GROWING GOURMET - Anto2ni.it

202 CROPPING CONTAINERS
floor. Plastic ducting is pre-cut into 12 ft.
lengths and tied into a tight knot at one end. The
open end of the plastic tube is pulled over the
cylindrical down-spout of the funnel and secured
with "bungee cords" or, preferably, a
spring-activated, locking collar.
Since the tensile strength of a 12 in. diameter,
4 mu, thick, polyethylene tube is insufficient to
suspend the mass of moist straw tightly packed
into an 8 ft. long column, care must be taken in
filling. After securing the empty plastic column
4-6 inches above the floor, the plastic column
slowly elongates with substrate filling. When a
few air-release holes are punched near the bottom
of the column, air escapes during filling,
facilitating loading. Most importantly, cavi-
Figure 174. Once ferried into the growing room, the
column is inverted so that the loose straw at the top
is compressed. Stainless steel arrowhead heads
mounted on a board are used to puncture 200-400
holes in each plastic column.
ties—air pockets—must be eliminated. As the
Note that 75% of the
weight of the column is floor-supported.
Figure 175. The same column as portrayed in Figures
135-140, 12 days later after inoculation with
grain spawn of the Pink Oyster mushroom
(Pleurotus djamor). 27 lbs. of fresh mushrooms were
harvested on the first flush.
column is filled, the poly-tubing stretches until
partially supported by the floor. As the
column fills with substrate, a worker hugs the
column, gently lifts it several inches off the
floor, and forcibly slams it downwards. (See
Figure 171). The impact against the floor increases
substrate density and eliminates
cavities.This ritual is repeated until the column
is filled to a height of approximately 10 feet.
Once the column has been filled to capacity,
the securing collar is removed by a person
standing on a small step ladder. The column is
tied off at the top using whatever means deemed
most efficient (a twist-tie, knot, collar, etc. ).
The column is carefully taken away from the inoculation
station and another tube is
immediately secured for the next fill of inocu-
PDF compression, OCR, web-optimization with CVISION's PdfCompressor