GERMANY
‘The air distribution is diff erent, but evaporation is The new project at Pilzland Essleben will be a two-layer system.
as easy as on a single-layer set up. Automating the transport of the harvested mushrooms is easy, and the rooms don’t have to be as big. Two belts above the upper bed transport the punnets of mushrooms to the cold store. I am convinced this system offers more scope for further automation and innovation in the future.” This presentation was followed by a representa- tive of Netafim who explained using drip irrigation systems (see April’s edition of MB).
Essleben
After the party on Friday, which was as ever a great event, the participants travelled to the village of Essleben on Saturday morning to visit the new Pilzkulturen Wesjohann farm. Pilzland is the umbrella trading organisation of the conglomerate. Once expansion plans are completed on all the growing sites in Essleben, from 2017 all the farms together will produce 450 tons of mushrooms per week, of which 10% organic mushrooms and 30% chestnut mushrooms. With its farms in the north, south and east of Germany, the company produces all over the country to ensure good coverage in the supply of fresh mushrooms. Essleben, located between Würzburg and Schweinfurt, is now home to a farm that produces 35 tons of fresh mushrooms. Following expansion, this figure will rise to 105 tons as per January. The farm now consists of four growing rooms of 665 square metres and four harvesting rooms with an identical growing surface in square metres. The preparation rooms holds six rows of beds, four beds high, and the shelving is quite close
44 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
together. In the harvesting rooms there is just a single bed per row. After 13 days the entire set up is moved and growing continues at the other side of a central corridor. The nets are moved to the harvesting room by a pulling winch and bridge system. The beds are filled from outside using a regular filling machine. The compost is supplied by the company’s own facility in Rechterfeld and TopTerra Worpswede supplies the casing soil. Henri van de Brake, cultivation manager at Pilzland: “Our compost has been spawn run for 15 days. We grow the white A15 strain from Sylvan and use Italspawn FB29 for chestnuts. We closely monitor how growing progresses, and the compost condition, and then decide how much water is needed. That can vary between 10 and 30 litres in the preparatory stage. We gradually cool down to reach an air temperature of 18-19 degrees with a CO2
reduction of 50 ppm/hour.
When the mushrooms are pulled into the other room the pinheads get an extra boost, which you really notice! Normally the compost has a temperature of about 22 degrees. During harvesting we spray practically daily. The air distribution with a single-layer system is totally different. You have to learn how to deal with it, the air movement is calm, but intuitively I’d say that evaporation is higher than in traditional growing rooms. We harvest using a picking bridge so all the pickers have to do is push the filled punnets onto a conveyor belt. The picking performance is 40 kg/hour”. So what prompted the progression into a two-layer system? Torben Kruse from Pilzland explains. “We saw huge advantages in the single-layer system concern-
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