Mushroom Diseases and Prevention:

Mushrooms (being themselves a fungus) are particularly susceptible to various diseases and blights. Several fungal and bacterial diseases afflict mushrooms, but are usually only serious on a commercial scale. Bacterial blotch, which causes mushrooms to become discoloured and sticky, is usually encouraged by high temperatures, moist conditions and by inadequate ventilation. This can easily be avoided by regular cooling and ventilation of the propagating area. Correct cultural treatment should prevent the troubles associated with these ailments, but if they do occur, watering with a solution of sodium hypochlorite or solely chlorinated water will assist in combating the diseases. This treatment as well as the use of dusts or sprays of zineb or quintozene will control certain other diseases of mushrooms.

The symptoms caused by the various aforementioned afflictions and diseases are usually very similar and care must be taken to ascertain the exact nature of any affliction. Expert reviews should be carried out before treatment is carried out as this will prevent possible destruction of the entire crop. Virus diseases which also attack mushrooms can only be controlled by steam sterilizing an infected mushroom growing bed and the affected soils. The soil is often the harbourer of the diseases too.

Mushroom flies are also a source of death and destruction in the mushroom community and can cause widespread devastation of most mushroom crops in a short space of time. The maggots of fungus gnats and other flies tunnel into the soft flesh stalks and caps of mushrooms, rendering them inedible and encouraging wilt and disease. The small invading adult flies often present in large numbers due to their virulence, can be eradicated by fumigating with nicotine or spraying with nicotine or pyrethrum. Control of infestations can also be executed by the use of watering with a spray strength solution of these insecticides into infested mushroom plots to kill hiding maggots and parasites. Both the diseases of mushrooms and the blighting pests that haunt them too are notoriously difficult to control and prevent in the amateur plot, merely due to the differing degrees or available decaying matter in your next-door-neighbours’ garden.

One of the worst possible tasks to attempt is to control the spread of soil borne diseases as these will require time consuming and laborious methods to prevent and defeat the diseases. When cultivating fungus in the garden for edible forms of mushrooms, particular care must be taken to avoid the cultivation of ‘grey mould’ – a particularly destructive disease whose spores can lay waste to entire crops of leafy vegetables. If grey mould does occur, the infected plants and land should be burnt. If the spores are present under glass in the greenhouse then the area can be cleared by the use of the fumigator tecnazene. Good luck with combating the spread of mushroom diseases and blight as they are, in effect, biological matter and will require specific and monitored attention to eradicate them effectively.

Kindly written by Kevin Thorns