It’s nice to try fresh mushrooms in the cold January. You’ll be able to pick them at any time of year if you build a mushroom growing cabinet. Externally, it’s a two-door cabinet measuring 2290X2130X1035 mm, which can be installed, say, in a large hallway.
The cabinet is constructed like a thermostat — with walls and doors made of thermal insulation panels. Their load-bearing surface is 12-mm plywood, in the middle — a layer of foam plastic 100 mm thick, inside — self-adhesive film or oilcloth. For rigidity, the thermostat is edged with a steel angle 25X25X3 mm. The door edging is also assembled from the same angle.
The interior of the cabinet is a rack (also the load-bearing frame), assembled from 10 vertical and 24 horizontal wooden bars with a cross-section of 100X50 and 50X50 mm: piano hinges for the doors are attached to the side vertical bars.
Polyethylene boxes measuring 700X400X260 mm with mushroom mycelium and substrate — specially prepared soil — are inserted along guide bars into the depth of the cabinet, calculated so that 50 mm gaps are formed in front and behind them for air circulation.
1 — leg, 2 — transverse angle (25X25X3 mm), 3 — guide bar, 4 — box with mycelium, 5 — cabinet wall, 6, 16 — vertical bars, 7 — flexible ventilation sleeve, 8 — damper, 9 — ventilation pipe, 10 — refrigeration unit, 11 — timer relay, 12 — fan, 13 — portable lamp, 14 — thermostat, 15 — psychrometer, 17 — heating lamps, 18 — plug, 19 — handle, 20 — substrate, 21 — extended bars, 22 — water tray, 23 — longitudinal bottom angle, 24 — ventilation gap, 25 — vertical door edging angles, 26 — door, 27 — film curtain, 28 — piano hinge, 29 — plywood, 30 — foam plastic, 31 — self-adhesive film.
For the development of mycelium in the substrate, the first two to three weeks in the cabinet maintain a temperature of 18—27°, and humidity — 90—95% (in the absence of ventilation). Then, during the fruiting period, the temperature is reduced to 11—17°, and humidity to 85—90° (with good natural ventilation).
Maintaining the specified parameters is impossible without control and monitoring instruments. Therefore, the mushroom growing cabinet is equipped with a unit from the “Sever” refrigerator, a heater (electric lamps with bulbs painted black), a thermostat, a psychrometer, a timer relay, and a fan (for mixing air in the cabinet). In addition, a portable lamp with a green bulb is used for inspecting mushrooms and caring for them. To prevent the temperature regime from being disturbed, the opening of the mushroom growing cabinet is draped with black polyethylene film. It hangs behind the doors with a large allowance.
To increase air humidity in the cabinet, water trays installed under the boxes of the first tier are used. Fresh air enters through openings at the bottom and roof. The first, at the bottom right, is closed with a plug Ø 120 mm with a handle; the second, at the top left, is equipped with a tin pipe Ø 120 mm with a damper-shutter and a flexible sleeve connected to the ventilation window at the ceiling of the hallway. The sleeve is made of two wire spirals, wound one on top of the other and covered with polyvinyl chloride film.
The total area of the boxes is 3.36 m2. With a yield of 4— 8 kg of mushrooms per 1 m2, the owner of the mushroom growing cabinet can get approximately up to 20 kg of delicacy products. And there can be four to five such harvests per year!
The “spent” substrate is excellent fertilizer, it is used to improve the quality of soil in garden beds.
«М-К» 9’86, K. KRUGLIKOV
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