Fromthat pea, it’ll be (the size of) amarble the next day, and from the marble, it’ll be close to a mushroom the next day.” White and brown mushrooms grow at about the same rate, she said, whereas portabellas require an additional two to three days. Mushroom farmers typically pick the trays by hand three times during a period of three to five days, with the middle pick yielding the most crop. After the final pick, farmers clean the beds and recycle the spent compost for other uses. At South Valley, it is sent to a company that makes soil amendment. This makes mushroom farming self-sustaining with no waste, Christine Kubogamell said, as the materials used for the compost are all-natural agricultural byproducts and, on the back end, the growing medium is reused to enrich soil for growing something else. “There’s always a new crop coming in every week, so there’s always a different stage every week in different parts of the farm,” she said.
Ching Lee clee@californiabountiful.com
MORE ONLINE Mushrooms make the meal! Find out more about growing and cooking with them at californiabountiful.com.
White button, crimini and portabella mushrooms all come from the same mushroom species, Agaricus bisporus.
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If the rainy months of fall and winter deprive you of sunlight, you might want to load up on mushrooms. Mushrooms are the only food in the fresh produce aisle that contains vitamin D—and one of only a few foods that contains “the sunshine vitamin” without being fortified. Humans make vitamin D when our skin is exposed to the sun’s rays. Mushrooms do something similar: Their high concentrations of ergosterol—found only in fungi— convert to vitamin D when exposed to light. Though all mushrooms contain some vitamin D, studies have found that when they are deliberately exposed to sunlight for 15 to 120 minutes, they can generate significant amounts that approach the recommended daily allowance. Some growers are doing just that—exposing their mushrooms to ultraviolet light before they’re packed, to produce “high vitamin D” mushrooms. People at home also can boost the vitamin D levels of their mushrooms by bathing them in sunlight. To give them maximum exposure, place mushrooms in the sun with their gills up or slice them first, as that provides more surface area for them to soak in the sun.
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November/December 2020
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