UNITED STATES
The beautiful venue of Sylvan’s Winter Workshop.
‘Money is obvious ly a
motivator, but it is not all down to hard cash’
will still take some time before Kennett switches to using a phase III compost system similar to virtually the rest of the world. “We are just not ready yet. Our hygiene is based on a single zone system with cook out, and many believe the benefit of phase III has still not been demon- strated in this case. Simultaneous filling and casing? Yes, it’s sure to arrive some time, but the farms here haven’t reached that stage yet.” Despite this view, developments in this area seems to have slowly stepped up a gear. Many farms are changing to a system of cook out in tunnels, and at Needham Mushrooms, for example, phase II compost is pressed into blocks and spawned in special rooms, so that although in block form, phase III is being filled in Kennett Square. They are certainly doing it the Kennett way – but this approach has proven to be profitable in the past too.
Winter Workshop
The high number of growers still buying spawn means that two major players in the spawn market in the USA are both very active locally. Lambert’s spawn plant is located close by, and one of Sylvan’s facilities is located close to Pittsburgh, and they have a sales office in Kennett. On 16 March, Sylvan organised a Winter Workshop in nearby Avondale, aimed at infor-
ming growers about modern methods of composting, growing and harvesting. Winter Workshop was an aptly chosen name, as although winter was nearing its close in Pennsylvania, a big snowfall was experienced two days before the event. Nevertheless, 30 growers still attended the workshop. Most of the lecturers came from the Netherlands and had enough expertise with modern systems to explain all the ins and outs. Bart Driessen, an independent advisor and partner in Global Mushroom Growing Consultants (GMBC) started by explaining about pH in the composting process. “Compost must never be allowed to become greasy”, said Driessen, “which is why gypsum is so crucial.” Mixing poultry manure and gypsum before adding to the other raw materials for the substrate is fine. The main thing to watch out for is that the compost never becomes anaerobic because of excessive moisture or a poor structure, because the pH won’t decrease enough in this case.” Driessen used some photos of the immense Yuguan farm in China, a project supervised by GMBC, to illustrate his points.
Canadian peat A historical Kennett Square farm. 10 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Next on the podium was Sylvan’s Rick Lazza- rini with a brief introduction to using Nicolon nets under the compost. This is a relatively new development for many growers in the region. Lazzarini explained aspects such as cleaning the nets and the useful life cycle. Bart de Leeuw from McSubstradd then spoke on the subject of various types of NIR ana- lysis and how to use the data. In the USA, Sylvan sells McSubstradd in different forms to in Europe, as supplement is mainly added here at inoculation. As Trichoderma is a more ever-present risk here than in Europe, the supplement must also serve to boost the com- post’s natural resistance to this green mould.
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