Reduce costs and gain benefits from growing Lentinus edodes in greenhouse in winter

As the saying goes, La Qi La Ba, frozen chin off. In the rural areas of Northeast China, the land freezes after the beginning of winter every year, and there is nothing for everyone to do. In Northeast Chinese, this begins to be "cat winter". However, in Xiuyan County, Liaoning Province, cattle town, every household is busy, are busy planting mushrooms.

Because mycelium growth has strict requirements on temperature, the temperature of the growth period needs about 20ºC, and to the fruiting period, it needs a relatively large temperature difference stimulation to promote the mycelium to kink and form mushroom buds, so most of the places where mushrooms are planted are to make mushroom sticks and grow in summer, and harvest mushrooms in winter.

Generally speaking, it takes a long time to get bacteria in winter, about half a year. To start picking mushrooms at the end of April, you have to start making rods in early November of the previous year. Kemu Town was located in the Changbai Mountains. It was the coldest time in the Northeast. The average temperature outside was minus 20ºC, but the mycelium needed about 20ºC to grow. There was a difference of 40 degrees. How can we overcome this adverse condition of low temperature and cold?

Jiang Baiqiu is the deputy secretary of the Party branch of Yilin Village, Muniu Town. He has a set of experience in mushroom planting and is the technical leader of local mushroom planting. Faced with the problem of bacteria in the winter season, Jiang Baiqiu explored a set of techniques that both saved money and were efficient.

In order to reduce costs, Jiang Baiqiu first thought of using waste greenhouses. Moreover, in order to achieve a good sterilization effect, Jiang Baiqiu had strict requirements on the steaming time, which must reach 48 hours. After such a long time of high temperature, the bacteria stick just out of the pot is very hot, and must be cooled before inoculation, otherwise the bacteria will be scalded to death, so that the heat emitted during the cooling process can be used to warm the greenhouse, saving energy and reducing emissions.

4000 sticks per day, 60 days of continuous steaming, added together, the total number of bacteria sticks is 240,000 sticks, nearly 80,000 cubic meters in volume, equivalent to the capacity of 5 passenger cars of a train. 240,000 hot bacteria sticks are packed together, just like a small stove, so that the temperature inside the shed can always be maintained at about 20ºC.

The heat produced by mycelium growth is the second heat source used by Jiang Baiqiu in the process of fungus development. It turns out that hyphae produce heat during growth and release it through respiration. The longer the fungus grows, the more hyphae it grows and the more heat it produces. That is to say, the newly inoculated bacterial rod, hyphae is to use the waste heat emitted by nearby bacterial rods to live, as a little bit of growth, hyphae produce more and more heat, finally rely on their own heat to meet the growth needs.

When the last batch of bacteria sticks were moved into the greenhouse, the hot air stove would have to be burned. After about a month of burning, when the mycelium on the surface of the bacteria sticks grew to the size of the bowl, the heat supply could be stopped. At that time, the heat generated by the mycelium could maintain its own growth. The boiler, which was originally used as the main heat source for greenhouse production in winter, was only a supplement, greatly reducing the cost of planting shiitake mushrooms.