WHAT’S FRESH: BUYING OPPORTUNITIES : In Fine Fungus : Mushrooms add a cultured touch to banquets and barbecues and can be had on harvest day.

Mild tasting and Vitamin-B rich, fungi are grown aplenty right here in Ventura County and are available the day of harvest.

Sold under the better-known mushroom title, the whitish-capped, stout-stalked fungus makes its way into a plethora of recipes--from sauces to shish kebab skewers.

During a recent tour of Ventura Mushrooms, Agricultural Manager Manuel Castro outlined its process of growing mushrooms.

“First of all you need horse manure. We truck all of ours in daily from the Santa Anita and Hollywood race tracks,” he said.

To be useful for mushroom culture, Castro said, manure must be composted for about 19 days.

Composted manure is moved indoors and heaped onto wood-framed beds that are stacked to the ceiling of a two-story building. Ventura Mushrooms--a subsidiary of United Foods--uses 84 temperature-controlled sheds to produce mushrooms year-round.

“The rooms are heated to 140 degrees for two hours in order to kill any competing molds,” Castro said.

Next, air-conditioning cools the beds to room temperature (75 degrees to 80 degrees) and specially processed millet is tilled into the manure, providing the catalyst for an extensive network of threadlike mold growth--from which the mushrooms are born. Covered with plastic to retain moisture, enhancing the growth of mold, the beds are kept at a constant temperature of 64 degrees for 15 days.

The plastic is removed and an inch of peat moss is strewn across the top.

Soon, tiny “pin” mushrooms appear.

At this stage, it will be one week before mushrooms bloat sufficiently for harvesting.

Workers climb the series of bunk-bed-like structures, slicing the mushrooms at the stem one-by-one, 350,000 pounds a week.

Ventura Mushrooms sells them the same day at its small market on the production site at 4440 Olivas Park Road, Ventura. Mushrooms are selling for about $2 a pound.

Roadside stand patrons may be interested to know that two more have recently joined the ranks.

The K.B. Hall Ranch fruit stand, 11999 Ojai Santa Paula Road in the upper Ojai Valley, has been around for decades, but used to be open only for its organic apricot season. “It used to be opened for just three weeks a year, and we’ve just opened year-round,” said Russ Delando, a farmer and manager of the stand. All organic fruits and vegetables are now featured. He offered this tip for his Italian red garlic:

Take a third of a cup of olive oil and add three to four crushed cloves. Let it sit for 15 minutes. Pour oil over greens and toss for a light coating. Sprinkle salt, pepper, vinegar and lemon juice to taste.

Paul Carpenter and four other farmers opened a stand three weeks ago at Telephone Road and Olivas Park Drive in Ventura.

“We felt there was a need and a market in the area to provide people with a choice,” Carpenter said.

The stand offers a wide selection of all-organic fruits and vegetables.