Isnin, Ogos 24, 2009

Cultivating mushrooms no easy task

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Humans are still moving, raggedly, from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Some of the organisms we eat, exploit or befriend - grains, trees, cattle, dogs - tamed readily. Kingdoms other than plant or animal are less tractable. Fungi have come under our rule only grudgingly and rarely.
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The familiar button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) has been cultivated for 300 years. But the most prized mushrooms are still hunted in the wildlands where they volunteer to grow; given the odd patterns of growth and the acute toxicity of some of them, the stakes are high.
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Taming mushrooms is a challenge because we're dealing with a huge, mostly invisible organism whose behavior we've barely begun to understand. What we see and eat is only the fruiting body of the fungus; most of its works - the mycelia - live underground, or in the leaf-litter layer of a forest, or inside the wood of a dead or live tree.
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Imagine trying to cultivate a tree when all you can see is its fruit, and you never know which acre of your orchard it will show up in.
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There are mushroom farms, such as Far West Fungi in Moss Landing (Monterey County), where founder John Garrone and his family grow several edible varieties.
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And there are fungus aficionados such as Ken Litchfield, whose mushroom cultivation course is being offered this fall at Oakland's Merritt College (see Resources). Litchfield and his students are trying to induce some of the wild-card mushrooms to behave more predictably.
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Under live oaks and madrones at the edge of the Merritt campus, Litchfield has set up mushroom beds with excelsior, wood chips and straw.
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"It's like a little hobbit village out here," he jokes. The largest structure is a straw-bale igloo; mushrooms will grow out of the straw in its humid interior.
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Mushrooms, Litchfield says, make their living in several ways: as symbiotes, linked to oaks and other trees; as parasites on living plants; or by decomposing dead organic matter. Some species can be either parasitic or symbiotic; others switch from one strategy to another during their life cycles.
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Opportunists
"Morels are opportunists," he explains. "That's the one that everyone wants to grow. They're not that hard to grow, but getting them to fruit predictably is a problem." Morels pop up after wildland fires; Litchfield suspects their growth is stimulated by smoke. This fall his class will make its own smoke extract and apply it experimentally to a morel pit.
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As chanterelles do with oaks, Litchfield and his students have a symbiosis with Far West. The farm uses blocks of compressed oak sawdust, inoculated with spores. The Merritt classes get the blocks, waning in productivity, that Far West is ready to recycle. Techniques that work in Merritt's experiments are passed along to the farm.
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Home mushroom-growing kits have been around for a while. Far West's Kiera Ilusorio says the shiitake kit is the biggest seller for home growers at the store in San Francisco's Ferry Building Marketplace: "They're a little easier. Tree oysters take more attention."
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Each kit comes with growing instructions. "You're trying to re-create the forest floor," she says.
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Finesse required
Ilusorio cautions that a certain amount of finesse is required. "People get the kits as gifts and don't know what to do with them. The hardest thing to hear is: 'It grew a black fuzzy lump I thought was mold, so I cut it off,' " she says.
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"The kits are like an amaryllis bulb," Litchfield says. "They fruit and then they're done. But after the first flush, you can transplant the kit into a bed of wood chips."
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Then it can go on producing and, with luck, inoculate the entire bed with mycelia. Outdoor beds need protection from snails and slugs, but mold is less a problem than for indoor growers.
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In other symbiotic relationships, Litchfield is working with Merritt's permaculture program to grow huitlacoche on corn, and has produced oyster mushrooms in worm boxes. His students also spend time in the lab and the kitchen.
"I've always used the mushrooms as an excuse to cook," he says.
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Resources
Ken Litchfield's mushroom class begins today, with late enrollment through Sept. 5. Go to peralta.edu and click on Enroll Now. For class schedule and course description, go to merrittlandhort.com.
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Far West Fungi, No. 34, Ferry Building Marketplace (Market at Embarcadero), San Francisco. (415) 989-9090 or store. farwestfungi.com.
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E-mail comments to
home@sfchronicle.com. -SFGate

Jumaat, Ogos 21, 2009

Salam Ramadhan Al-Mubarak

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Bulan mulia penuh keberkatan, Ramadhan Al Mubarak datang lagi dan sebagai umat Islam digalakkan agar melipatkan gandakan ibadat demi mengejar ganjaran pahala daripada Allah.

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Saya dan keluarga dari Cendawan Global mengucapkan selamat menyambut Ramadhan Al-Mubarak kepada seluruh para pengunjung blog ini, pelanggan dan umat Islam di Malaysia dan dunia.




Rabu, Ogos 19, 2009

Morel is: Know your mushrooms

Thursday, August 20, 2009
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By Tom Meade

Journal Staff Writer
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Naturalist Joe Metzen examines a mushroom in the woods in Exeter.
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Joe Metzen has been studying mushrooms intensively for seven years, and he says, “The more I learn, the less I know.”
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Metzan and Laura Carberry, his colleague at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, are scheduled to present a series of mushroom programs on the mainland and on Prudence Island. The series is scheduled to start with a mushroom walk and lunch, Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Audubon Fisherville Brook Wildlife Refuge, in Exeter.
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Strolling through the Exeter woods, a basket in one hand and a folding knife in the other, Metzen stoops to pry a lavender mushroom from the forest floor.
It is beautiful.
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It is an Amanita, and it is deadly.
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In 2006, Amanitas killed a family of 10 in Mexico. They sickened another family of 16 in that country, 8 of whom died.“Everyone wants to know about the edible mushrooms,” Metzen says. “First, you have to learn the Amanitas, some of the deadliest mushrooms in the world.”
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During an hourlong walk last week, poisonous mushrooms outnumbered edible ones many times over.
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“I don’t want to put unreasonable fear in people,” Metzen says, “but you can’t be too careful.”
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Classifying mushrooms is becoming increasingly complex, he says, kneeling to pry a fluorescent orange mushroom from a rotting log. The stunning mushroom goes by a number of English names, including “Lady Purse,” “Chicken of The Woods,” and “Sulfur Shelf.” It is commonly assumed to be edible.
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Metzen owns dozens of mushroom field guides, and they often disagree about what’s safe to eat. Some of them also disagree about the Latin names of certain mushrooms. Flipping through one of his field guides, the naturalist finds a mushroom that has more than a dozen possible Latin names, and he observes, “DNA research is turning everything on its head.”
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The field guides also disagree about what’s edible and what’s not. He points to an entry that lists a particular mushroom as “edible/poisonous.”
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Also, he says, some people can suddenly become allergic to certain mushrooms. In 2006, for example, a 46-year-old Idaho woman became ill after eating a morel, which most mushroom hunters consider to be among the choicest of varieties. A report said the woman “had eaten and dried lots with no effects previously. Now [she is] sensitive to morels.”
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Other mushroom hunters can suddenly develop skin allergies to certain mushrooms.
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A few of New England’s edible mushrooms are easy to identify, Metzen says, and he plans to bring some samples to his Audubon mushroom presentations.
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For everyone who attends the mushroom programs in Exeter and Coventry, naturalist Laura Carberry plans to serve mushroom soup, mushroom pâté, mushroom strudel, and stuffed mushrooms.
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Metzen says, “Laura will get the mushrooms at the safest place to find them: the supermarket.”
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Joe Metzen and Laura Carberry will present their program, “Taking the Mystery Out of Mushrooming,” Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Audubon Fisher Brook Wildlife Refuge in Exeter. The fee is $20 for an Audubon member or $25 for a nonmember. Reservations are required.
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More on mushrooms
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• Metzen and Carberry will present “Taking the Mystery Out of Mushrooming” again on Sept. 19 at the Audubon Parker Woodland Wildlife Refuge, in Coventry. Hours, fees and registration requirements remain the same.
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• There will be a “Wild Mushroom Walk” Sept. 20 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Audubon Kimball Wildlife Sanctuary, in Charlestown. The fees are $8 for a member adult, $12 for a nonmember adult, $4 for a member child and $6 for a nonmember child.
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• A “Fungus Foray on Prudence Island” is scheduled for Sept. 30. The ferry is scheduled to leave Bristol at 10 a.m. and to return around 4:30 p.m. The program fee is $16 for a member or $20 for a nonmember.
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More details are available online at asri.org. To register for Audubon programs, call 949-5454, extension 3041 or e-mail programs@asri.org.
tmeade@projo.com

Website terbaru

Salam.
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Saya baru je lancarkan satu website baru di www.nizamsky.ws
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Sudi-sudikan melawat sebab saya akan jadikan ia sebagai portal utama untuk kemaskini sebarang aktiviti bisnes online saya. Blog cendawan global dan lain-lain pun saya akan kemas kini juga cuma website ini akan dijadikan blog utama nanti.

Isnin, Ogos 10, 2009

Getting the Goods on mushroom growing

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There are so many myths about mushrooms, says Murray Good.
Like that old complaint about being treated like mushrooms:
"They keep us in the dark and feed us, uh, manure."
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Wrong. And wrong.
Good says mushrooms don't grow in manure, and they don't need darkness. He ought to know. He and his wife, Chantelle, grow a million pounds every year at Whitecrest Mushroom Farm southeast of London.
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But "farm" doesn't really capture the Whitecrest operation. It looks more like an industrial plant churning out the mushrooms with startling efficiency -- just five weeks from spore to mushroom.

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Big front-end loaders are dumping the growing material into large steel pans that are hoisted into racks into one of seven growing rooms. Each room is at a different growth stage and pickers are plucking the mushrooms ready for harvest.
They are packaged and shipped out to be on store shelves in the London area the next day.

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Whitecrest produces portobello, portobellini and crimini mushrooms, prized for their flavour. The three varieties are actually the same species: brown agaricus. The different names reflect the stage at which they are picked, with the small beige crimini being the youngest.

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The farm on Cromarty Drive, near Putnam, was established in the mid-1980s and the Goods took it over in 2001. Murray Good grew up on a farm near Plattsville, northeast of Woodstock, and started out working for Alpine Plant Foods. Good said he wanted to get back into farming and mushrooms looked interesting.

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"It's a fast learning curve. Every five weeks, you get to know what you did right or wrong," he said.

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The farm employs 24 people, including 16 harvesters. As part of the deal, they took on farm manager Kevin Bosley, who taught the Goods the techniques of mushroom growing. With additional investment to upgrade the equipment, he estimated the operation is worth about $2 million.

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Good said it's true that decades ago, horse manure was used to grow mushrooms. But even then, it was composted to create a much more pleasant growing material.

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These days, Whitecrest grows mushrooms grown in a bed, or substrate, of partially-composted wheat straw with small amounts of gypsum and nitrogen added.

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The substrate is pasteurized in two stages through a natural composting process.
The wheat straw is the perfect growing medium for the mushroom fungus whose job in nature is to break down the cellulose fibre in trees and plants.

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"That's their whole job. They are nature's recycler of cellulose," said Good.
Once the growing medium is ready, mushroom spawn, the equivalent of seed, is added.

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A mature mushroom will produce as many as 16 billion spores. Spores are collected in a sterile environment of a laboratory, then embedded on grains or seeds to produce the spawn. The spawn grows through the substrate into lacy white filaments called mycelium.

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A layer of peat moss is spread on top and tiny "pins" poke up, growing into the mushrooms that are actually the fruit of the fungus. Getting the mushroom to pop up is quite a trick that requires precise watering and temperatures varying between 13 and 18 Celsius.

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"We trick them into reproducing by creating the condition of a cool fall day so they fruit and drop their spores," said Good.

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Water and air going into the growing rooms is purified with ozone and filtered to prevent foreign spores from contaminating the growing beds.
Ozone purification also avoids the use of chemicals, allowing the farm to achieve its organic certification.

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"Everything has to be clean, clean, clean. That's how it is in mushroom farming," said Good.

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Carbon dioxide produced by the growing process has to be vented out. The growing rooms are dimly lit, not to promote growth, just to save energy.

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Each room has 264 square metres of growing room times for a total of 1,800 sq. m. Good is always working to speed up the cycle of growth through careful manipulation of the growing conditions.

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Two years ago, he cut the seven-week growing cycle to six weeks and is now down to five weeks. By contrast, some U.S. growers are still on a 10-week cycle.
Good is hoping to get down to four weeks, but that will be tricky without sacrificing quality, he said.

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After picking, mushrooms are packaged on site and distributed through Toronto-based Windmill Farms. Windmill Farms also produces white mushrooms to supply major supermarket chains. There are only about 60 mushroom farms in Canada.
Good said Canadian farms generally only produce fresh mushrooms, because the canned market has been captured by Chinese producers, who have much lower labour costs.

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Two years ago Whitecrest Farms branched out into retail and agri-tourism by opening a small retail store. The store sells mushroom patties, marinated mushrooms and breaded mushrooms.

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Another product is the Teeny-Tiny mushroom farm for kids. All the growing material and spawn is packed in a styrofoam container, so kids can cultivate and eat their own crop of mushrooms.

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Good also conducts tours of the mushroom operation and mushroom expert Rex Bartlett conducts hunts for wild mushrooms in the area. The operation is also branching out to the kiwi business. A few years ago, Chantelle spotted an article about the Arctic (also spelled Artic) kiwi, a hardy variety that can grow in Southwestern Ontario.

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The fruit is the size of a small plum and has a smooth skin, unlike the New Zealand variety. Chantelle planted the first vines in 2007 but the crop was damaged by frost. The kiwi plants take several years to mature and first full harvest is expected in 2011.

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In the meantime, Good is watching his mushrooms pop up and extolling their nutritional quality.

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He said they are rich in potassium and anti-oxidants and produce their own vitamin D. The mushroom is also prized by chefs for its ability to absorb flavours.
But Goods admits that to some kids -- and even some adults -- the humble mushroom can be a tough sell.

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"I think it's a texture thing. You either love or you hate them. Nobody is in the middle." -The London Free Press

Jumaat, Ogos 07, 2009

London Eye


Salam.
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Hari ni cerita lain daripada cendawan, pasal London. Lepas tiga minggu kat sini, banyak tempat saya dah lawati dan pelbagai perkara menarik yang berlaku. Minggu lepas tinggal sorang2 je sebab kawan-kawan ramai dah balik dulu. Minggu ni baru datang lagi dua orang so ada la geng nak teman pegi jalan-jalan.
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Saya tinggal di apartmen Gainsbrough House, Casillis Road, Canary Wharf. Tengah bandar London. Menurut maklumat, kalau sewa kat sini dalam £600 seminggu. Kira bertuah sebab syarikat yang tanggung hehe.
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Misi minggu ni dan seterusnya, ambik gambar banyak2, pegi tempat yang belum pegi lagi. Masalah kat sini makanan halal susah skit lah tapi sebab sekarang ni musim panas takde masalah nak jalan-jalan.
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Memang kebanyakan barang diaorang mahal, tambah kalau nak fikir convert ke RM sebelum beli, tak terbeli.
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Apapun, sistem pengangkutan awam dia memang canggih, diaorang panggil tube. Rondalah area sini satu hari sampai lenguh kaki. Satu lagi, saya nampak banyak peluang bisnes boleh dibuat kat sini. Ingat nak buat satu bisnes venture satu hari nanti dan bila dah kaya nak bawak famili lak datang.

Saya kongsikan gambar untuk tatapan semua.
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Salam dari London
6 Ogos 2009

Sabtu, Ogos 01, 2009

Kursus Cendawan di Cendawan Puchong







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Assalamualaikum dan salam sejahtera.
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Saya dengan berbesar hati mewar-warkan kursus cendawan yang akan dianjurkan oleh rakan saya, En Zul dari Cendawan Puchong seperti makluman berikut. Pendaftaran dibuka sekarang dan sila hubungi pihak urusetia kursus untuk maklumat lanjut.
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Nizam,
12:15pm London




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