35
Small corridor.
transport 5000 kg through the entire building, which includes compost and casing soil. These raw materials are stored on the lowest floor (-2). Compost, supplied by Coenegrachts in Belgium, is supplied in blocks and stored in a cold store at 2 degrees Celsius. The compost is stored on pallets each holding one ton, and at filling the compost is taken to the growing rooms by lift and filled on the shelves. Casing soil comes from BVB Euroveen. It is prepared on the floor, mixed with water and transported to the growing rooms in containers before being placed on the beds using buckets. Another part of this storey is reserved for storage of mushroom crates. This activity is naturally well separated from the compost and casing soil. The growing rooms are located on three storeys; gro- wing rooms 1 and 2 on the second storey, 3 and 4 on the first storey and 5 and 6 on the lower ground floor ( -1) Each growing room has different dimensions, but the average room has 200 m2 of growing surface area. Each growing room has to be filled manually. Blocks are filled, the plastic removed and the compost is level- led out and compacted. All of this takes a working day and needs four to five people to complete. Casing is done somewhat faster and including cac-ing and level- ling takes four people about six hours. The ground floor (storey 0) is home to another enter- prise owned by the Debono family - a trading company in fruit and vegetables. The main entrance and the cold store where the mushroom are stored are also on this level. The third storey offers more general storage space, and houses the cooling, heating and boiler for the growing rooms.
Comparable quality The objective of the farm is to market 6000 kilos of fresh mushrooms per week in Malta. The mushrooms are picked and sold in 4 kg crates in two grades – smaller than 50mm and larger than 50mm. The Debonos fill 86 kg/m2 compost. Adding a supplement is currently
Basement with the large lift door on the left.
not possible, but that will change shortly. The yields and quality can match production on a traditional farm set-up, as apart from the manual filling and casing the climate control options and the quality of the raw mate- rials are identical to other farms. The first mushrooms were picked just before Christmas 2011, and the initial results were very promising. With a yield of around 32 kg/m2 without supplements the farm got off to a good start. Now, after almost two years of growing, Noel has succeeded in maintaining this level and is serving the market with a consistent supply of good quality mushrooms. Trials are currently on-going with exotic mushrooms to fill this gap in the market. In view of the results with white mushrooms, this new venture is bound to be a success too.◗
Maltese produce.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
