Photos: Ulrich Groos and Bert Rademakers
success of the grape harvest. It was heartwar- ming to see tapas bars where the only things on the menu were oyster mushrooms or mushrooms (see photos front page and content page). A tradition we should introduce in North Europe!
Bottle farm Agruset
On Monday, we visited the Agruset S.A.T. cooperative in Pradejon. The cooperative has 17 affiliated members who grow oyster mushrooms, shiitake and eryngii. The first two are grown on straw and the eryngii in sawdust in bottles at the farms. We started our visit at a facility that was built in collaboration with a Korean machine manufac- turer. The farm has been operating for four years, but despite supervision from Korea it has faced many problems, and the growers are still searching for the correct method. Duplicating the Korean techniques turned out to be quite a challenging task under Spanish conditions. The raw materials, particularly, and making the liquid spawn the process requires caused quite some headaches. Per week, 15,000 bottles of 750 gram can be filled, sterilised and spawned. The liquid spawn is produced in fermenters. Each fermenter produces enough spawn to inoculate 6000 bottles and each of these yields 150 grams of king oyster mushrooms. Keeping the liquid spawn bacteria-free proved to be difficult and initially caused a lot of problems. Concerns about hygiene meant we were unable to enter the company itself. Later in the week we visited Ramon Vallondo to see a relatively new farm, where the colonised bottles were taken so the eryngii could grow further.
The mushrooms are cultivated in very well-kept, climate conditioned rooms. The entire process of pinheading, growth and harvest takes place in three weeks. When they arrive at the farm, the bottles are scratched – a process resembling ruffling that disturbs the surface of the substrate in the bottles. This removes the old mycelium and stimulates more spontaneous pinheading. For the first week at the farm, the bottles are placed upside down in trays. This prevents the entry of residual water or condensation which could cause bacterial growth that could damage the mushrooms. After a week, the bottles are righted and the pinheads can start to grow and flourish. The climate in the growing rooms is maintained at a constant 13 degrees Celsius with 90% RH and a CO2
content of 500 ppm at the
start, rising to 1100 ppm when the pinheads turn into mushrooms. Once the fruit bodies have reached the size of a little finger, all the small mushrooms are cut off to leave just two behind in each bottle. These two then develop into lovely big eryngii, the smaller ones are sold as mini
Straw arriving at the Agruset cooperative.
Sheds at Hongos Fernandez.
Bottle-based growing at Hongos Fernandez.
eryngii. There is still a very limited market for these eryngii in Spain, but growers are hopeful about the growth potential of this market segment thanks to the flavour, appearance and good shelf life of this mushroom variety.
Substrate plant Agruset
After the visit to the bottle farm, we proceeded to the Agruset’s oyster mushroom substrate plant. This plant produces 800 tons of oyster mushroom substrate in phase 2 blocks (spawned
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