GROWING GOURMET - Anto2ni.it

424 HARVESTING, STORING AND PACKING
Harvesting the Crop
Simple guidelines prevail in the proper harvesting
and storing of mushrooms. First, young
mushrooms last much longer after harvest than
aged mushrooms. Once spores have developed
on the face of the gills, perishability is accelerated.
If mushrooms have partial veils, like the
Button Mushroom (Agaricus brunnescens) or
the Black Poplar Mushroom (Agrocybe
aegerita), they are best picked while the partial
veils are intact, in other words when the mushrooms
are still young. Partial veils protect the
gills, limiting moisture loss, preventing spore
release, and rupture only as the caps expand.
The cultivator must constantly counterbalance
maximum yield with marketability. The
comment I most often hear, after presenting my
Oyster mushrooms to a distributor who has
been purchasing them from afar, is "I didn't
Figure 376. Harvesting clusters ot a cold weather,
dark Oyster strain. This strain is popular in China
and Japan.
know Oyster mushrooms could look like this!"
Because Oyster mushrooms readily suffer from
shipping and handling, local producers can easily
usurp the markets of distant growers. Oyster
mushrooms have a functional lifespan of only 5
days, after which marketability drastically declines.
Another rule is that clusters yield, pound for
pound, higher quality mushrooms than mushrooms
grown individually. Bouquets of
mushrooms have obvious advantages, both
from the point of view ofharvesting as well as
marketing. They can be picked with ease, needing
minimum handling and trimming. Once
harvested, the mushrooms protect one another by
being bunched together. Harvesting mushrooms
Figure 377. Harvesting l'addy Straw mushrooms in
Thailand.
in clusters limits the damage caused by individual,
loose mushrooms jostling against one another subsequent
to harvest. Most importantly bouquets,
at the ideal stage for harvest, are composed of
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