Understanding Flow Hoods and sanitization for growing mushrooms.
Mushrooms are increasingly popular to grow at home. However, growing mushrooms can be quite tricky and many people make mistakes that lead to contamination of their mushroom cultures. One common mistake is not understanding the importance of sanitization when working with equipment like flow hoods which circulate air in your work area. The placement of the fan on a good flow hood will seal off the edges of your workspace so that it circulates only within this space; no outside contaminants can enter. If you’re new to mushroom farming or considering getting into it, read on for some helpful information about how to use flow hoods for best effect!
Mushroom growers often find themselves making costly mistakes due to lack of knowledge around sanitization and sterilization. To get the best results when growing mushrooms, you need to create an ideal growth environment for your mushrooms to grow. This means giving them the best nutrients and materials to grow on.
These are the mushroom substrates or mushroom media that you grow your mushrooms on, or in. If you think about growing mushrooms like growing vegetables in soil, then it puts your mind in close to the right framework. Just imagine now that you are the Matt Damon character from the movie Martian and you must grow your potatoes to survive. You would do everything you could to make your soil perfect, and to improve your growing conditions as best you could.
That same level of effort is a bit like growing mushrooms, or at least growing them well. The toughest part of growing mushrooms is maintaining a sterile environment for them to grow in. Contamination by other spores of molds, and other things, is the biggest challenges growers face.
One-way growers get the best yields and quality mushrooms is by creating and maintaining sterilization for their substrate, and the inoculation phase of their operation. The inoculation phase is where things can go smooth or go sideways fast.
In order to keep other containments out of your newly sterilized substrate, while putting the mushroom spores in growers, use labs that they set up in their mushroom farms with laminar flow hoods to keep contaminants in the air out of their substrate.
The laminar flow hood is the most effective way to protect your work surface, sample containers and instruments from contaminants in air. The laminar flow hood has been designed with an adjustable fan speed that allows you to control the amount of air flowing through it. This means that you can adjust the level of protection required for different types of experiments or procedures. This works amazingly well for your inoculation phase or step in your mushroom growing process.
Watch this video from our friend Mike Crowe to see him at work in his lab, using a flow hood as a part of his process, you will find it informative and hopefully entertaining as well.
Enjoy a visit to the lab with our friend Mike Crowe and see how he uses this impressive flow hood set up to keep his grow operations successful and safe.
Another visit to the lab with Mike to learn even more!
Many traditional farms thrive on dirt, but a mushroom farm requires extreme cleanliness. Welcome to our lab. Says “Mike”.
It is nice to see Mike taking these steps and being so open with his processes. This willingness to help guide others is a great instinct that Mike shares with other leaders in the Mushroom Farming business.
The mushroom industry is booming, and with this increase in production, there are a lot of new growers entering the market. This means that we need to do all we can to ensure the success of our mushrooms and keep them safe from contaminants. To do so, it’s important to understand how flow hoods work and what their benefits are. There will be an overview on sanitization strategies for your growing area as well as tips for ensuring you’re using proper gear before handling any mushrooms!
What is a laminar flow hood?
A laminar flow hood is used for working with biological materials, such as blood or tissue samples. In the case of mushroom farming it is more about what we are trying to keep out or cross contamination than preventing something from getting out of the lab area. The hood has two parts: A work area where your sample will be placed; and a plume chamber that contains all the air inside the hood. Air enters through one side of the hood and exits through the other side. This creates a steady stream of clean air over the surface of the material being worked on.