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Small portabellas produced by a third fl ush. This adds up to extra kilos.
compost added at casing (CAC) is essential. The se- cond flush is picked on day 26 or 27. This cycle can be stretched to five weeks with three flushes. The huge advantage compared with a six-week cycle is the time gain. On an annual basis, you can fill a growing room 10.4 times instead of 8.67 times with a six-week cycle. There are also disadvantages. The limited time available before cool down demands a very well and consistently incubated compost, preferably left to incubate for longer than the 16 days used as standard by most composters today. To safeguard the speed of colonisation through the compost, a lot of CAC material is added. This is de- trimental to mycelium quality, which later translates to poorer mushroom quality. With this five-week cycle, time is often lacking to cook out properly meaning that the compost is removed before it has been steamed. This means greater risks, also because three flushes - with a higher disease pres- sure- have been produced. On the other hand, there is still time to steam clean the growing room before it is filled again. A slight hiccup – such as less well- incubated compost or too heavy casing soil – is all it takes to compromise completing the cycle in the 35 days available. The usual victim is the third flush,
which can often only be partially harvested, or not at all, thereby overshooting the aim of the exercise.
Other cycles On larger farms where several growing rooms can be filled each week, rotating cycles is also a possibility. For instance, if you fill room 17 in one cycle on Tuesdays, the room can be filled a cycle later on Thursdays so you create a cycle of e.g. 30 days (two flushes) or 37 days (three flushes). This is an option worth considering if a little more time is needed than a standard cycle offers. The advantages of this situation for a two-flush cycle are evident. Four weeks is often too short for two flushes, but five weeks is an unnecessary luxury. For a three-flush cycle a length of, for example, five weeks and three days doesn’t present many benefits. The picture changes on farms that use a multi-zone system. Trays are filled on a filling line, placed in incubation rooms and depending on the type of compost used, incubated or spawned. The trays stay in these incubation rooms until pins start to emerge, after which they are transported to a picking room. The cycle time here is a minimum of three weeks (with two flushes) and maximum four weeks (with
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A third fl ush can mature very quickly if the casing soil is dry.
Good spread and fi rm, plump mushrooms.
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