The main ingredients of compost are straw and horse manure, but the straw has to be pretreated before the two are mixed.
This involves mixing with
chicken manure and
sprinkling with liquid
manure, followed by heating
Cultivation stages
Mushroom cultivation
relies on a supply of mushroom spawn. In similar fashion to seed
production by seedsmen, specialist producers grow specific
mushroom mycelia using aseptic microbiological techniques.
A new strain may start out on a single agar culture plate and
then be enlarged by further growth on agar. For final use on the
farm the most popular preparation is to grow the mycelium on
autoclaved cereal grains. This eventually produces the
"spawn" of easily distributed granules that the farmer
will use to start his crop.
The first step in mushroom farming is compost production.
Compost Production
This is an important part of mushroom cultivation, as spawns
require a rich substrate that is moist and full of nutrients. It
also has to be free of harmful microorganisms. It is a
multi-stage process, taking about 14 days, although before 1964,
this process would take many weeks of hard labour:
| The main ingredients of compost are straw and horse manure, but the straw has to be pretreated before the two are mixed. |
This involves mixing with chicken manure and sprinkling with liquid manure, followed by heating |
 The horse manure and bedding straw is then mixed in and fermented. |
  More chicken manure may be added to provide extra nitrogen and nutrients, and gypsum is included to obtain the correct structure and acidity. |
   The compost is then split into long narrow piles and periodically turned. During this period its internal temperature can reach 80ºC. At the end of the process the compost is ready to be shipped off to a mushroom farm. |
The Cultivation process
   Most farms now grow their mushrooms on trays in stacks of two or three. The compost shown here is being machine-loaded on sliding sheets. |
  This is then inoculated with the spawn (grain colonised by mycelium). |
 Mycelium soon covers the compost |
After
two weeks the compost is covered with a |
 |
 |
This picture shows the climate control system. This is an important part of the process, as the environment has to be changed to induce fruiting. |
| The mycelium is then broken up by a machine called a ruffler. This induces fruit body formation. These pictures show the blades of a ruffler, and a machine in action |
  |
   The fuiting bodies start to appear. They grow tightly packed together and are soon ready for harvesting, either by hand (for top quality), or by machine (for canning etc):  
 |
| The mushrooms are
then graded by quality, size and colour and packaged. Or sent for canning or bottling. |
  |
Photography by Prof. S. W. Chiu, Department of Biological Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.
Now you've got your mushrooms......time for a feast!