Mushroom Farming

[ray23]

Col, I thought I had the mixer already and with the brother in law the two hands are in place.

There might be me a oven that works with gas or wood and packaging machine available from a guy who is going out of buisiness, moving to Spain. I should know next week. The oven does 1,000 at a time. since we are so small I'm leaning toward working with wood.

I think the next ones I will need will be Nong Faa. When would be about the right time to star putting those into packages. We currently have 3,000 Nong Faa and they are still producing. Currently have 8,000 Khon Kao about a month old. I think that will carry me to Nong Faa season.

I will send the brother in Law around the time we make our first ones, so he doesn't forget.

Even if I have to buy new oven and pakager the cost is about 33K.

I heard of doing it in drums before. Thanks for the pics, they make it a lot clearer to understand.

I think I will pursue a wood burning oven. Lots of wood around and that should keep the costs down.

Thanks for all your help

Ray

[chillem]

Col, I thought I had the mixer already and with the brother in law the two hands are in place.

There might be me a oven that works with gas or wood and packaging machine available from a guy who is going out of buisiness, moving to Spain. I should know next week. The oven does 1,000 at a time. since we are so small I'm leaning toward working with wood.

I think the next ones I will need will be Nong Faa. When would be about the right time to star putting those into packages. We currently have 3,000 Nong Faa and they are still producing. Currently have 8,000 Khon Kao about a month old. I think that will carry me to Nong Faa season.

I will send the brother in Law around the time we make our first ones, so he doesn't forget.

Even if I have to buy new oven and pakager the cost is about 33K.

I heard of doing it in drums before. Thanks for the pics, they make it a lot clearer to understand.

I think I will pursue a wood burning oven. Lots of wood around and that should keep the costs down.

Thanks for all your help

Ray

I don't see the problem with using gas. We can make 2 ovens with one big tank of gas. That is 1200-1300 bottles you can make with it.

For one oven it takes about 2 hours when it starts boiling, after that we let it boil with the gas fully open for about 30 minutes. Then we turn the gas down to about half the power and that for another 4 hours.

I don't know about the timings with the wood, but I think it's much more harder to control the temperature. And also much more work I guess.

Just making your bottles it takes some time already, so I prefer the easy way and just spent a little bit more money for the time I save.

If you are interested I can give you the contactnumber from the person who makes these ovens. He can make several sizes, depends on how many you want to make in a day.

[ray23]

Thanks, cost would be the only issue. We will be making them for ourselves. So if I could do a thousand in day that should be sufficient.

I have a small nitch market that we do well in. I don't want to step on Thai toes.

[chillem]

Thanks, cost would be the only issue. We will be making them for ourselves. So if I could do a thousand in day that should be sufficient.

I have a small nitch market that we do well in. I don't want to step on Thai toes.

1000 a day:

If you only making bottles, that means no jobs like cutting mushrooms or other stuff, then it should be possible with 3-4 workers on a 8 hours working day. Also do all your bottles in one day for one oven. Because the quality might not be the same if you spread one oven in 2 days.

[ray23]

Thanks, cost would be the only issue. We will be making them for ourselves. So if I could do a thousand in day that should be sufficient.

I have a small nitch market that we do well in. I don't want to step on Thai toes.

1000 a day:

If you only making bottles, that means no jobs like cutting mushrooms or other stuff, then it should be possible with 3-4 workers on a 8 hours working day. Also do all your bottles in one day for one oven. Because the quality might not be the same if you spread one oven in 2 days.

Ony planning on one worker, so my sights may be to high

[ray23]

Just trying to plan ahead a bit, what would be a good time frame to replace Khon Kao with Nong Faa?

I was thinking around Oct. is that to soon?

[ray23]

Well we finished off our first official year. Had 180 K in sales for the year. Cash in hand of 38K baht

We
started the year with one mushroom house and a 1,000 plants now have a
total on nine places to grow and currently 11,000 plants producing. We
will be adding 4K new plants in a few weeks. Bringing us up yo 15K
plants in production. We will be replacing the 11,000 K in plants over
the next five months depending on how long they have been in production.

We
lost money on the fish roughly 12K baht. But that figure includes
building a holding tank, filter system. About five pumps used for water
and 0-2 supply. We have 400 Talapia in grow nets, each with it's own 0-2
Another 400 Catfish in he small pond.

I made a lot of mistakes
probably killed more then I sold. But lessons hard learned so I will be
limiting my mistakes this t year compared to last year I hope.

So
went through a learning and building year, adding permanent structure
pumps that will last for years. and some cash in our pocket. So I look
for a better year next year.

The worm farm is doing great, we
have doubled the amount we had. Since they eat the mushroom scraps no
money expense involved now. I may start sell bait pretty soon to wait
till the rainy season is over when it's more difficult to get worms.

[IsaanAussie]

Well we finished off our first official year. Had 180 K in sales for the year. Cash in hand of 38K baht

We

started the year with one mushroom house and a 1,000 plants now have a

total on nine places to grow and currently 11,000 plants producing. We

will be adding 4K new plants in a few weeks. Bringing us up yo 15K

plants in production. We will be replacing the 11,000 K in plants over

the next five months depending on how long they have been in production.

We

lost money on the fish roughly 12K baht. But that figure includes

building a holding tank, filter system. About five pumps used for water

and 0-2 supply. We have 400 Talapia in grow nets, each with it's own 0-2

Another 400 Catfish in he small pond.

I made a lot of mistakes

probably killed more then I sold. But lessons hard learned so I will be

limiting my mistakes this t year compared to last year I hope.

So

went through a learning and building year, adding permanent structure

pumps that will last for years. and some cash in our pocket. So I look

for a better year next year.

The worm farm is doing great, we

have doubled the amount we had. Since they eat the mushroom scraps no

money expense involved now. I may start sell bait pretty soon to wait

till the rainy season is over when it's more difficult to get worms.

Ray sounds like a cheap year of first hand learning, but I am a little confused by your numbers. You said you had 180K in sales with 38K baht in hand. Does that mean you have a profit of some 20%?

[ray23]

That would be pretty close. But a ,lot of profits were tied back into enlarging the operation.

For me this was simple way to track things. Had I used the deprecation method the profits would show higher..

Fish were the biggest lesson to learn. I probably killed more then I sold.

Mushrooms are easy but, time consuming

[IsaanAussie]

That would be pretty close. But a ,lot of profits were tied back into enlarging the operation.

For me this was simple way to track things. Had I used the deprecation method the profits would show higher..

Fish were the biggest lesson to learn. I probably killed more then I sold.

Mushrooms are easy but, time consuming

Any farming enterprise that can fully recover infrastructure investment within a year and show a bottom line profit of 20% is pretty good in my book. Well done.

[ray23]

I think our next year will be better, we are now paying my 5K a month from the farm. It was very hard for her to see the value of what we did last year.

I doubt that I will expand more over this year. That would take another market opening to us. Then I might do it.

Everything is spaces out so there will not be one big buy, we currently have 2K of Nong Faa and 2K of Khon Kao that should go in this moment, Then we have reached our current capacity that we have now. The it will be replacing the used up packs.

Fish we have 400 catfish now, more then likely we will start catching them next month. We cut expenses there buy not pumping 0-2 to them and added a light with a sensor to turn it on and off during darkness giving them bugs to eat. That really cuts down the cost of food.

Talapia roughly 1,000, last year we had 2,000 and we fed 25%, in the end I don't think it made a lot of difference, relying mop ore on algea.. So this year 16.5% and less feed daily. We are also feeding 50% less then we did last year We have 400 in four floating nets, with a larger net over them, That stops the birds stopping by for lunch. The net is so fine that makes the actual net for them, that they clog up very easily. I need to find something better, that will keep the fry in. But allows the water to circulate. Currently I have 0-2 going into each net. We learned about salting the pond on TV. every time I have ran into a problem that I didn't understand the guys on the forum gave me the answers. I followed them with good results each time.

We have a small cement pond for holding the fish for sale in small amounts. We had problem with filtering that water. On the forum they have given me a different design and I modified our existing filter. That hasn't been tested yet as he fish are to small to sale. But, I'm confident just like everything else I have ran into, the design will help.

I got a tell you when you burn up 30 to 40 Kilo of fish because of mistakes it gets your attention

So I think things will go better this year. If farming was easy everyone would be doing it. I;m very satisfied with last year. But, I think we will have a better profit in this year. Depending on how many more lessons I need to learn.

[ray23]

I had a question asked so I thought I would post it here along with my answer:

I have a few questions. Your grow houses are nice. What dimensions are they. Seem to be around 4x8 meters?

Have you ever calculated the growing in m2 space that you inside. You
tell us about the number of bags but not the area. I was working on a
system using sealed trays upright 20cm thick with both faces open with
screens and sealed with plastic, then holes punched after the substrate
was fully bloomed. I use a chopped straw substrate kind of like people
do with plastic logs.

With my system though in a 4x8meter hut I can have over 120m2 area of
growth. But not sure I want to experiment if your yields are just as
good.

Keep it simple is a good motto.

also do you know where to find suppliers of grain spawn?

My houses are 4 by 7 meters, I have five houses, they are set two meters apart I cover the areas in between with thatch then I have lean to sort of thing on the end one. Nothing fancy and i have room for about 17K packets. I save money on building walls and actually have nine locations to grow in.

I have never did straw mushrooms, so my plants lay side ways.

I grow Nong Faa and Khon Khao, the reason being Khon Khao does very well in extreme heat. Khon Khao is more labor intensive they have to be picked twice a day and require more water. We have 8k of those with 2K more coming next week. The old ones are getting tired.

Nong Faa we have 3K anytime you have a temp overnight of less the 25C they will produce. We also have 2 K more of them coming next week.

I did this so the vendors we supply will have product no matter the weather.

I will start replacing Khon Khao with Nong Faa the closer we get to the cools season. But I will always have both varieties.

Grain Spawn no idea.

Hope that helped.

[zeichen]

Nice.

I would suggest instead of just adding more spawn bags to your rooms that after your cycle of flushes (I usually stop after 3-4). I would discard all bags far away from your houses and disinfect the hut. Usually waiting 1 -2 weeks before starting the next cycle. If you keep going and going without fully decontaminating your huts, you might end up with some unwanted molds, fungus etc. Would be bad if a whole crop was destroyed since you are buying bags at 6baht each or so12k baht per hut would be bad to loose. I know a few farmers in their 2nd and 3rd years to loose full crops because they didn't decontaminate between batches.

You might want to experiment making straw logs in large poly bags and creating your own spore spawn, you can clone the exact strain that fruits the best. You might end up getting higher yields in shorter growing lenghts. Might be more labor intensive to keep replacing every 6 weeks but you might end up with much larger yields. 100kg of straw would be minimal, and the spawn if you culture it yourself will be cheap too. You might end up saving 8-10k per hut for a cycle. But you would need a hot room and usually dark for them to culture in usually 2 weeks.

Since you have 17k bags costing 6 baht each that is over 100k baht. How often do your bags fruit? 3-4 months? That would cost a lot if you had to replenish them 2-3 times a year.

Have you tried having blocks of ice on the ground of your nangfa huts. Shouldn't be more than 10-20 baht/day that might lower your hut temp for oyster nangfa, 1-2 degrees and give slightly more humidity, could help with a longer growing season. I found that 22 degrees my strain produced a lot more than at 25 but my strain wasn't heat resistant like a lot of the varieties here in Thailand.

Thanks again for your thread and wonderful and accurate journalling of this adventure. I am certain if you have any scientific blood in you, you will love culturing/cloning your own spawn.

I'm still working out the process to get white cap (hed kratom) to grow for more than 3 months a year. Its a delicate balance of cost effectiveness. I could easily spend 400k baht start up costs and monthly costs of 5k baht to make a cooled grow house, but since they don't actually wholesale for a lot more than nangfa, not really worth it.

[ray23]

We do disinfect in the crop rotation. Today I had more Nong Faa then Khon Kean, for the rest of this next week, we have forecasts at night below 25. So they will be busy same ting if we get rain. The 4K that come in are for replacement of others. They will go into new houses waiting for them. When we remove the others then we clean things up before we put more in.

I haven't done straw mushrooms do well with what I have. We have sold about 15K baht do far this moment that is plenty for me.

I want more I could just add more houses, I have plenty of room left. But everything we produce is sold within 3 Klms of the farm. So pretty easy on everyone. I have no idea where this si going really depends on our market.

The plants we use now tend to last about five months.

[zeichen]

You keep mentioning straw mushrooms. I am talking about using chopped straw as your substrate.

http://www.fungifun.org/mushworld/Oyster-Mushroom-Cultivation/mushroom-growers-handbook-1-mushworld-com-chapter-4-1.pdf

In picture you can see a straw log vertically hanging with oysters fruiting on it. You can also use straw beds. Or even bags like you do but with straw and small holes punched in after pinning.

There are just different strategies for maximizing growing space. The downside would be fermenting and or pasturizing your substrates. Can require a little bit of effort and some steaming equipment but could be as cheap is 50gallong barrels on top of cement block with wood fire underneath.

But as I said if you are buying 17k bags at 6bht each x3 harvests a year, that is still 300k investment. Even if you are harvesting 15,000 kilos of mushrooms which would bring over 700k in sales you are still loosing more than half to operating costs. Just something to think about, instead of building more huts and producing more, try and reduce costs first. Like I said it is not easy to cultivate your own spores and prepare your own spawn, curing chambers, but wtih each house that you build you increase the risk of more unwanted fungus, mold, bacterial contaminations.

But again, I shouldn't really give advice. I am just spewing things that I am trying to calculate before I take the plunge. You are more brave than I am and just started. I do very small scale, and experimental mycology, but really would like to create a productive commercial operation like you have.

So please don't take my comments as criticism or judgement. I think you are doing great and am quite envious of your success.

[ray23]

Well I missed on that one

[zeichen]

I was back track and re-reading all the posts in the thread again.

I noticed one person asking how much the middle man make and watching one of the Thai educational videos about mushroom farming as a way to reduce poaching they were selling to middle man for about 50baht/ kilo, then in the background you could hear her ask the driver what they resell at and he said between 5-10baht a kilo. As stated before don't cut out the middle man if you already started doing business with him. If you can find a wholesale market or individual markets first that is best.

Others asking about spores. The actual spores can come in a print (which you add water to and put in a syringe) or a syringe fully loaded with liquid spores. (you then need to inject into a grain jar or actually 10) Then you can do a grain to grain transfer once your mycilia multiply and the whole grain jar/bag is covered with in white. If there is green mold, throw it out far away, do not open inside or you will contanimnate your entire operation.

For most people doing mycology and transfering spores and making your own grain spawn is a little too much.

You need a sterile environment, something that prevents contamination from getting into your agar plates or spawn jars.

The other method for cloning mushrooms that you like are to peel them open and take a sample using a scalpel and putting on sterilized agar plates.

The upside is you get to copy the individual strain that you desire.

Another point some mentioned is the amount of mushroom production from bags. Since most of them weigh about 1kilo, your harvest will be roughly 250grams (average)-500gms (optimal conditions) per bag over 3-4 flushes (blooms) An average operation can do about 3 cycles a year. So if you are running 4k bags in a room (6 baht bag each) that is roughly around 1k kilos of mushrooms (oyster) at 40-55 baht a kilo you are grossing 50k a cycle minus 24k baht for bags and then add in water, electricity, labor etc. making 70-75k baht a year on one hut isn't out of the picture.

reducing one's overall costs on bags to 2 baht or so if you inject them yourself, would add some labor time and cost but would probably add to your overall operation if you are doing more than 1-2 huts. Pakdee had a pdf that was for disabled people helping them get into farming and they had a step plan. 1. 1-4k bags, one hut. 2. 2nd year expand to 2 huts , 3. year expand to 3 huts and make a hot room and start making your own bags. With a simple low cost set up you can make about 1k bags a day and then rotate your huts so you are refilling them sequentially. Ill post later if Packdee doesn't post it. Very nice manual for farming oyster mushrooms specifically in Thailand

I found this http://www.fungifun.org/mushworld/Oyster-Mushroom-Cultivation/

to be a great source of information.

[IsaanAussie]

The production numbers are what it is all about. Time will tell for me as the two boxes I have in flush contain a lot experimental substrates which may not produce a single shroom. But currently the first box has yielded an average of 130gm per bag with more to come. I am expecting up to 2 kg per bag when anything settles down.

[zeichen]

Issaan Ausie are you doing oysters? or that Milky variety from Packdee? I really want to try that one.How did you like the taste?

If your substrate is 1 kilo bags, how do you expect to get 2 kilos of mushrooms from 1 kilo of substrate? Energy is neither created nor destroyed only transferred. Or are your bags larger than 1 kilo?

How many flushes do you usually run before disinfecting area and restocking?

Yes, I do see that having higher production from quantity of bags, but reducing your costs by producing own spore spawn would help too. If you are using 10k bags, and they cost 6 baht each, that is 60k baht x 3 cycles, a year is 180k investment for approximately 7500 kilos of mushrooms a year . Where you could save half of that by creating your own spawn bags. You reach a point that harvest 10k bags is a lot of work too, whereas if you only had 5k bags and cost of making was 3baht each, you would end up spending 45k baht investment for an average haul of 3700 kilos per year. If you sell for around 50 baht a kilo, you net around 190k a year for 10k bags, or 140k baht a year for 5k bags. Double the work and harvest for only 50k more. But the trick is to find the balance between optimization of land, time, investment and productivity. I still think that I would rather make my own bags and use my own cultivated spore, then increase my work load and number of huts.

Benefits of bag cultivation is limits the need for steam sterilization of huts, literally anyone can dedicate some effort, time and get some nice results, Very easy to start up a production with limited resources.

Down Side of bag cultivation of (hed nang fa) oyster mushrooms

1. It limits your surface area of growing,

2. when bags are laid close together they increase the heat generated from each other so, species that prefer lower temperatures would struggle somewhat.

3. since the majority of the substrate is down at the bottom the flushes take slightly longer and produce slightly less than if spread out in trays or horizontal straw logs.

[Packdee]

Useful links for mushroom growers.

FAO paper

http://www.fao.org/d...7e/ab497e07.htm

Bagging team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11b2MiCSebg

Bagging Machine 800 bags/hour, three operators.

http://mushroomptr.net/catalog15.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtVaDyjf0s

Mixer

http://www.sritongmushroom.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=326528&Ntype=1

Bagging machine (pressing substrate in the bag)

http://www.sritongmushroom.com/index.php?lay=show&ac=article&Id=5381584&Ntype=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0qsmD9n2_Y

Spawning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVAelzPA4HM

Col. Packdee

[sjefrie]

Thanks for the video's Col. Packdee some of them i haven't seen yet on Youtube

[ray23]

Thanks for the video's Col. Packdee some of them i haven't seen yet on Youtube

Col. is there something that can be used to illiminate insects while your still o in a growth cycle without killing all your customers.

Since we are in rotation phase now. we have thrown some plants on the ground awaiting disposal. I found that with doing nothing to them and they are sitting in the sun. They still produce, not a lot. So I think I will stack them around the premitter wall. and pick what shows up to feed the worms in the worm farm we have for bait. We are already feeding the contents of the packets to them. I really hate to waist anything.

[itchybum]

This is so ironic...government house, Bangkok..

[zeichen]

"Col. is there something that can be used to illiminate insects while your still o in a growth cycle without killing all your customers."

I know I am not the Col. and his knowledge far exceeds mine but there are a few things that I know of that work.

The old Thai teak wood houses would often have a small trench that surrounds the house filled with water. This will reduce ants, snails and the like from getting in to your huts.

Daily physical inspections or at the least weekly. Do not use any chemicals at all ever as mushrooms are porous and will always absorb whatever you put in the room.

Certain lizards, snakes and mice will often nest too. different traps are available to capture them also.

Making sure that you clean the exterior of the plastic bags with either alcohol or a very diluted bleach water solution works to keep micro organisms, molds and bacteria from growing.

It might be overkill but for me I also wash my boots with bleach and water before and after leaving each mushroom hut. Also keeping hands washed when harvesting does reduce cross contamination.

I have used a concentration of soap, water, garlic and even chilli works for most vegetables but again I wouldn't put it near the openings of the mushroom bags, but on the bags, beams and other areas would be fine.

[Packdee]

Ray, During rainy season we have problem with this tiny mite (Luciaphorus sp.)
You have some one translated this thread for you.

.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Packdee

[sjefrie]

Ray, During rainy season we have problem with this tiny mite (Luciaphorus sp.)

You have some one translated this thread for you.

.

Research article about effect of Crude Plant Extracts on Mushroom Mite, Luciaphorus sp.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/psyche/2012/150958/

[ray23]

Thanks Guys, those plants in front of Government house look like toad stools to me. If they are you may end up dead eating them. We see them on out farm a well. I don't even feed them to the worms. But, I really wouldnl;t know the difference so I will stick to what I grow alone

[itchybum]

Thanks Guys, those plants in front of Government house look like toad stools to me. If they are you may end up dead eating them. We see them on out farm a well. I don't even feed them to the worms. But, I really wouldnl;t know the difference so I will stick to what I grow alone

But at government house, its what feeds them and such which is so fitting.

[ray23]

I reviewed the article I don't think I'm in real trouble yet. I;m only seeing them in the ones we are rotataing out. Then we will desinfect the houses.

Locals use lime on the dirt floors, is that helpful?

[Packdee]

FAIRY RING FUNGUS IN LAWNS

Fairy ring has its name because people once believed that mushrooms growing in a circle followed the path made by fairies dancing in a ring. In reality, fairy ring can be caused by any one of more than 50 kinds of fungus and occurs in the spring and in the fall. Fairy rings most often occur after two or three days of rain followed by several days of dry sunny weather. Fairy rings grow where large quantities of organic matter, such as lumber, tree stumps, logs, etc. have been buried and are rotting in the yard or garden. The ring is caused by a fungus in the soil which use this undecomposed material as a source of nutrition.

From http://www.weekendgardener.net/plant-diseases/fairy-ring-031003

The fairy ring in front of the Goverment House is edible Lepiota rachodes. I have them in my garden.
I've already cloned this specie.

][/img]

Edited June 21, 2013 by Packdee