Autumn full year at Mart & Ingrid Veeke

At Mart & Ingrid Veeke, it's fall all year round. The family business does everything it can to create the best conditions for mushrooms. "In order to produce the best quality mushrooms, we mimic autumn no less than 156 times a year," says Ingrid Veeke. Everything for optimal yield.

The family business Veeke has been growing mushrooms since 1963. Today, even the third generation Veeke already works on the shop floor. It has also not only stayed with mushrooms, also shii take, oyster mushrooms and portebellos are grown at Veeke. Where Henk and Bets Veeke started with a cell of 180m², Veeke now grows in fourteen cells with a growing area of 500m² per cell.

Mart and Ingrid have been head of the company since 1990. The focus is on quality. Because when growing mushrooms, there's still some work to be done. For example, the temperature, humidity and ventilation should be good. In each cell, these factors can be regulated separately, with the temperature rising to 70 degrees Celsius. "The breeding ground comes in as a combination of manure and mould," explains Veeke. "Then we raise the temperature, which causes us to irritate the fungus. A white mushroom eventually grows out of that. We're doing this so that all the bacteria die. Then we can start over again and limit diseases as much as possible."