AGARICUS CULTIVATION
...or with a drawer system in terms of the moment of harvest. The mushrooms must grow at the time needed.
It makes little difference whether you work with tilting shelves… The art is in
balancing the interests and
possibilities of growing,
harvesting and trading.
Provided there is a low disease pressure on the farm of course. There is less time pressure, you can fill on a regular day and the mycelium has plenty of time to develop into a solid foundation for the mushrooms. This cycle is quite common in Europe on smaller farms where there is still time to properly detect and treat diseases and pay a lot of attention to the individual growing cells. Even if the compost price is high, for example because of long-distance transport, this cycle is still popular.
Photos: John Peeters. Illustrations: Mushroom Office
34 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Timing of harvesting So how can you optimise these cropping cycles? The harvest manager must follow a certain plan- ning. They need to know precisely how many mushrooms are to be harvested on which day in connection with scheduling pickers. Traders require their orders on a certain day and the mushrooms also have to be cooled and packed. Growers must factor in all these aspects and ensure the right quantity of mushrooms can be picked on the right day. However, mushrooms and compost are natural products that do not always behave or perform as expected. Things can happen a day or two sooner or later in the growing room. What growers can do is discuss with all the stakeholders whether harvesting the required quantity at the right time is feasible at least five days before the impending harvest. Communica-
tion is key here. Sometimes a growing room fails to perform on schedule. You can often bring production in those rooms a day forward, but you need to start and steer the process well in advance by taking the right action at the right moment. This requires experience and foresight. Increasing the growing room temperature before the pin- heads have emerged will mainly delay things. This also applies to rooms with too much myce- lium on the surface of the beds. Mushrooms often appear faster in rooms where the pinheads are nestled deeper and the compost temperature is not too low. Also remember that if you increase the temperature during pinhead development, you may have to pick three kilos more per m2 from the beds on the day of harvest and the quality may deteriorate faster. The art is in balancing the interests and possibilities of growing, harvesting and trading.
You have to coordinate the activities of growing, harvesting, packing and trading perfectly.
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