Compost production: estimation of the process according to external features.

With the diversity of information on compost production, one can distinguish several main stages in its production process. These are 3 stages in the 1st phase and the 2nd phase, compost pasteurization.

The 1st stage of the 1st phase is in removal of easily-accessible nutrition – carbohydrates. It is a necessary condition for getting compost which has nutrition only for button mushrooms. This process is accompanied by generation of a lot of energy which ultimately increases the temperature of the compost mass.

The duration of this stage depends on its performance at achieving the target aim – deletion of easily-accessible nutrition. If the process is too short, this nutrition will remain, and one can forget about the selectiveness of compost. If the 1st stage is too long, the main nutrition of compost which is necessary for formation of button mushrooms, will be off, and it will have a bad impact on the quantity and quality of mushrooms.

On the first two photos one can see the appearance of compost undergoing the stage of deleting of easily-accessible nutrition.

This blue and white deposit is the main “labor force” which does all work t this stage of compost preparation.

The 2nd stage of the 1st phase includes two main processes.

The first process is fixing and conserving of the remained carbohydrate nutrition fir further use in formation of fruit bodies of button mushrooms. In smart books they call this process caramelization. — The external manifestation is even darkening of straw to dark brown color.

The second process which goes at the same time as the first one is the process of ammonification of organic nitrogen, In other words, organic nitrogen in chicken manure splits up to component parts which at the third stage participate in formation of main and supplemental nutrition for vegetative growth of button mushroom mycelium.

The main external manifestation of this process is a strong smell of ammonia. I could not manage to take a picture of the ammonia smell, that is why I only show the photo of the result of straw caramelization.

In this compost the food for future fruit bodies is prepared well.

And in this compost, the process took a wrong way, and the nutrition is prepared rather for trichoderma or seed mold than for button mushrooms.

The last stage of the first phase is formation of a lignin and humus nitrogen fortified complex. Or, in other words, the main type of nutrition for the vegetative growth of mycelium of button mushrooms. Why main type? Because when getting used to this type of nutrition, mycelium saves energy for the first wave of fruiting. And the yield of the first wave and the intensiveness of fruiting in further waves depend on the quantity of this nutrition.

We mentioned above another type of nutrition for the vegetative growth of mycelium. These are the leftovers of microorganisms which participated in the process of compost preparation. In other words, microbe protein.Button mushroom mycelium eats it first, and it contributes to its fast running on the outer surface of compost particles.

For mycelium to digest the interior volume of compost particles the second type of nutrition is needed 0 lignin and humus nitrogen fortified complex. And, as we said before, this nutrition impacts the yield more, and that is why I called it the main one.

The prepared compost of the 1st phase.

The main tasks of the 2nd phase of compost preparation is getting rid of pests and diseases, completing fermentation processes and removing ammonia which forms during these processes.

Photos of prepared compost of the second phase which resulted in mushroom yield of 30-32% are presented below.

Compost, ready for mycelium.