UNITED KINGDOM UK get together at Leckford
Since the demise of the Mushroom Growers’ Association in 2005, there has been no organised meeting, or farm walk or get together for mushroom growers in England.
That changed on the 1st of March, at the Leckford Estate. By Rodney Barrett
▲ Peter Howard, of G’s Fresh Mushrooms, and Jack Ward of the British Growers Association chaired the meeting of the Mushroom Growers Panel.
A 16 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
t the kind invitation of the Waitrose Farm at Leckford in Hampshire a group of mushroom people met for a meeting of the
Mushroom Growers Panel, and then a walk around the Leckford Mushroom farm and a visit to Tunnel Tech, located on the same estate (see also MB20).
The meeting in the morning of the Mushroom Growers Panel is normally held at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire, but on this occasion, due to the Leckford invitation, was also open for other interested levy paying growers to attend. Leckford also provided the growers and suppliers with a buffet lunch kindly paid for by British Growers Association Ltd.
Visitors were welcomed to the Leckford Estate by Olga Pawelczak, the new mushroom farm manager and Mike Green the head grower. Olga also showed the assembled group some other
products currently being grown on the Estate all of which are available in Waitrose stores, these being of wine, apple juice, flour and cold pressed rape seed oil, sample packs and bottles of which were given to all those present.
Leckford Mushroom Farm Following lunch a visit was made first to the mushroom farm which is now only growing browns, all of which go into the Waitrose Supermarket chain. This farm was one of the first Dutch Style shelf farms to be built in the UK back in 1986 and at that time was of 10 rooms of 630 m2 being filled with bulk phase II compost. Within a year it was expanded by another 5 rooms of 315 m2. In those early days a 10 week cycle was the norm and 4 flushes were taken. As things progressed an 8 week 3 flush programme became possible due to the arrival of the hybrid strains, the farm then changed the rooms to 8
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