest pressure, which, in turn, can influence yields. The project coordinator is trying to include as many sample crops as possible to create a more statistically significant data set.

Ultimately, the goal is to construct a narrative that describes environmental influence on nutrient composition of spent mushroom substrate over time, which goes beyond the initial scope of the grant to provide the most comprehensive report possible.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

A poster from the project, which is a review of the literature on spent substrate and an overview of the Western SARE grant work, has been created and presented to the Third International Medicinal Mushroom Conference and the 2005 and 2006 Washington Tilth Conferences.

The poster received positive reviews at the mushroom conference, drawing interest from a diversity of individuals from around the world. The working abstract was published in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms.

The project coordinator’s research led him to several articles on the effects of mushroom polysaccharides on broiler chickens, namely the impact on weight gain, bacterial populations in the cecum, coccidiosis and immune response in young chickens. With the articles as a resource, he performed his own on-farm trial, providing spent substrate to pasture-raised broiler chickens and examining death rate and carcass weights. While the 2005 trial yielded some interesting and potentially significant data, some experimental design discrepancies have served as lessons for future studies, which are continuing as part of this Western SARE grant research.

In addition, a PowerPoint presentation was made on the life cycle of the mushroom and mushroom cultivation at the Evergreen State College Organic Farm during Harvest Festival. And the coordinator led an interpretative mushroom walk for a group of students from Evergreen.

Collaborators: