This is the first month I have been growing cucumbers and tomatoes in a small bubble hydroponic system. They have needed little maintenance and i

My Baby Cucumbers Via Bubbleponics or Aeroponics

This is the first cucumbers i have ever grown in water. Just young like baby gerkins the are so cute. I picked one already to eat today, it was delicious. And no fear of the chemicals spayed on them. I am using a nutrient formula from the local Hydroponic farm Bangkaja Hydroponic farms. They use top quality food grade nutrients to mix the own A B formula. It is Ph Balanced and nothing needs to be added. Only the levels checked as the plants grow. It's amazing the Aztec grew like this, what great knowledge we have to gain from our past. The baby cucumbers were great and aeroponics works amazingly faster then regular hydroponics, this is cause the roots can get much more oxygen and not due to weird hormone or fertilizers. We use the best quality food available and they make it and the bankaja hydroponic farm. So if you need anything just email and i can contact them, if you speak thai i can give you the owners phone number.

My Gemstones and Fine Jewelry

FINE GEMSTONES ON EBAY

Complete Mushroom Food Pyramid

Mushrooms are a complete food, providing a healthy amount of proteins and carbohydrates. So i have decided to come up with a healthier solution to the American food pyramid. If we ate mushrooms in place of so much meat in our diet we would all be healthier.

Packing Mushroom Compost Medium

Today they were packing bags full and tight with the sawdust compost mixture which will feed the mushrooms. Many people come in to help when they do this. Today they packed 7,000 Bags of compost, the machine they have only packs 1500 per day and seems is the electric motor is burning hot by the end of the day. They are filling a big order, and currently cant meet the demand for orders for all their customers. During certain times of the year like the Thai Vegetarian Festival and certain holidays the demand increases.

It is nice to have so many orders you cannot fill them all. It seems the expansion of the Het Fang or Straw mushrooms is in order.

This farm started 13 years ago by planting only Straw mushrooms. They continued to slowly expand to now being a center for the area. People from as far as Soi Dow, Pong Nam Ron, Klung and even Koh Chang come to get cultures and materials needed to plant a mushroom farm and they supply local fresh markets with each the daily harvest. It can be anywhere from 30kg to over 100kg per day. Todays harvest was above 70 kg. Today I took home 1 kilogram of Het Fang or Straw Mushrooms. Tonight we split them with the neighbors. We ate tons of mushrooms tonight, they were delicious. We had the Het Bao Hu Mushrooms from yesterday. We cooked them in Pad See Ew Sauce, they were good. However I love them cooked in Nam Man Hoi sauce. "Pad" Means stir fried so you would say in Thai " Pad Nam Man Hoy". Tomorrow I am getting the Bao hu mushrooms cooked in Nam man hoy.I saw the last picking of the fruiting body or Mushrooms after i watched them packing the bags with compost medium. The straw mushroom or Het Fang like a hot humid dark climate. They have many rooms full of the straw mushroom and other many types of mushrooms in different climate. Het Fang or straw mushrooms are the most plentiful mushroom on the farm. They began with straw mushrooms and they are the most productive mushroom on the farm, it is amazing. I dont yet understand the whole growing process of straw mushrooms but as it comes to me i will correct the details. I see they take the raw straw material and submerge it in water. For days, hours or weeks i am not sure. Using the steam boiler the can kill any bacteria from the beginning. Then they put the steam into the room to clean it and make them germ free rooms. This warmth is perfect to grow mycelia, the temperature is very hot and humid. At some time they add in the mushrooms mycelia growing cultures. It takes days too complete. When the fruit or mushrooms slowly appear, you can begin your harvest. It takes about a month two 6 weeks for harvest to begin after full mycelia growth. They produce for up to 4 months as the food remains and no contaminations occur. Inside the material the mycelia are decomposing the straw sugars. As the straw clumps age they are moved so the straw mushrooms can grow on all different surfaces. The Chanthaburi Suan Het near Nueng Sung has been in the growing business of mushrooms for 13 years. They hope to be growing their our own mycelia in the PDA or agar mixtures in the next 3 months.
More to come

Mushroom Farm Suan Het Chanthaburi

Today March 1st 2011, I visited the Het Suan CHanthaburi. It is a big Mushroom farm located near Neon Sung intersection in Amphur Thaimai, CHanthaburi Province. You will see the small statue on the side of Sukimvit Highway 300 meters before you come to he intersection at NoenSung. Take a left and drive 2 km down the twisty road to the farm. At the Mushroom Farm CHanthaburi, th grow and supply all type of local asian mushrooms. From Het Fang and Het NangFa to Het Kon Het Yippon and some strange ones like Het Hua Ling, in English the Monkey Head Mushroom.



I am learning about the different types and bought myself some inoculated compost ready to begin sprouting Oyster mushrooms in 5 days. If i do it right the mushroom will flower or produce the fruiting body for about 4 months until all the food is gone from the saw dust compost. Today i bought 1/2 kg of Het HuJu and Het Kon each. I made a Kang Katik Coconut milk Curry mushroom soup for dinner. It was delicious. And then tommorow i will return to see how the pack the mushrooms compost into the bags. It takes a full month or more for the Mushroom Mycelium to grow covering the inside of the bag.

Today i visit all the different rooms full of mushrooms and then i watched the mixing the ingredients for the compost to support the mushrooms growth. It is made up of lots of saw dust, some gypsum powder and calcium carbonate. Plus a few more nutrients.
So look for the next update about Bag stuffing.

Het Fang


Het Bao Hu - Bao Hu Mushrooms

Het Nang Fa Chumpoo



Het - Mushroom

Het Hua Ling - Monkey Head Mushroom

Mushroom Farm

I visited the local mushroom farm today. It was a big farm and produced ten types of fungi. They were cleaning the harvested mushrooms for market. Each day they send the harvest to sell in the market and they hve yet to meet the demand. They produce new mushrooms every 11 days. It is a quick turn around for money invested. You have to cook the saw dust growing medium in a steam room. This cleans all the bacteria prior to inoculating the saw dust with the specific mushroom cultured bacteria. I bought dome Blue mushroom spores on Ebay and want to see them grow, so i will bring them tomorrow and help plant them in the prepared growing media.

I sat for two hours watching them collect the mushrooms and then carefully clean the base off with a sharp razor. Using a sharp blade they glided across the mushrooms base and removed any dirt or remaining sawdust. Then when they completed this the put them into baskets and weighed them all. The boss then recorded the weights figured out the money and sent them off to market.

They have many different types of mushrooms. The most interesting species today was the Monkey Head mushroom. They gave me all the harvest and said they were delicious. I ate them for dinner, just boiled a second in water and then made them into a Yum Het Thai Dish. They were delicious.