Mushrooms
Out-of-Season

The mushroom season for most people is over. Gone from breakfast or supper table is that tasty delicacy we get so fond of in the brief period when the fields are dotted with this particular type of edible fungus.

But in two buildings in upper De Lautour Road the mushroom season is never over. For there, in large trays of prepared soil arranged in orderly rows, mushrooms grow all the year round. The weekly harvest often runs into hundreds of pounds of perfect specimens, unbuffeted by wind and weather. They are packed and shipped away to all parts of the country—yet another unusual Gisborne export.

Mrs Foote says it has taken her many years of experiment to perfect her method of mushroom culture. By the look of the trays when "Photo News" called, she seems to have all the answers to what is well-known as a difficult business.

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Flashlight photograph in darkened room shows mushrooms hard at work growing. They get big fast, hence the term "mushroom growth".

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The originator of this enterprise is Mrs Mabel Foote, known to thousands of Gisborne children as the caretaker of the Macrae baths. Mrs Foote has resigned this job to devote herself entirely to the mushroom business, in which she sees a bright future. Mr Selby Johnson, a builder who came to Gisborne three years ago from Pahiatua, became interested in the project, and the partnership has built and equipped special mushroom houses in which temperature and humidity are controlled to give best results.

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Mrs Foote harvesting the crop. In this shed there is 1000 square feet of soil area in trays.