AGARICUS CULTIVATION By John Peeters
Mushroom production, a race against the clock?
Mushroom production today is a highly industrialised phenomenon. Growers are often also traders, and customers dictate the quality and timing of the mushrooms to be delivered. However, the reality is a little more complex.
L
arge production facilities with a lot of staff, who are vital for the harvest, are well-oiled units. For example, if 20 tons of mushrooms are planned for
picking on a Monday at a farm, there has to be this many available. After all, customers expect the freshest possible produce and as we all know mushrooms have a limited shelf life. So how can growers organise this?
Filling day The day that simultaneous filling and casing takes place largely determines the timing of the first day of harvest. Depending on the cropping cycle, which can vary from approximately four to six weeks with two or three flushes, the first harvest day of the first flush will be 14 to 18 days after the growing room has been filled. This makes Friday the most popular filling day, as growing rooms filled on Fridays are normally ready for harvesting on Mondays. Mushrooms picked on Mondays are often on the supermar- ket shelves before the weekend. But let’s zoom in on some different scenarios which are all based on growing rooms that are simultaneously filled and cased.
All growers have to deal with high (fresh) customer
expectations and a very limited shelf life.
32 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Four-week cycle with two flushes To start with, there is some debate as to whether the day of filling is called day 0 or day 1. Perso- nally, I consider the filling day as the first day of the process, so I refer to it as day 1. All other days are derived from day 1, so a week after fil- ling is day 8. But, if you prefer to call the filling day ‘day 0’, simply subtract one day from my advice. The four-week cycle is especially popular with growers of brown mushrooms, as they emerge on the beds one to two days sooner than white mushrooms. To enable the second flush to appear on time, in a four-week cycle the first harvest day must often be no later than day 15. This means that if the filling day was a Monday, picking is also done on a Monday. Achieving this
can be quite a challenge with white mushrooms. If this cropping cycle is applied, any delays in the cultivation process must be avoided. So the compost must have a good or very good extent of spawn run and must also be brought to the right temperature to initiate growth - about 25°C - as quickly as possible. Basically, you have day 1 to day 3 to spray, with possibly a brief session on day 4 in the morning. The growing room then enters the recovery period with cool down on day 5. With moderately spawn run compost with mycelium that still has to develop during the time in the growing room, you face the problem of the strongest temperature peak during cool down. This leads to the situation where you struggle to contain the peak by often using lower air temperatures and higher fan speeds than desirable to encourage good mycelium growth. Tighter cropping cycles do however allow more frequent use of the growing rooms and boost the farm’s total production volume. It is a good cycle to use with a somewhat lower compost price and decent prices for mushrooms, but it can sometimes be a race against the clock without any rest for the room. And if you are growing white mushrooms, as I already mentio- ned, it is quite a challenge.
Four week cycle with two flushes.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
