Fukuoka Back in 2019, a few weeks before Wuhan became the centre of many people’s attention, Helsieni took part in a competition organised at Slush, the yearly conference for start-ups. The competition was organised by the cities of Helsinki (Newco) and Fukuoka, and was aimed at Japanese companies who want to expand to Europe, and at Finnish companies willing to expand to Asia. After our successful presentation, the jury decided to award the prize to Helsieni: a round-trip ticket and a subsidy for office rent in Fukuoka. Then came the sanitary restrictions. Lockdowns and closed borders ..read more

This is what we could read everywhere last year on T-shirts, Facebook profiles or even grafitis. A few months later, it seems our former life has taken over this message. Our locally-made DIY mushroom kits have rarely sold as little as this Christmas season. Local farmers markets (REKO) are quieter than before the pandemia. The local food platform Uudenmaan ruoka has seen its sales decrease in 2021 for the first time. I don’t blame anyone for buying a cheap triangle sandwich when racing to work, but I would like to write what it means for us when you support your locals. Your local is within r ..read more

We had our first public appearance with our open-source Mushroom Growing Fridge aka ‘Growfridge’ at the Open Source Circular Economy Days Helsinki 2016. What is a Growfridge? A growfridge is a micro-mushroom farm. The main component is a refrigerator. This is retro-fitted to create optimal growing conditions for mushrooms to grow and fruit. With this “Growfridge” you can have a growing and fruiting room to cultivate up to 3 kg of fresh oyster mushrooms per month at home. The workshop consisted of drilling holes in the fridge for air-exchange and installing a CPU-fan, a humidifier, a lamp and ..read more

After the successful crowdfunding campaign Helsieni went on to an autumn full of work. Once the containers arrived in Hernesaari, we started building the mushroom farm. We are designing and building the whole farm ourselves. As mushroom home growers know, important in mushroom growing is the right temperature and humidity at the right time. Therefore, there are two containers: the first for incubating and the second for fruiting. Finnish climate and changing seasons make container farming more challenging. Even if outside it’s freezing cold or a heat wave, the mushrooms growing inside the cont ..read more

We have two new species on offer: Pink Oyster (Pleurotus djamor) You can cultivate this mushroom in a (self-made) growkit on coffee waste but also on for example straw pellets. The taste is more spicy than the grey oyster and the texture is firm. Elm Oyster (Hypsizygus ulmarius) The Elm Oyster is not part of the pleurotus species, but still looks quite similar. It is a fast growing species and grows on almost anything: coffee, straw & sawdust. The mushrooms are big and have a strong flavor. To our webstore ..read more

Last week we went to Lohja to visit Eric Puro and his new outdoor mushroom farm called Gifts from Metsä. This spring he has been inoculating over 1000 logs with different strains of Shiitake, Oyster, Nameko, Elm Oyster and Reishi. Eric has been farming Shiitake in Kentucky (USA) for many years and now he is starting to do this here in Finland. The local climate conditions in Southern Finland are very different from hot & humid Kentucky. This is why he has made a big variety of trials and he will be meticulously monitoring his logs’ humidity and mushroom output. He will also try different w ..read more

In March of 2019 Helsieni traveled to Rääkkylä, in Eastern Finland, to meet one of the biggest Shiitake producers of Finland: Polar Shiitake. The CEO, Markku Leppänen, showed us around his business which has been growing shiitake mushrooms since 1985. The process starts with grinding the raw material, in this case alder trees, to fine chips. The trees come from a nearby plantation. The wood is supplemented with organic wheat bran. The substrate is then hydrated to the right moisture level and pasteurized at 70-100C for several hours in a big heater that also mixes the substrate. This sam ..read more

Spent mushroom substrate (SMS) is waste every mushroom farm produces. It is fully colonized substrate, in our case a mix of coffee grounds and oat husks, that has given from 2-4 flushes of mushrooms and is no longer economically viable to keep in the fruiting room. After every harvest the substrate that has given their last mushrooms inside is taken out. Some growers throw it on a big pile and compost it, some leave it in their plastic bag or container and stack it up (that’s us). If the substrate is not put into a proper composting process the mushroom grower usually does not want the spent ..read more

Global food production is under increasing stress, from rising fossil fuel costs, to climate change that alters weather patterns and increasing occurence of extreme events. Perennial plants are plants that do not need to be planted every year, they are trees or shrubs that, once established, are very resistant to changes in weather fluctuations, diseases or pests, they require very little to no maintenance. The future of global food supply will rest increasingly on perennial ecosystems. It turns out that Finland already has large amounts of  these ecosystems; they are called forests. However ..read more

Joulun kunniaksi Helsieni kiertää pääkaupunkiseudun REKO-jakelut marras-joulukuussa! Listasimme päivämäärät ja jakelut alla olevaan taulukkoon. Myynnissä tuoreita ja kuivattuja osterivinokkaita ja osterivinokkaiden kotikasvatussettejä REKO-alennushintaan. Osterivinokkaat ovat luonnollisesti omaa tuotantoamme ja kasvatettu kahvinporoissa ja kauranakanoissa Helsingin Hernesaaressa. Date Place Time 24.11 REKO Karis/Karjaa 18:00 – 18:30 5.12 REKO Espoo Kauklahti Esbo Köklax 17:00 – 17:30 7.12 REKO Lohja 19:10 – 19:30 7.12 REKO Sjundeå / Siuntio 19:45 – 20:15 [/table_row] 8.12 REKO Ingå – Ink ..read more