Sunday, August 14, 2011

Fruit - Fungocerga


Look what I found - an organic soft-fruit grower from Melide! From the website:

Fungocerga is an agricultural association*, located in the Melide district, dedicated to the cultivation of garden produce and soft fruits (a total of 10 hectares), shitake mushrooms on oak logs and the harvesting and sale of wild mushrooms.


The geographic location, climate and flora of the area is ideal for the cultivation of diverse varities of mushrooms and soft fruit such as raspberries, currants, blackberries and strawberries. The richness of the soil and the area´s climate allow a natural growth process, one respectful of the environment. To guarantee the quality of the final product, we exclusively use our own plants.

*A Sociedad Agraria de Transformación is a business dedicated to the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products, or supplying services to, promotion, improvement and/or development of rural areas.

I caught a piece of an interview with the owner on the Gallego channel. Interestingly, he said crop production wasn´t any kind of a problem, it was marketing that was the challenge. He sells most of the fruit to France, as there´s no tradition in Spain. I´ve seen this in other instances as well, they sell the product abroad and then it´s re-imported at a higher price. Strange.

On a related note, I saw blueberries for the first time in a giant grocery store in a mall last week. They were asking €3.50 for 125 grams!

I couldn´t get the online store to work, maybe it´s still under construction. Well, either I´m buying my fruit from this guy, or I´m going to ask if I can get bushes from him.

3 comments:

  1. Hi, Blueberries grow very well in Galicia, they like a peaty soil, we got our plants from Aki of all places, we grew them in tubs as our soil type was not right for them, the peat we bought from the agricultural store in our village.

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  2. If I understand correctly, blue hydrangeas indicate acid soil, and the hydrangeas are absolutely spectacular, so I´m hopeful that I can get blueberries to be happy.

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  3. Hi Coco, yes this was also my understanding, now I'm not so sure having been told by a nursery man that the different colours are different varieties, I have now bought one pink and one blue they are planted in the same bed, our soil is neutral so we will see what happens next year.

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