Browsing by Subject "villikasvit"

Spruce shoots are the young, light green, annual growth of branches that burst from buds during May - July. It is forbidden to gather spruce shoots without the permission of the land owner. The Finnish natural resource department studied, that one-time gathering of spruce shoots does not damage the growth and health of the tree, if the upper canopy is left untouched. Spruce shoots are known to contain a rich amount of C-vitamin and minerals. Spruce shoots were widely used as a folk medicine for several centuries to prevent symptoms of cold. Spruce shoots also have a unique taste, and during the last years there has been an increasing interest to use spruce shoots in food and drink applications in the restaurant and food industry. There is a large potential to gather spruce shoots from Finnish forests, and it might be a new potential source of income for the forest owners. Although, more study is required to investigate the demand as well as ways to use the spruce shoots. The objective of this study was to examine how common the use of spruce shoots is in the Helsinki area restaurants and how the restaurants use it. 22 restaurants were chosen for the study and a survey was done by e-form and interviews. Questions consisted about the ways of using spruce shoots, purchasing channels, future prospects, amounts of yearly use, and pricing. Another objective was to study the time consumed to gather the spruce shoots. Time consumption was compared by gathering different size of shoots during the growth period. Time consumption of the gathering was measured in two plots in the Ruotsinkylä research forest during summer 2017 and 2018. 18 Restaurants answered the survey and the conclusion was that spruce shoots are commonly used. 88 % of the restaurants used spruce shoots as an ingredient and all of the restaurants were interested in using spruce shoots in the future. There was variation between the demand with different restaurants. The average yearly use was 9 kg and most of the restaurants used spruce shoots in length of 15-30 mm. There was also a demand for the longer ( > 30 mm) spruce shoots but they prefer smaller (15-30 mm) spruce shoots, because with this length the taste and variability in the use is considered better. In field measurements, it was found that the length of the spruce shoots greatly affect to the time consumed while gathering. Smaller spruce shoots were gathered on average 820 g/h and longer spruce shoots 1440 g/h. Restaurants are interested in using spruce shoots and as an ingredient it has a wide variability of uses. Restaurants prefer smaller spruce shoots and there should be more study about the potential use of larger shoots, for example in the food industry. It is easy to gather spruce shoots but the challenges are a short and yearly changing growing period as well as insufficient knowledge about the preservation of spruce shoots.