Visiting the organic oyster mushroom farm in Berlin

An organic oyster mushroom farm sprouts in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

Here a girl plays in the farm’s courtyard.


The mushroom farmers buy buckets of wheat with the spores living on them.


Then they wash and heat up hay in these industrial potato cookers.


They stuff plastic bags with a mix of heated and sterilized hay and the inoculated wheat, hang them in a room on the ground floor, and wait around 2 weeks for the spores to inoculate the hay.


Then they take the mushroom logs downstairs to the basement where the air is cooler.


(This photo and the one above are both in the basement space. I didn't photograph the ground-floor room because there was nothing there.)

They also had a fan downstairs, although I am not sure whether that was for guests or for the mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms need light so that they know what direction to grow in. In the mushroom logs are holes, and the mushrooms will sprout through them.

The mushroom logs hang from the ceiling on hooks, like sausages!


I asked Christian Klein why he chose the sausage-form, and he said that it was a question of space. He had already tried to grow oyster mushrooms one without much success. The first time he had put the spores + hay mix in boxes. In the sausage-form, there is more air circulation and surface area.

He would like to sell logs so that people can grow oyster mushrooms at home, but the problem with cultures is the bad bacteria. I am not sure what the enemy of oyster mushroom is, but as you can see below, it is green.


A close-up of oyster mycelium. This white structure is what you want.


Christian Klein wrote his thesis on the oyster mushroom. He had chosen it because shitakes take a long time to grow, and white button mushrooms you cannot propogate yourself. His goal is eventually to be able to propogate the oyster spores.

Unfortunately, I did not eat any of the farm's mushrooms since they were in between growth cycles, and oyster mushroom do not keep. But you can buy the oyster mushrooms from the farm itself or in a flowershop on the Friedhof Eisackstraße on the U-Bahn station Innsbrucker Platz.