Mushroom Growing Queen Guo Meiping's Edible Fungus Cultivation Path

    Guo Meiping of Tongwa Village, Xindu Township, Huaiyin District, Huai'an City is 29 years old this year. She married her husband Li Song in 1998, and in the second year after marriage she gave birth to a daughter, Xiaohui. Before marriage, her husband Li Song had gone to the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences to consult experts about edible fungus cultivation techniques. A few years earlier, her family had grown half a mu of straw mushrooms and oyster mushrooms in a greenhouse, earning 8,000 yuan, and her husband felt quite pleased with himself. But Guo Meiping was not satisfied with the status quo, believing that this was merely a "subsistence-level" smallholder economy, and that one must dare to venture and take big strides. So, capable and astute, she took advantage of opportunities to sell straw mushrooms and oyster mushrooms in the urban area of Huai'an to carefully gather market information on edible fungi.  

    She discovered that shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms commanded high prices on the market and were in short supply, making them a "short, flat, fast" rural wealth-building project. After returning home, she whispered sweet nothings into her husband's ear and decided to launch new projects growing shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms. Growing shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms is difficult, but she believed that "nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind to it." To this end, she went to the Xinhua Bookstore in the city and bought a set of technical books on growing shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms, studied them earnestly and carefully, and conducted trial plantings in the field. She would not leave the mushroom shed even for meals, measuring temperature, checking humidity, carefully observing the morphology of the mycelium and fruiting bodies, and earnestly strengthening field management of the mushroom shed...  

    "Hard work pays off." After days and nights of tending by Guo Meiping and her husband, rows upon rows of glistening white "silver ingots" grew on the mushroom beds in the shed. After the trial planting succeeded, the young couple focused their energy on expanding the greenhouse planting area for shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms, from the initial half a mu to 12 mu of multiple cropping. Because the shaggy mane mushrooms and white golden needle mushrooms they cultivated were of good quality, every time they went to the urban area of Huai'an to sell them, they were snapped up. Many buyers in the urban area took the initiative to come to their home to purchase, and the economic returns were considerable. In 2004, their family's net income from edible fungus cultivation reached 80,000 yuan, and this year it is expected to exceed 100,000 yuan, making her a widely known "Mushroom Growing Queen."  

    As the saying goes: "One flower blooming alone is not spring; a hundred flowers blooming in profusion fill the garden." After Guo Meiping became wealthy through scientific mushroom growing, she saw that the people around her were not yet well-off and felt very anxious. So she willingly served as a "navigator" for mushroom-growing prosperity, going from village to village and household to household, sharing her own experience, and doing her utmost to provide financial support. Guo Jingjiang was a poor household in the village. After "visiting" Guo Meiping's greenhouse in the spring of last year, he sighed and said: "When I have money later, I'll also grow shaggy mane mushrooms." When Guo Meiping heard this, she immediately took out 2,000 yuan from her home to support Guo Jingjiang, also provided him with mushroom spawn free of charge, and frequently went to the site to guide him. After more than 40 days of careful management through the winter, all of Guo Jingjiang's material bags produced mushrooms, and he made a profit of more than 5,000 yuan that year. Under Guo Meiping's leadership and guidance, more than 200 households in the village grew edible fungi, with an average annual income of over 6,000 yuan per household.