CULTIVATION TIPS ADVISIE Graze picking


By Jos Hilkens


AdVisie ‘the mushroom growing consultants’, Herkenbosch hilkens@mushroomconsulting.nl


Graze picking (see photo), is not yet standard practice on all farms, even though this method has already proven to be very advantageous. With the grazing picking method, the picker harvests the same bed between two and eight times on the same day. The precise number of times depends on the production that day, the number of pickers, the total number of hours spent harvesting that day, the expected speed of growth of the mushrooms, the harvesting equipment etc. In the fi rst picking cycle, the entire room must be harvested within two hours. By harvesting the largest mushrooms, space is created on the beds so the other mushrooms have more room to grow and carbon dioxide is removed more eff ectively. This gives better quality mushrooms. As the mushrooms being harvested all have more or less the same cap diameter, the result is a highly uniform yield with more visual appeal. Graze picking allows the other mushrooms on the beds to keep growing, hence increasing the individual weight and therefore production. The heavier piece weight, and less work grading the mushrooms, clearly boosts the picking performance. If there are no self-propelled picking platforms on the farm, moving along the beds takes time, but that is compensated for by the benefi ts. As graze picking means that on busy days the last bed to be picked is no longer left for six to eight hours before t e fi rst mushrooms are picked, but is picked after a maximum of two hours, the growth speed will slow and fewer harves- ting hours will be needed on the peak day. During the last one to two passes over the beds, the picker also leaves larger mushrooms to create variations in size between the mushrooms left on the beds. This is however, the most diffi cult aspect of graze picking. When the picker looks at the bed after picking, the mushrooms left must clearly diff er in size.


Too much of a good thing Mushroom production per m2 weight fi lled, the higher production in m2


correlates to the compost fi lling weight. The higher the compost , provided the cultivation conditions can be managed


By Con Hermans


AdVisie ‘the mushroom growing consultants’, Heythuysen hermans@mushroomconsulting.nl


Photos: AdVisie


properly. However, you shouldn’t just look at the fi lling weight, but rather at how much dry matter is fi lled. Good quality compost naturally contains enough moisture, but a too high moisture con- tent is detrimental to the dry matter content. It is better to apply the extra water necessary later. The same applies to dry matter: be careful what you fi ll as dry matter consists of organic matter and ash. Mushrooms only grow on the organic matter, so there is a direct correlation between the amount of organic matter fi lled in kilos and how many kilos of mushrooms can be harvested. You should see the ash as ballast, and its volume should be as low as possible. There are extremely wide diff erences in the ash content of incubated compost over the world, ranging from 25 to 40%. The ash content is determined by two factors: the degree of fermentation of the compost and how much chicken manure and gypsum has been added. The nature of the chicken manure also greatly infl uences the compost’s ash content. This can be a diff erence of factor two to three. Ash should therefore be one of the criteria applied when selecting chicken manure - but this is not currently taken enough into account. The amount of gypsum added by many composters could also be more precise. Almost half the ash in incubated compost originates from the gypsum. Gypsum is an integral component of good compost, but it is often added in abundance. Here too, you can have too much of a good thing - maybe not directly at the composting plant but certainly at farm level.


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Consulting for: the mushroom growing consultants


Jos Hilkens +31(0)653 31 6204


Mushroom growing Disease control 6 MUSHROOM BUSINESS


Composting


Con Hermans +31(0)653 29 9396


www.mushroomconsulting.nl


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