The weather has turned cooler now, and the scenery outside looks much more desolate. At first, Shen Yun told her about the last inspection. After she finished, Meng Zhao took out a storybook to read, but the carriage was not as stable as a car. It was swaying and she couldn't concentrate, so she took out playing cards instead.
Outside, the coachman drove the carriage, while inside, Meng Zhao, Shen Yun, Huang Cui, and Yin Chun sat cross-legged at the four corners of the carriage, playing cards.
The carriage swayed and rocked, but laughter and playful chatter occasionally emanated from inside, somewhat dispelling the boredom of the journey.
Upon arriving in Hongnong County, she first caught up with the Gu family and Li Yunxiang and her daughter, and then immediately went to buy two plots of land, each about five acres in size.
Then they hired many villagers to level the land. They didn't ask them to clear the weeds; instead, they burned them to add some fertilizer to the land.
Seeing her making such a big fuss, someone couldn't help but ask her what she was planning to do. Meng Zhao didn't hide anything and said directly, "I'm planning to grow mushrooms and vegetables."
Those around heard this but didn't dare say anything at the time. However, after returning home, they discussed it extensively, and almost no one thought it could succeed.
"That Madam Meng is very good at running a workshop, but she really doesn't know anything about this kind of land. In this freezing weather, how can she grow vegetables?"
"That's right. They even talked about growing mushrooms, but mushrooms don't even have seeds, so how can you grow them?"
"Sigh, I think she's just wasting her time. She'll be crying when nothing grows out."
Although the villagers talked a lot and thought it wouldn't work, when Meng Zhao started recruiting, they saw the money beckoning to them and they all became very quick to help. Everyone knew that Madam Meng paid a lot of money and never delayed payment, so they were all willing to work under her.
Some well-meaning people openly or subtly told Meng Zhao that the project was doomed to fail and wanted her to stop and not waste money. However, Meng Zhao turned a deaf ear and continued to do as she pleased, buying up timber and hiring workers, and even building houses on the ground.
Meng Zhao wanted to build a greenhouse because he was fed up with the fact that in winter, all he could find on the table were cabbage, radish, tofu, or pickled or dried vegetables.
Although they are all vegetables, they don't taste like fresh vegetables at all. And because of this, her shop has far fewer vegetable choices in winter, which is really inconvenient.
Because the scale of building the greenhouse was too large, Meng Zhao first selected more than a dozen people to build the mushroom sheds.
Mushrooms are plants that prefer shade and moisture, so Meng Zhao chose a location at the foot of the mountain near a water source. The terrain here is relatively high, so even if it rains, it is not easy for water to accumulate.
The walls were built of wood, and the ceiling was double-layered.
In the first step, Meng Zhaoxian added tung oil and beeswax to a pot, heated it to a certain temperature, and then applied it to linen, allowing the oil to fully penetrate the fibers of the fabric. He then placed it on a fire to bake, which accelerated the formation of the oil film.
If once isn't enough, apply tung oil to the linen repeatedly and then heat it to form a strong waterproof layer on the ordinary linen, achieving a waterproof and windproof effect.
Then, a layer of woven straw is added to the dense oilcloth to further protect against the cold.
Inside the mushroom shed, Meng Zhao adopted two planting methods. The first method was to dig a shallow pit in the ground, fill it with a mixture of leaf mold, wood chips and livestock manure dug from the mountain, water it thoroughly and then compact it to form a foundation.
The second method involves building a bamboo frame to hold a separate culture medium.
While the mushroom shed was being built, Meng Zhao had already begun breeding. There were many methods, but none could guarantee 100% success. So Meng Zhao cast a wide net and tried every method he could think of, hoping that one would eventually succeed.
First, collect the mushroom spawn. You can simply chop up fresh mushrooms, soak them in clean water for two days, and then spray the mushroom water onto leaf mold or straw.
You can also go directly to damp places in the mountains to look for decaying wood with mycelium or small mushrooms. This method makes it easier to extract wood-decaying fungi, such as wood ear or shiitake mushrooms.
Meng Zhao now has a carriage, and naturally, horse manure. She layers the horse manure and straw to create an environment conducive to the growth of natural mycelia in the manure, thus promoting the reproduction of the mycelia.
This method of propagation using animal manure makes it easier to cultivate straw mushrooms, button mushrooms, and Agaricus blazei mushrooms.
After much effort, it was finally time to sow the seeds. Meng Zhao sprinkled some lime on the culture medium in advance to inhibit the growth of miscellaneous bacteria, and then sprinkled the extracted inoculum little by little onto the culture medium in the mushroom shed.
Worried that the people hired from outside wouldn't take it seriously, Meng Zhao and his own people did all the work bit by bit. After all, these bacteria are extremely delicate, and if they get infected, all the work for the year will be for nothing.
Because it was her first year of planting and she didn't have professional equipment, she had to use different planting methods in each mushroom shed, record and mark them, and find the best planting method.
Meng Zhao went to the mushroom shed every day to check on it, afraid that there might be something she hadn't done well enough. Finally, her hard work paid off, and she saw the first batch of mushrooms—straw mushrooms.
The mycelium of straw mushrooms takes five to seven days to grow, and the mushrooms appear eight to ten days after sowing. Early that morning, Meng Zhao pushed open the door of the mushroom shed and saw a dense patch of small mushrooms, like countless tiny umbrellas spread out on the ground. Anyone with trypophobia would be terrified.
However, what Meng Zhao saw was not a dense cluster of mushrooms, but rather piles of gleaming silver.
Excitement shone in her eyes. You see, straw mushrooms have a very fast growth cycle, and they can be harvested every three to five days, for a total of three to four harvests.
My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
