Commercial Mushroom Growing

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INTRODUCTION

TYPES OF EDIBLE MUSHROOMS

Many different types of edible fungi are found growing wild, the best known being the Oyster mushrooms, the Morels, the Beefsteak mushrooms, the Boleti, the Truffles, and the Coral fungi, but this is a very abbreviated list. In Switzerland, France, and Germany, up to seventy-eight distinct varieties of wild fungi are offered for sale in the markets and are eagerly bought. In Britain and America, where the public are chary of buying wild mushrooms, only the cultivated sorts find a ready sale. The grower reaps the benefit of this prejudice, because his produce does not have to compete with wild mushrooms which are obtainable for little more than the cost of their transport to market.

For only a few varieties of fungi has a method of cultivation been discovered. Of these, the most popular are the Shii-take of Japan, which grows on oak trees; the Truffle, an underground fungi found in Southern Europe, where the peasants use pigs or dogs to scent it out; the Terfas or Kames, another underground fungus, grown in Africa and the Orient; and the variety known as Agaricus campestris, Agaricus arvensis, Agaricus hortensis, etc. This latter is the only kind cultivated in Britain and America, and is known by a number of names because no one seems certain of its origin. Whether this mushroom will continue to monopolize our markets, or whether one day some of the foreign fungi will also be grown here remains to be seen. A method may even be found of cultivating one of our native wild fungi. In the meantime, however, there is no other type of mushroom about which enough is known to make it a practical proposition for the grower, and it is with Agaricus campestris that this book deals.

The Food Value of the Mushroom. Mushrooms have for so long been regarded as a luxury food that it is good to be able to assure the public that they are now acknowledged by the Ministry of Agriculture to be a valuable source of nourishment, rich in protein, minerals, and vitamins, and a pleasant aid to digestion.

The following table, which was compiled by the American Society for Horticultural Science, will be of interest to both producers and consumers.

ANALYSIS OF FRESH MUSHROOMS

An analysis of the ash of fresh mushrooms showed

The vitamin content of Fresh Mushrooms per 100 gm. was found to be:

A true estimate of the food value of the mushroom can only be reached by comparing these values with the amount of nourishment contained in other foods that have a place in our national larder.

For instance, a protein content of 3·94 per cent is not high when compared with the amount provided by an equal weight of beef (25 per cent), but it is very much greater than the protein content of most vegetables and fruits. Carrots, for example, contain only 0·6 per cent protein, potatoes, 1·4 per cent, and lettuce, 1·1 per cent. Even dates yield only 2 per cent, and bananas no more than 1·1 per cent of their total edible weight.

The fat content of the mushroom is small (0·19 per cent), but most vegetables and fruits have none.

A carbohydrate content of 0·87 per cent is low, and compares with such salad foods as watercress (0·7 per cent) and lettuce (1·8 per cent).

The vitamin content of the mushrooms is exceptionally high. Mushrooms are a better source of Niacin, Riboflavin, and vitamin C than is any single vegetable.

Minerals, such as calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, are supplied generously, and there is also a fair quantity of iron.

It can be seen, then, that not only are mushrooms a valuable nutriment, but they are besides a better source of nourishment than many of the foods that form a normal part of our daily meals. Indeed, with their abundance of protein, essential minerals, and vitamins, and their low carbohydrate and fat content, they constitute the ideal dish for those who wish to lose weight. This fact seems to have escaped the notice of the dieticians, and the mushroom industry might do well to bring it to their attention.

The official recognition of the food value of the mushroom had a very stimulating effect on the mushroom-growing industry, but an even greater impetus has been given to its development by the attention that is being devoted to the crop by scientists in the Governmental agricultural laboratories throughout the world. Mushrooms are now being treated with the respect due to a staple food and a recognized industry.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE CULTIVATED MUSHROOM

The vegetable kingdom falls into four divisions—seed plants, fern plants, moss plants, and Thallophyta. Mushrooms belong to the most peculiar of the four. The Thallophyta have no proper root, stem, or leaves, and take a variety of forms which range from a naked body with no cell walls, to a string of cells which intertwines and is known as mycelium. Pond scums, bacteria, moulds, and mushrooms are all included in the Thallophyta. Reproduction is by spores.

The cultivated mushroom belongs to the order of Basidiomycetes, known in this country as ‘Club Fungi’, because the spores are produced on a cell (or basidium) shaped like a club. These spore-bearing cells are in the gills under the cap of the mushroom and two spores grow on each basidium.

The most important point about the Thallophyta division is that most of its members contain no green colouring matter (chlorophyll). It is the green colouring in the leaves and stems of other plants which enables them to manufacture food from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Having no chlorophyll, mushrooms, moulds, etc., cannot make their own food, and must live on the food built up by some other living organism. Moulds, for example, grow on decaying fruit; mushrooms on a compost of rotted straw and horse manure.

This peculiarity of the mushroom has made the crop a study in itself, for no other market produce grows under similar conditions. The provision of food for the mushrooms is a simple matter, but unfortunately many other moulds, bacteria, and fungi invade the beds and compete with the mushrooms for the available food. Some even attack the mushrooms. Conditions in the mushroom houses must therefore be those most favourable to the mushrooms and most discouraging to the uninvited guests, for unless these unwelcome visitors are kept under control, the mushroom crop may be a total failure. Chapter Ten of the present book has been devoted entirely to this subject, and in it will be found a description of all the most up-to-date methods of dealing with the problem.

THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE MUSHROOM

Cultivated and wild mushrooms have a similar life cycle. Mushrooms in their wild state are usually found in meadows, where they live on the decayed organic matter in the soil. Cultivated mushrooms are grown on a compost of horse-manure and straw, covered lightly with soil. This mixture has a high food value and yields excellent crops. It is possible to grow mushrooms on other media, and it is the ambition of every mushroom research worker today to discover some combination of these media that will give crops as good as, or, if possible, better than, those that are obtained from manure. Such mixtures are known as ‘Synthetic Composts’, and are discussed in detail in Chapter Five.

PLATE 1

DR. W. J. SINDEN, Associate Professor of Botany at Pennsylvania State College. His research into the problems of both manure and synthetic composting, his invention of grain spawn, and his studies of the ventilation requirements of the mushroom have helped to revolutionize modern methods of mushroom production

DR. C. A. THOMAS, Associate Professor of Economic Entomology at the Pennsylvania State College Experimental Station, is a world-renowned authority on mushroom insect pests. His beautiful drawings of insects are reproduced in this book

DR. E. B. LAMBERT, Pathologist at the Bureau of Plant Industry at Maryland, celebrated for his invention of "Indoor Composting" and the Shorter Composting Technique and for his studies of casing soil and mushroom diseases

PLATE 2

DR. A. M. KLIGMAN M.D., Ph.D., whose investigations of the problems of spore germination and the selection of mushroom strains have made possible the development of a greatly improved mushroom spawn

DR. R. L. EDWARDS, Director of the Mushroom Research Association, at Yaxley, Peterborough, whose synthetic compost is acclaimed as one of the most successful yet discovered

MR. F. C. ATKINS, Editor of the M.G.A. Bulletin, an indefatigable writer, whose many books, pamphlets, and articles have kept the British Mushroom Growers abreast with all the newest advances in the science of Mushroom Culture

FIG. 1. THE MUSHROOM

A mushroom makes its first appearance on the surface of the soil as a small oval body, known as a ‘Pin-head’ mushroom. If conditions are favourable, the pin-head grows rapidly and in three to four days a thick stalk has developed, and the top has swelled into the well-known rounded top of the mature mushroom. At this point, the stalk and cap are joined by a film of thin tissue known as the ‘veil’, and the mushroom is called a ‘Button mushroom’.

The veil acts as a protective covering for the gills where the spores (or seeds) of the mushroom are ripening. These gills are fine plates of tissue on the underside of the mushroom cap which radiate from the stalk to the rim of the cap like the spokes of a wheel. At the side of the gills are club-shaped cells where the spores are generated. At first the gills are pink, but they darken to a deep brown as the spores ripen.

As the spores mature, the veil breaks; the mushroom cap opens out like an umbrella and the spores are broadcast to the wind. An umbrella-shaped mushroom left overnight on a sheet of white paper will leave the pattern of its gills traced in brown dust on the paper. With the aid of a microscope it can be seen that this dust is a collection of brown egg-shaped cells. These are the spores of the mushroom which have dropped from the gills.

Inside each spore is a minute drop of oil on which it has been suggested the spore lives until conditions are suitable for germination. Mushroom spores have been persuaded to germinate after storage for as long as eight years. When conditions of temperature, moisture, and environment are ideal, the spore splits open and a strand of cell oozes out. This strand grows into a long thread which branches and intertwines through the surrounding earth (or compost) until the soil (or mushroom bed) is thickly impregnated with a silky grey growth which is known as mycelium (or spawn).

In meadows, the mycelium grows outwards in a circle round the original spore, and this accounts for the ‘fairy rings’ of mushrooms which are sometimes discovered. It has been found that wild mushrooms generally grow best after a dry season, for the mycelium does not run well through wet soil. Once it has run, however, rain is required to make the pin-heads develop. The pin-heads are simply a fusing together of the threads of mycelium on the soil surface. The threads of mycelium act as channels through which food is carried to the growing mushroom. The stem consists of a column of mycelium threads running upwards to the cap. The outside layer is thick and the inside pithy. The cap is a blended mass of mycelium threads terminating in the gills. The mushroom ripens and produces more spores, and the cycle is repeated as before.

Mushroom crops grow in flushes. As long as conditions remain favourable, new mushrooms continue to appear daily, but the number diminishes gradually until a short rest period occurs, during which time very few mushrooms develop. The rest period is followed by a second flush which is sometimes even more prolific than the first. The beds continue to produce, rest periods alternating with flushes, until the food value of the beds is exhausted, or until conditions become unfavourable.

So far, efforts to prolong the cropping period by adding more food to the spent beds have been unsuccessful. Once the original store of food in the beds is all used up, there is nothing to be done but start again with fresh material.

THE HISTORY OF MUSHROOM CULTURE

Mushrooms have been appreciated as a table delicacy since ancient times, and it may be wondered why it is only nowadays that mushroom growing has become an industry. For this delay, there were two reasons. The first was a dearth of scientific knowledge, and the second was the lack of a reliable supply of spawn. When these two needs were filled the industry developed rapidly.

The earliest known treatise on how to grow mushrooms was written by a French botanist, Tournefort, in 1707, and the methods described are very primitive. Later, mushroom growing was begun in the limestone caves with which the ground beneath the city of Paris is honeycombed. Conditions there are very suitable, and the attempt was so successful that by 1900 there were more than 1,500 miles of bed-space devoted to mushroom culture. Today, mushroom growing is still carried on there, and a large part of the produce is canned and exported.

In Britain, mushrooms were first grown in outdoor beds, and this is still a popular method here, as the climate is suitable for it during most of the year. Many of the early attempts were made by gardeners, who produced mushrooms as a delicacy for the households they served.

America’s mushroom-growing industry began in greenhouses, where mushrooms were put in as a stop-gap between other crops. They soon proved so profitable, however, that it was not long before special houses fitted with shelves were built for mushroom production alone. This marked the beginning of the end of the happy-go-lucky methods, and the start of the new science of mushroom culture.

Credit for the development of the best types of houses and improved methods of growing must go to the growers—evolutions won painfully by trial and error at the expense of their own pockets. Credit for the discovery of means to combat diseases, insect pests, and other troubles must go mainly to the scientists.

The first important contribution from science was made by Pizer, who investigated the effects of adding gypsum to the compost. Since then, precious fragments of knowledge have been added one by one to this nucleus, so that, at this present time, there are very few problems connected with mushroom growing for which a solution has not been found. The crop which was once regarded as such a hazardous gamble is now respected as a sound investment.

From a business aspect, the most momentous event in Britain was the formation of the M.G.A. (The Mushroom Growers’ Association), which has its headquarters at Yaxley, Peterborough. This association took up cudgels against an indifferent Government and secured official recognition of the food value of mushrooms. As a result, the industry was granted a fair share of materials in short supply, such as timber and certain chemicals. Further persuasion obtained a tariff on the import of foreign mushrooms, and the lifting of fuel restrictions. Besides this, a large supply of literature about mushroom growing was collected and formed into a lending library for the benefit of members, and a bulletin published monthly keeps the industry informed of the latest developments at home and abroad. Pamphlets on specific subjects are issued at intervals.

Of equal value to the grower was the formation of the M.R.A. (The Mushroom Research Association, Ltd.), which is a non-profit-making organization, maintained partly by the Government, and partly by voluntary contributions from the growers. This association devotes itself exclusively to the study of the problems of mushroom growing, and has made valuable contributions to the ever-increasing store of knowledge. Its outstanding achievement has been the development of one of the most successful synthetic composts yet discovered.

Similar organizations exist in countries abroad, and knowledge is constantly interchanged.

Other benefits have been brought by the invention of such things as mechanical manure-turners, soil-elevators, and soil-sterilizing outfits, which make the actual working of a mushroom crop very much easier than it used to be.

Fortunately, too, the public are becoming ‘mushroom conscious’, mushrooms being treated less as a luxury, and more as a part of the nation’s daily food, to an extent that may be judged by the fact that, in Britain, the annual production has more than doubled itself in the last fifteen years, and is still increasing.

MUSHROOM SPAWN

All the foregoing factors have contributed to the growth of the mushroom industry, but it was a more important development that laid the foundations. That development was the discovery of a method of making ‘Pure Culture’ mushroom spawn.

Mushroom spawn is simply sterilized organic matter permeated with threads of mushroom mycelium. It is regenerative. That is to say, a piece of spawn planted in a favourable environment will start to grow and will produce mushrooms.

Commercial growers always plant mushroom spawn, never mushroom spores. The spores are exacting in their requirements, and though nature persuades them to germinate in the fields, it was a long time before man managed to accomplish it, and he can only achieve it in a laboratory. Until the secret of spore germination was discovered, reliable spawn could not be produced.

The first spawn to be put on the market was ‘French Flake Spawn’. This was spawn that had been dug up from fields where mushrooms were growing wild. It was first dried, and then dispatched to growers throughout the country—along with any diseases and insect pests that happened to be infesting the particular field from which the spawn was taken. An additional hazard was the impossibility of foretelling what variety of mushroom would be produced from such spawn.

A definite improvement on the French spawn was the British product known as ‘Brick spawn’. To make this, wild spawn was collected from the fields and inoculated into ‘bricks’ made of compressed manure and leaf-mould. When the spawn had grown through the brick, it was dried and sold. This method slightly reduced the danger of spreading disease and insect pests, because these usually made their presence known while the spawn was growing and contaminated bricks could be discarded. The spawn was nevertheless of poor quality and unknown variety.

At last, in 1893, a method of germinating the spores of mushrooms was discovered by two French scientists, and pure culture spawn was within reach, but, unfortunately for the growers, the method was kept a closely guarded secret and the spawn was put on the market at a price that few could afford to pay.

Consequently, pure culture spawn was not widely used until 1902, when the Department of Agriculture in America issued a bulletin explaining exactly how it could be made. About the same time, Dr. Duggar of Cornell University devised a method of making spawn grow from a piece of tissue cut from the cap of a mushroom. Spawn grown in this way was known as ‘Tissue-culture’ spawn, but it was never developed commercially, because the spawn proved to be less virile and prolific than spawn grown from spores.

The first spore-cultures were inoculated into bricks of prepared compost as before. This type of spawn had the advantage of being free from disease, and was virile and of a known variety, but there was still a chance that contamination might exist in the brick, or might develop in the brick while the spawn was growing.

Eventually, about 1920, the final step was taken towards the production of the Pure Culture spawn we know and appreciate today. The prepared compost was packed into milk bottles and sterilized. The spore cultures were introduced into the sterile bottles and the spawn could at last be guaranteed free from contamination.

Nowadays, the production of Pure Culture Mushroom Spawn is a highly specialized business, demanding no small amount of skill and scientific knowledge, for the mushroom growers have become exacting in their requirements.

They want a spawn that runs quickly through the beds, so that disease and insect pests have no opportunity to gain a foothold, as may happen if the mycelium growth dallies; a spawn that runs thickly through the beds, so that every available scrap of food is absorbed and used to produce mushrooms; a spawn that gives mushrooms of good size and quality, because these fetch the best market prices, and the mushrooms must be of a hardy strain that will stand up well to any unforeseen draughts, droughts, infestations, and diseases the crop may fall a victim to.

A description of how modern pure culture spawn is produced is given in Chapter Seven.

THE SCOTTISH MUSHROOM LABORATORIES

I should like to say here that, besides supplying the British mushroom growers with an all-British spawn, the Scottish Mushroom Laboratories provide a competent laboratory service. Here, research and technical experiments are carried out, and the latest treatments to combat disease and other troubles are tried, and new insecticides and other chemicals are tested.

The laboratory is equipped to carry out any tests a grower might wish to have made, such as the analysis of soil, manure, water, disinfectants, and insecticides. These services are offered free of charge to those who use our spawn,