– otherwise you won’t survive. No time to relax, always on the move. As this region is traditionally known for mushroom production, we have to travel all over the country to serve the market with our fresh mushrooms. I investigated the kind of produce suitable to co-trans- port with mushrooms and discovered all kinds of berries. Mushrooms do not go well with potatoes or tomatoes on the same trailer, it’s bad for quality. I have cooled storage, processing and transport facilities all over the country, and our own fleet of delivery vehicles. Nowadays we also grow berries. We have four mushrooms farms – ranging from old to new and produce 600 tons of mushrooms a week in a total of 85 Pennsylvania
doubles (traditional Pennsylva- nian-style mushroom growing rooms). The newest of my farms has six large growing rooms of 1440 square metres with aluminium shelving, and is a kind of further develop- ment of the typical doubles. I am also one of the five partners in Laurel Valley compost, who produce phase II for us. They’re my neighbours. I love working here, surrounded by so many family members.”
Cultivation
At the Basciani’s newest farm, a system of filling the rooms in blocks is used. This means that all the growing rooms, on all the farms, are filled in succes- sion so that on this site all the rooms hold mushrooms at the same stage of cultivation. The advantage offered by this
method is that only three weeks of the eight-week cycle are devoted to picking, which impacts positively on the disease pressure. The farm operates an eight-week cropping cycle on phase II compost supplied by Laurel Valley. The incubation time before casing is 14-15 days. The compost is inoculated with 95% Lambert 901 spawn and 5% Sylvan A15. A head filler from Dutch company Mushcomb is used, and Fancom control computers regulate the climate. The casing soil comprises dry Canadian sphag- num peat mixed with lime and water before CI or CAC spawn is added. The company works with high filling weights of more than 100 kgs of compost per square metre converted back to incubated substrate.
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Before cool down during the first two days after casing, a good 10 litres of water per square metre is sprayed , followed by two days without water to allow the mycelium to colonise to the top of the substrate.
Cool down starts on day four, and spraying starts again too at a rate of 1.5 litres per square metre from day four to day eight. Spraying stops again between day nine and 12, but once the pinheads emerge the beds are watered every day, including during the first and second flush. The third flush is not sprayed. This method is typical when using dried Canadian peat as it easily absorbs and releases moisture without a real buffering effect. Yields are around 40 kg per square metre.
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