Mushroom mania
The Institute of Horticultural Science, a division of the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, has established a Mushroom Research Laboratory where a variety of mushroom spawn is developed. This institute sells the spawn and offers guidance on all aspects of mushroom farming, writes Zahrah Nasir
It’s mushroom all the way these days –– fried, boiled, roasted, sliced, stuffed, sautéed, curried, herbed, bread-crumbed, I feel like Bubba in ‘Forrest Gump’ who was forever reeling off recipes for shrimps and, for this, I must give a great big thanks to all of you out there who bombarded me with questions about growing this versatile food.
My expedition to seek out and solve the mysteries of mushroom growing took place on a beautiful spring day, the kind of day when everything in the world is singing with joy except, that is, for the engine of the taxi I had hired for the occasion and which broke down not once but three infuriating times as we tried to locate the mushroom farm whose owner had agreed to divulge all the secrets of his trade.
We eventually arrived at the correct location, after driving in endless circles on back country roads, finding two large chicken sheds of the former poultry farm which were absolutely heaving with bags of sprouting button mushrooms but no guide in sight. A couple of workmen, totally involved in the back-breaking task of loading hundreds of plastic bags, packed with previously ‘spawned’ compost, on a truck, didn’t object when I cheekily took myself off on a tour of inspection. I should have waited for the owner to arrive but was desperate to see what growing mushrooms on a commercial scale is all about and, at the back of my mind, was the thought that maybe he would change his mind and refuse to divulge the secrets of his success. By the time the owner arrived I had already learnt much of what both my readers and myself needed to know and the workmen had filled me in on the basic details which the proud owner was happy to expand on.
Button mushrooms, those expensive treats which many of us would enjoy growing at home are more correctly called ‘agaricus bisporus’ and actually need cool, not warm, growing conditions. They produce best at temperatures below 20°C, unlike ‘oyster mushrooms’ which need temperatures way above this. This low temperature requirement was why bags of spawned compost were being loaded on to the truck. Temperatures in the Islamabad area were rising rapidly, a full six weeks earlier than normal, so the farm was in the process of making its annual transition from the hot plains up in to the much cooler hills for the summer. Button mushrooms are grown in the plains from October to the end of February, sometimes to April if temperatures remain low enough and then up in the hills from February to the end of September.
Other than a source of spawn, the trick to growing this species of mushrooms lies in the compost which is tricky and rather expensive to make. At this farm, the ingredients vary from place to place, the all important compost comprises a mix of old poultry manure, ‘boosa’ which is chopped wheat straw, organic peat and pure, rough ground gypsum which is tightly packed in five kilograms clear plastic bags and then steam-sterilised to remove any weed seeds or other impurities.
Sterilisation, during which process the compost is heated to 50°C and kept at this temperature for two hours, is done in an ingenious yet very simple contraption, designed by this farm’s owner, which involves heating a large drum over a gas flame. Inside the base of the drum is an arrangement of water covered bricks on top of which as many bags of compost as can be pushed in are placed during the two hour process. When sterilisation is going on, the work at the farm is round the clock.
After sterilisation the compost is allowed to sit in its sealed bags for up to thirty days. The reason for the added gypsum is to help during the sterilisation process and to balance the ph of the compost which needs to be ph7 or ph7.5 maximum for successful mushroom cultivation. Once this waiting period is over then the bags are opened and the precious spawn is mixed through, the bags are then re-sealed for an additional thirty days or so by which time the spawn should have become active.
This spawn first manifests itself as a mass of cotton wool type threads called ‘mycelium’, which needs to be carefully broken up and evenly distributed through the compost in order to obtain a decent crop. If it is not broken up then the mushrooms grow in one single clump and production is very low.
At this stage the spawned bags are left open at the top to allow the first ‘flush’ of mushrooms to pop up, something they do very quickly indeed provided that correct conditions are maintained. These mushrooms, like many others, need to be grown in dark, humid conditions. Humidity is maintained by a regular spraying with clean water and, I must admit, the mushroom growing area of this farm was pretty wet and yucky indeed!
Mushrooms give off carbon monoxide when they are growing and huge extractor fans are used to pull the poisonous air out of the closed growing area on a regular basis. If this is not done then all of the baby ‘pin-head’ mushrooms go brown and die.
One of these spawned bags of compost gives between four to seven flushes of mushrooms, each flush can be in the region of two kilograms upwards which is pretty good in my opinion and I can safely vouch for the fact that two kilograms is an awful lot of mushrooms.
This farm imports mushroom spawn from California but don’t despair. Some more research led me to the Institute of Horticultural Science, a division of the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad who have established a Mushroom Research Laboratory where, under the guidance of Dr Muhammad Asif Ali a variety of mushroom spawn has been developed, including a button mushroom which is claimed to tolerate temperatures of 27°C ––- 30°C and three types of oyster mushrooms.
Even better, this institute sells mushroom spawn and offers guidance on all aspects of mushroom farming.
So there we have it readers. You can now grow your own mushrooms and, if you can get hold of or make the tricky compost, there is no reason not to go into home production as soon as possible. To be honest, I cheated a little. I managed to barter an unspecified amount of seed from my home grown ‘giant red mustard’ for four spawned bags of compost which I installed in a closed wooden crate out in the woodshed and which is the reason for the glut of mushrooms we are feasting on right now! n
Send your gardening queries to zahrahnasir@hotmail.com. Answers will appear in a future issue of ‘The Review’.
