Detailed Explanation of Key Techniques for Winter Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms

To achieve high yield, high efficiency, high quality and low consumption when cultivating edible mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms in winter, one should start from the following aspects.

1. Site. There are many ways to cultivate edible mushrooms. In the cold winter, indoor heated cultivation is the most suitable. Indoor heating methods include pipe heating, coal stoves, etc. Considering cost and practicality, heating with a coal stove is the most effective. This setup is suitable for relatively cold areas and can achieve low cost, fast heating and convenient operation. When cultivating edible mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms in low-temperature seasons, pest and disease damage is light, the rate of contamination by competing fungi is low, the performance of high and stable yield is good, and the mushroom bodies have large caps, thick caps, short stems, good color and texture, and high quality. Moreover, there are few vegetables in winter, so it is easy to capture the market and obtain ideal returns.

2. Raw materials. The choice of raw materials is crucial. For example, oyster mushroom is one of the easiest edible mushrooms to cultivate, with simple cultivation methods and diverse approaches, among which raw-material cultivation, which is low in cost and easy to operate, is the first choice. Culture materials include raw-material cultivation and cooked-material cultivation. Raw-material cultivation means the culture material has not undergone high-temperature sterilization, and generally the method of stacking fermentation is adopted. That is, after the culture material is mixed with an appropriate amount of water, pile it up, cover it with plastic sheeting, and let it heat up naturally. Each time the temperature at the center of the pile reaches 60°C, turn the material at the edges into the middle, continue to pile and cover it, and let it heat up naturally again. After 3 times, it can be inoculated and bagged for cultivation. By controlling a certain carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and high-temperature environmental conditions, the reproduction of competing fungi can be effectively inhibited and the rapid growth of oyster mushrooms promoted.

3. Bagging. Regarding bagged culture material, some people think that small bags hold less material and have a short cycle, but the yield is low and labor costs are high; some people think that large bags hold more material and have a high yield, but the cycle is long and the benefit is not actually high. Through comparative cultivation trials, it was found that plastic bags with a specification of 18 x 45 cm (30 cm long after filling) and filled with 0.6 kg of dry material are the best. In terms of bagging method, implement three layers of spawn and two layers of material, that is, spread one layer at each end and sandwich one layer of spawn in the middle, which is more suitable for intensive production.

4. Management. The fixed-position fruiting method can be adopted. Oyster mushrooms and the like grow fruiting bodies from the oxygen-enhancing holes reserved when bagging, which can effectively prevent mushroom buds from forming a large number of shriveled ones due to competition for nutrients during growth, causing unnecessary loss of nutrients. With conventional open-mouth fruiting, the mushroom clusters are too large, there are many dead mushrooms, and the mushroom quality is poor. With the fixed-position fruiting method, however, the bag opening is not left open, so the water in the fungus bags evaporates less.