For several days in a row, the young man Fang Xiaohua mentioned did not reappear. Meng Zhao gradually put the matter out of her mind and focused her attention mainly on the mushroom shed.
That day, she changed her clothes and went to the mushroom shed to check on the growth of the button mushrooms. It was already August, and the temperature was gradually decreasing. The mushroom shed, which had been thinking about how to cool down, was now about to be insulated.
At this time, the temperature in the mushroom shed was about 25 degrees Celsius, which was just the right temperature for mycelial growth. Meng Zhao raised the oil lamp and brought it close to the mushroom bed to observe carefully.
On the trays of black substrate on the shelf, the mycelium with a net-like structure can already be seen, spreading outwards little by little, constantly absorbing nutrients from the culture medium to grow.
At this time, it is necessary to maintain the temperature and ensure proper ventilation inside the mushroom shed.
Two weeks later, the mycelium gradually formed and filled the culture medium. If all goes well, we should be able to see small mushrooms in about ten more days.
Meng Zhao began to count the days on her fingers. Although the mushroom shed should be dark and damp, if the environment was too poor, bacteria or contamination might occur, causing all the work to be in vain. Therefore, she needed to disinfect it with lime water every day and ventilate it from time to time. She really dared not be careless at all.
It wasn't until the end of August that Meng Zhao finally saw white bumps on the culture medium. Gradually, these small bumps increased in number and eventually covered the entire culture medium.
The temperature can be lowered a bit at this point, as long as it doesn't drop below 15 degrees Celsius, it won't affect the growth of the mushrooms.
Button mushrooms grow extremely fast; once you see them sprouting, they will mature in about a week.
At this time, the button mushrooms were white, plump, and very pleasing to the eye. Once the gills became clearer and the caps were fully open, Meng Zhao gave the order.
"Mining!!!"
When Meng Zhao bought the courtyard, she chose a place in a neighboring village. On the one hand, she considered safety issues. It would be extremely dangerous for a group of women, even if there were many of them, to live in a place with no one around. On the other hand, they needed a lot of manpower to build mushroom sheds and vegetable greenhouses, and they also needed manpower for transportation later. So they naturally needed to find a place where they could recruit helpers at any time.
Just like last time, I found it unbelievable that she wanted to grow mushrooms in the house and vegetables in winter.
At this moment, Meng Zhao and her team were loading the mushrooms they had picked onto the truck, which indeed attracted the attention of the villagers who had come to work in the greenhouse.
Xiaoyu whispered to Meng Zhao, "Shopkeeper, should we let them leave? We don't want them to steal our skills."
Meng Zhao shook his head. "No need. They can't see anything from far away. Besides, this stuff is very complicated. Even for us, it takes two or three mushroom sheds to grow one shed of mushrooms successfully. And even if we succeed this time, we can't guarantee that we'll be able to grow them next time. So even if I teach them step by step, they might not be able to learn it."
Xiaoyu scratched her nose. "That's true. Even though I followed your instructions from the beginning, there are still many parts I don't understand."
"Then you must study even harder. Among all the girls in our courtyard, you are the only one who knows so many characters. That's why I'm guiding you step by step. You can't let my efforts go to waste."
Xiaoyu nodded excitedly. Growing mushrooms was something she had never even heard of before, yet their shopkeeper had actually managed to do it. Moreover, the shopkeeper said that all she needed to do was guarantee to work for her for five years. After five years, if she wanted to go out on her own and build her own mushroom shed, she wouldn't stop her.
The shopkeeper said that button mushrooms not only grow quickly, but a single mushroom shed can yield five or six harvests. They also have relatively relaxed requirements for temperature and humidity, and are easy to grow. After this season's mushrooms are harvested, another season can be planted next spring. You can even choose to grow them in rotation with straw mushrooms. As long as you master the methods, a mushroom shed can support a family of three without any problem.
With this goal in mind, she felt even more motivated to study, and thus she worked even harder.
For the first delivery, Meng Zhao only picked six baskets and had Yin Chun deliver them to several restaurants in the county. At this time, due to the drop in temperature, there were far fewer mushrooms on the market. Moreover, even if there were some, the supply was unstable. For those large restaurants, the taste of a signature dish would be different if the side dishes were missing or changed.
This is the time when her greenhouse mushrooms are shining brightly.
After the first batch of mushrooms was harvested, Meng Zhao chopped up some of the mushroom pieces, added water and boiled them. After filtering out the liquid, he diluted it with water at a ratio of 1:10 and sprayed it on the mushroom bed. This also helps to prolong the mushroom growth time.
You can also spray diluted hot cow dung, salt water, or wood ash water, which can promote the growth of small mushrooms and reduce mushroom diseases.
In September, Wei Jinglan's academy was finally able to officially open. The name of the academy was chosen by Meng Zhao, and it was called the Hundred Crafts Vocational and Technical Academy. The academy offered compulsory cultural courses as well as five elective courses.
These include cooking, pottery making, textiles and embroidery, woodworking, stone construction, and of course, if a suitable teacher can be found in the future, other courses will be added.
Every teacher in the academy now is a top performer in their field, whom Wei Jinglan painstakingly searched far and wide for.
She herself, along with the other three recruited teachers, was responsible for the compulsory cultural courses.
If other academies want to recruit students, they usually do so by emphasizing the reputation of their teachers. They would say that their academy's headmaster was a Jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations) in a certain year and was a disciple of the emperor, and that their teachers were at least Juren (successful candidates in the provincial imperial examinations). Then, a steady stream of students would come to them.
Apart from the two teachers in charge of compulsory cultural courses who had the title of Xiucai (a scholar who passed the imperial examinations), the rest of the students in their vocational and technical academy, no matter how famous they were in the industry, ultimately lacked social status and therefore had no reputation to speak of.
So they had no choice but to resort to the most primitive propaganda methods.
That is, handing out flyers and shouting slogans.
They detailed the various features of their school on a piece of paper, and, considering that many people are illiterate, they also drew many vivid cartoon pictures on it to let everyone know what a vocational college is.
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