Too often there are problems with second flushes. The first flush is rather normal but not extra-ordinary. The problem starts showing on the third harvesting day of that first flush by loss of quality and second flushes do not come back the way they should.
If the casing soil of those rooms is examined closely then it will appear that whatever water is given, it is still very dry. All water given after the first flush seems to be gone before the flush has even started.
Most of the times there is too much mycelium in that casing soil. A problem what was already there before the start of the first flush but really shows in the second.
At that moment the problem cannot be solved anymore. One has to look for solutions before even the fructification has started.
Solutions lay in the choice of casing soil, the amount of water on that casing soil during incubation, the way of watering and in the climate control during casing soil incubation.

Too much mycelium results in too fine strands of mycelium and therefore a lack of water transport to the mushrooms. Mycelium dries out very fast and too much mycelium forms a crust together with the casing soil. What is needed is a thick, white type of mycelium. Only this can guarantee strong, heavy and white mushrooms. Especially in second flushes.

Henk van Gerwen

On April 23 and 24, the Russian Mushroom Days took place at the Azimut Olympic Hotel in Moscow. Every year the event attracts more and more professionals from around the world. And already at the entrance it became obvious that this one was no exception.
Within the Mushroom days, a two-day international conference “Russian mushroom growing: a new quality of growth” was held, at which manufacturers of equipment and services from Russia, Europe and Asia spoke. I was lucky to present products new to the Russian market at the conference: ChampFood supplements and Lambert mycelium. Lambert presented the revolutionary Speed Spawn to the Russian audience, which aroused great interest among those present.
The conference announced the production and consumption of champignons in Russia in 2018 and early 2019, which surpassed all, even the wildest forecasts of previous years. I had the opportunity to talk with the heads of the mushroom enterprises operating and under construction with a total capacity of 70,000 tons of mushrooms per year. It is important to note that the rapid growth of mushroom production in Russia is taking place against the background of a smooth growth of retail and wholesale prices for mushrooms.

In the near future, competition between manufacturers will increase, and the main factor determining the success of enterprises will be the quality of management. Since there are only a few such specialists in Russia, the management culture of large mushroom enterprises should be imported in the same way as equipment and mycelium. For long-term sales of equipment and services in Russia, and even more so for possible investments, it is necessary to supply not only equipment and materials, but also production culture. The farther, the more accessible the material resources will be, but the payback of investment will depend more and more on the culture of their use.

Establishing a good harvesting team is very important and every farm needs a good leading example with eye for details to lead that process. A good harvest management can make or break all the efforts from earlier stages. What is a good starting point and where are improvements possible?

Of course the best starting point is knowing and realizing what benefits selective picking can bring. As explained in my earlier blog a mushroom grows rapidly and doubles in weight every 24 hours. In an ideal situation that means harvesting 24 hours would be the most beneficial. Every time when the mushrooms reach their maximum size they get picked and every pass the pickers do, space is created for the other mushrooms so that as many possible mushrooms can reach that maximum size. What that maximum size is depends also on the market. Of course that is hard to manage to harvest 24 hours but some companies make it work and see huge improvements in yield and quality. When you do a trial yourself on a few square meters and see how much more yield you can get when you only pick the mushrooms when they are ready to be picked, the results will be stunning. I did it myself one day on a big farm where they were harvesting already on a reasonable level in 2 shifts and still got 43% (!) more yield. Now that is hard to do with all the pickers on big farms but it shows the potential and importance of good training, managing and planning.

My experience is that on a small farm the owner is more involved in the daily operations, the amount of pickers is lower and therefore the results in yield and quality are better than on many big farms where managing the people is a bigger task.

Training and a good system will bring you many advantages and a quality that stands out. Every farm should have a designated trainer that will train new pickers into perfection. Remember that it’s easier to train a new picker when you spend the time then retrain pickers with bad habits. When new pickers come to join the team they should have a motivated coach and someone with know-how who can explain the selective picking way into detail. Training pickers on selective picking in their first weeks is more important than the speed they pick. As most of the farms pay their pickers per kg, they will pick up the speed later. In a lot of farms, the best picker is always related to the one with the best picking performance based on speed, but is that so? Try to measure how many total kg every individual picker makes every week. You will find out that some pickers harvest more total kg than others, those pickers bring you more yield and are more valuable for the farm as the fastest picker.

Planning rooms according the expected daily production is very important in the process of selective picking. Selective picking requires that only the mushrooms that need to be harvested are getting picked, not more. Picking too small in the morning because there are too many pickers in the room or because the same pickers have to go to other rooms will cost production. Try to plan in every single room the needed amount of pickers so that each room can harvest the entire day. Another advantage of that is that you can start in the morning some pickers already in the 2nd and 3rd flushes instead of doing that later and loose already quality. On many occasions the 3rd flushes get only harvested at the end of the working day when mushrooms are already soft and opening, not very good for quality and yield at all!

First important step to learn would be to estimate the total production of the day and the picking performance of the available pickers. That will give you the total needed hours to harvest the room. If you divide that number by the required picking time you get the total of pickers needed for that day, in that room. See below an example of a set-up for your daily production planning.

Every room is planned on the total expected kg, picking performance and based on that information, in the last column the total amount of pickers needed for that day in the individual grow rooms, based on an 8 hours working day.

That way you will give the mushrooms the required time to grow. Every hour a mushroom will grow 1mm and in weight 4%. Every pass the pickers make they should only pick those that are ready and leave the others. Picking down a room with nice quality mushrooms to 50 mm early in the day because they are not getting harvested until the next day, is disastrous for yield. Even when you have only 1 room to pick for the day, plan the amount of pickers so that you make advantage of the growth of the mushrooms during all day.

To introduce the picking method on your farm will be a process that, depending on how you manage this, will take some time. See it as an investment for the future but definitely worth doing. The benefits will be huge and in a competitive market necessary for every farm to compete.

Erik de Groot
GLAGS Global Agriculture Services
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Longer pre-wetting of straw to preserve structure during mushroom composting

In my 'Pre-wet' blog, I already wrote about the importance of pre-wetting for good mushroom substrate. In this blog, I would like to discuss the structure of straw. I often hear customers say: "We are shortening the pre-wetting time because the structure of the compost is too short." But I disagree with this statement. Why? Read all about it in this blog.

If the straw has a shorter pre-wetting period, the micro life is less likely to damage the hard wax layer of the compost. The idea is that the straw and, therefore, the compost stays longer.

The problem lies in the machines that process the straw. Proper mixing is done by rapidly rotating shafts that pick up the compost and spread it mixed, to optimise blending. Hard straw breaks in these machines, however, which results in shorter structure.

Further opening up the straw, by way of a longer pre-wet or by adding an additional dose of water a few days after the start of the pre-wet, softens the straw. Softer straw breaks less easily and therefore retains more structure.

Conclusion
We can compare straw with spaghetti. If we want to put spaghetti in a small pan, we can break it and it will fit, but the structure becomes shorter. Allowing the spaghetti to warm up a little first makes it soft, so you can get all the spaghetti into the pan without breaking it.

Nutrients
If the growing room is filled while there are still yellow straw sprigs in the compost that have not been opened up, this is a problem. The water is not absorbed by the compost; and in addition, the mycelium literally cannot grow in the straw. This prevents the mushrooms from getting any nutrients from the straw. You also continue to see the same yellow straw sprigs in the compost in the second/third flush. Non-opened compost only provides filling weight, but the mycelium cannot feed the mushrooms from it.

Mark den Ouden
More question about composting? Follow the Master class of Mushroom Office, given by Mark den Ouden and John Peeters. From 29 April – 4 May, see more information, by click on this link.