sugar-cane bagasse as substrate for mushroom growing

HI folks out there, as like my previous thread that i want to start growing mushroom, can anyone out there tell me is there anything that i must do to treat the bagasse apart from boiling and sterilizing the bagasse? what i have here is from the market that juice is extracted for as sugarcane juice. They will then throw away the sugarcane ..... as like they litter the streets with it!!! so its going to make the place smelly and so on till the rubbish truck come along... that is if the guys working do no go for a pay rise strike . I came across quite alot of people saying that they use the sugarcane bagasse to grow mushroom on. Since if it can be used, i was thinking i might as well use it to help reduce to waste over here... By the way i intend to use spent coffee grounds as well. but dont think its that easy as i think i have to travel round the whole Cambodia to collect miserable amounts from the shop.... Thanks in advance..

The only other thing that I can think of would be a small amount of nitrogen for the fungi. They don't need much, but if the bagasse is 100% carbohydrate (which is very likely), then they may be a little protein starved. If you are close to the ocean, you could throw some fresh seaweed (which is where agar comes from) into the cooking pot with the bagasse. You don't need much, just a few percent.

John Elliott wrote:The only other thing that I can think of would be a small amount of nitrogen for the fungi. They don't need much, but if the bagasse is 100% carbohydrate (which is very likely), then they may be a little protein starved. If you are close to the ocean, you could throw some fresh seaweed (which is where agar comes from) into the cooking pot with the bagasse. You don't need much, just a few percent.

Thanks John. i was thinking to add the spent coffee grounds to it since the coffee grounds has lots of nitrogen.... good idea to add some agar in it...

I realize your post was from 6 years ago and hope you've had success since then in finding mushroom species and substrates to suit your location. I'm just getting started in Miami, FL and interested in using banana leaves as a freely available component of substrate, but have not yet experimented. Only purchased grow kits and made fruiting chambers from plastic tubs. Good luck!