US (MD): Taking an interest in fungi to becoming a professional grower
Source: VFD.com
US (MD): Taking an interest in fungi to becoming a professional grower Thanks! A small, family-owned and -operated mushroom farm, Bay is the brainchild of Jose Prieto-Figueroa and Bianca Soto, a married couple who also grow fungi at their home in nearby Cambridge.
Inside the main house, which Prieto-Figueroa and Soto bought in 2016 after it sat abandoned for years, is an unfinished commercial kitchen, where Prieto-Figueroa initiates the first stages of mushroom cultivation. A tall man with salt-and-pepper hair, glasses, and a scruffy beard, he's wearing mushroom merch in the form of a T-shirt featuring a skull with red cap mushrooms growing out of it that presents like a mash-up of Dia de los Muertos and The Last of Us.
Prieto-Figueroa, it quickly becomes clear, is an academic at heart, as well as a serious mushroom geek.
Why this matters: For operators, this is a water-management story. The useful signal is that direct substrate measurements can help cut drain loss materially without giving up yield or fruit quality, which is exactly the kind of controllable efficiency gain a facility can build on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does substrate sensing matter in free-drain strawberry systems?
Because drain percentage tells a grower what already happened, while substrate moisture and EC data show root-zone conditions directly. That makes it easier to cut water loss without guessing.
What is the operator takeaway from this trial?
If the thresholds are understood well enough, growers can reduce drain water materially while protecting yield and fruit quality, which makes sensing an operational tool instead of a reporting tool.
