The first batch of enoki mushrooms tested still failed to produce mushrooms in the end. The temperature was still a bit high, which affected the production of mushrooms.
Later, we tried to grow shiitake mushrooms on mushroom trees and Agaricus bisporus on mushroom beds, and they have begun to show visible results.
Talking about these two kinds of mushrooms is also full of twists and turns. First, there is the shiitake mushroom.
Chen Chunhua asked Lin Guoqing to help her find a piece of old birch wood, preferably a dead wood.
Lin Guoqing said that there was no problem, and on the third day he brought her one back, and threw it on the ground.
"Hey! Birch! Timber resources are really tight right now. Lao Shi had a hard time getting a piece from their factory!"
Chen Chunhua looked at the piece of wood and felt strange no matter how she looked at it. Then she thought about what Lin Guoqing said, birch wood from the steel plant?
"Is this thing birch? Is it iron birch?" Chen Chunhua pointed at the straight and tough piece of iron birch on the ground, which didn't look like dead wood at all.
Lin Guoqing carried it all the way from the village entrance to his home, sweating all over. He was just pulling up the corner of his clothes to wipe the sweat off his face. When he heard this, he responded casually.
"Is there a difference? Aren't they all birch? And what do you want birch for?"
Chen Chunhua: "...I'm using it to grow mushrooms. Can you bring me a piece of iron birch? How do I drill a hole in it?"
Iron birch, also known as the black birch, is harder than ordinary steel and invulnerable to weapons. Some fields use iron birch directly as a substitute for steel. It generally grows in the north, but they also have it in the western part of the province. I wonder if this piece was shipped from there.
"Forget it, forget it. You should just go back. This is my problem. I shouldn't have come to you. I should have come to Mom instead."
Chen Chunhua wanted to find birch wood simply because the magazine said that mushroom wood was made of birch wood segments, and in fact, they should be similar.
Lin Guoqing was also speechless. Didn’t you say you wanted birch? How did he know there were so many things to do with birch? No wonder Lao Shi asked him if he was going to build another house.
This matter was quickly resolved after consulting Liang Shengdi. Chen Chunhua mentioned that she wanted the old tree for growing mushrooms in the evening, and Liang Shengdi towed it back to her by boat the next morning.
It is said that when rowing a boat to the county, you will pass by a forest, half of which is submerged in water. The most common trees are fir and willow. When you walk towards the shore, many of the trees have been killed, and some are dry and have fallen to the ground.
She didn't know which one Chen Chunhua wanted, but based on her previous experience of picking mushrooms in the mountains, she pulled two pieces of dead wood onto the boat, one of fir and one of willow. Then she went back with a hoe and dug up two taller tree stumps, specifically those that were more than 15 years old.
When Chen Chunhua saw the tree stump, she was delighted. With a big grin on her face, she began to promise Liang Shengdi, "Mom! When I grow mushrooms, we'll make chicken soup with mushrooms!"
In fact, there has been no shortage of meat in the past two years, especially chicken and duck, but every time Chen Chunhua said she wanted to make chicken soup, Liang Shengdi would still secrete a mouthful of saliva.
"Just plant well! Tell me if you need anything! I'll go get more wood if you need more!"
Old Mrs. Liang vowed to protect her daughter-in-law's vegetable business to the death!
The two pieces of wood Liang Shengdi brought had been lying on the ground and exposed to the sun for a long time, so they didn't need to be air-dried. A little water would create conditions suitable for mycelium growth. However, the tree stump was freshly dug, so it still needed to be air-dried. After it dried naturally, the roots could be cut off and used.
The wood was quite long, so Chen Chunhua cut both dead trees into two halves, about one meter long.
Then use a hole puncher to punch holes in the mushroom wood. Shen Chunhua strictly follows the standards in the book. The hole depth is 1.5 to 2 cm, the hole diameter is 1.5 cm, the row spacing is 5x3 inches, and they are arranged in a herringbone shape.
The culture medium was prepared long ago, and the ingredients mixed with the enoki mushrooms were sawdust, rice bran sugar and gypsum.
She dug out a small piece from the bottle and stuffed it into each hole bit by bit. She had a total of 4 pieces of wood, so she could not use up all the fungus in a bottle.
After stuffing the mushroom spawn, cover it with the bark prepared when drilling the holes just now, flatten it with a hammer, and then stack them in a tic-tac-toe format on the ground floor of the mushroom house. Find a south-facing corner and cover it with a layer of plastic film.
This plastic film was not easy to come by. Chen Chunhua went to Su County and bargained with Qi Caigen for it. Large vegetable growers have been using greenhouses for a long time, so if you ask him for it, he will definitely have it.
To be a professional farmer, she even bought a thermometer, the kind that measures room temperature. Once the temperature reaches 23 degrees Celsius, she removes the film and even moves the wood to a cooler place. This means uncovering the film in the morning to let it cool down, and covering it at night to keep it warm until summer arrives.
You also need to add water in the morning and evening, and after adding water, you need to open the doors and windows in time to improve ventilation, otherwise there will be bacteria and insect pests, causing the mushroom wood to turn black and rot. You also need to change the position up and down and left and right every 20 days.
By the time the children went to school, the first four pieces of dead wood had almost all begun to develop tumor-like protrusions, the legendary mushroom buds.
However, two thick tree stumps planted a few days later hadn't shown any signs of growth. Therefore, Chen Chunhua made a special trip to the mushroom class to see Teacher Qian. She wanted to ask him, "Aren't tree stumps supposed to be richer in nutrients?" Why wasn't the stumps producing mushrooms, even with the same fungus species?
She has actually "graduated." Teacher Qian is now teaching the next batch of students, but she welcomes former students who are applying their knowledge and seeking help when they encounter problems.
Teacher Qian said that shiitake mushrooms are different from oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms. They have a longer dormant period and it takes about two months to cultivate the mushrooms. The four pieces of mushroom wood that Chen Chunhua mentioned are not very thick, so the mushroom wood will reach maturity in about two months.
But tree stumps that are more than fifteen years old are very thick. Particularly thick mushroom trees sometimes even need two summers to produce mushrooms in large quantities. This is normal.
Old trees produce mushrooms later, but they are durable and can produce a lot of high-quality mushrooms. However, mushroom wood that is about 10 years old is prone to decay and its productive life is much shorter than that of old tree stumps.
At this moment, Chen Chunhua was particularly grateful to Liang Shengdi. If she hadn't provided her with two different ages of wood, she wouldn't have known about this! Putting aside other things, if she had really used the iron birch that Lin Guoqing brought, she probably wouldn't have been able to produce mushrooms for three years.
The mushroom trees in the mushroom house have begun to emit a strong mushroom scent, and Chen Chunhua promptly stood up the mature mushroom trees.
Before setting up the trees, she soaked the mushrooms in water overnight, and only took them out when they stopped emitting bubbles.
Four 1-meter-high wood sections are tied in pairs to form two "X" shapes. A long horizontal bar is placed on the "X"-shaped wooden frame, 60 to 70 centimeters above the ground. Finally, the mushroom wood is arranged in a V-shape on the horizontal bar.
The herringbone mushroom trees are arranged in a north-south direction by the sunflower so that they can receive even light.
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Is Tomato going to go bankrupt? o(╥﹏╥)o
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