You have to see it to believe it, as Saint-Thomas could have said. Near Place Viarme in Nantes, a strange activity of growing edible mushrooms has been set up for a year now in the Martray chapel. Behind plastic curtains, on rolling shelves glued to each other, myriads of small shiitake trees grow on hundreds of clear substrate blocks. Knife in hand, Romain Redais, co-creator of the
Urban mushroom (with Camille May), detaches one by one these fleshy and fragrant mushrooms, of Asian origin. “We produced three tons of it here,” smiles the 40-year-old urban farmer. It is a fast, silent and space-saving culture. We couldn’t have made potatoes in town! »
Selected as part of the first call for projects for “places to reinvent”, launched by the town hall of Nantes in 2018, the mushroom farm did not land in this religious cultural building of the 19th century by chance. Although its two founders only recently discovered annoying ventilation problems, the place initially appealed to them for its thermal qualities. “The chapel acts as a climate buffer, with rather low temperature variations. You still have to be careful, especially against heatstroke, and come and watch every other day, reports Romain Redais, a graduate in industrial chemistry. It’s a lot of work but it’s still a lot of fun to work here! »
Amap, restaurants, direct sales
With a second production site in the former MIN, the small agricultural company has already sold 8.5 tons of organic labeled mushrooms in one season. Shiitakes but also oyster mushrooms and brown mushrooms, sold via AMAP, to a dozen restaurants in Nantes, but also on direct sale (17 euros per kilo) on the occasion of a small market, at the chapel, every Friday afternoons. “We love the place, the approach, and then it’s very very good, assures Perrine, 29, a client. They are browned in the pan, then the shiitakes are mixed with onions and soy sauce, with pasta. »
To get its business off the ground, the Urban Mushroom plans to diversify with endive production, which would not require a lot of additional resources. In the meantime, those who present themselves as “the only strict mushroom growers in Nantes and even Loire-Atlantique” hope to double their mushroom harvest this year. Eventually, they would like to see them grow in spent grains of beer (barley residue recovered after the brewing process) in a waste recovery process.