PINHEADING
stagnation in the growth of the pins and mushrooms. If growth does stop, it is extremely difficult to get it kick-started again, and far from ideal. Attempting to do so usually results in loss of quality and production. An error is often made here that is not always recognised immediately. If air humidity remains too high, the pinheads will be unable to evaporate properly and will show hardly any further development, or fail to grow at all. Insufficient air movement can also be the cause behind bad evaporation and consequently poor development.
Compost and casing soil quality There can also be several other causes of poor pinhead development. Poorer or bad compost quality will greatly inhibit pinhead growth for the second flush, and extremely poor quality compost will inhibit growth even before the first flush. With poor quality compost, a lower air temperature should be applied sooner and for a longer period in order to stimulate pinhead development than with good quality compost. The process is complicated if the compost qual- ity fluctuates too much, and makes obtaining the ideal number of pinheads in all the rooms effectively out of the question. Recognising good or bad quality compost is not always possible, but as soon as you notice thick strands of myce- lium this is a sure sign of inadequate compost. The greater the mass of mycelium, the poorer the compost quality. Good quality compost is characterised by good, fine mycelium growth in the compost, is usually reasonably active and has a fairly strong, typical, sweet mycelium smell. However, even if all the visual signs are
positive, this is no guarantee that the compost actually has sufficient nutrients for later flushes – certainly if a lot of mushrooms were picked in the first flush. A combination of good compost quality and good casing soil quality will normally show very rapid pinhead development for the second flush after the first flush too, whereby the spread is more difficult to influence due to the spontaneity of pinhead development. This indicates abundant nutrient availability in the compost. Growers can exert a some degree of positive influence in steering towards larger pinheads by working with a higher CO2 value, but good quality compost and a heavier casing soil quality also greatly affect the process of stimulating larger pinheads that will ultimately develop into heavier mushrooms.
Spread
What action can growers take to influence the spread in a first flush optimally? Here, the uniformity of the various cropping cycles also plays an important role. The more similarity the cycles show, the easier it is for growers to steer development from cycle to cycle. Once again, the compost quality greatly influences uniformity and the number of pinheads that grow, or should grow, at the various moments of the cycle. The younger generation of pin- heads must still be able to absorb sufficient nutrients in order to grow, even if they share the bed with already larger pinheads or even fully-fledged mushrooms. At a time like this, the presence of nutrients in the compost, i.e. the compost quality, is the determining factor. The best instrument a grower can use is the air
An often-seen phenomenon in American standard doubles, where the climate is very diffi cult to control.
10 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Too little space between the beds means it is almost impossible to encourage the right number of pinheads.
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