Its that time of year again. The ever elusive morel is said to be growing like crazy right now. So tomorrow after work I'll be running around our wooded area hunting for them. I saw a family on YouTube over the winter who has been growing them in their yard over the past few years. I think he calls himself urban gardner or something like that. So I may start a little experiment with some that I find.
Thank you. Well since its raining today and probably till Friday I think I'm going to give them a couple more days.
CJay--I will have to wait a few more weeks to go Morel hunting. But it never hurts to take a look see in our woods. From all the articles I've read, we have a great woods to find them in. We have the white Morel that like growing around dead or dying Elm and Ash tree roots. They can be found about 2-4ft from the base of the trees. Once we had one grown in some wood mulch we had put down. The spores must have been on the wood mulch before we spread it around. The article said that the temps need to be staying above 40 degrees. Cjay you had mentioned about the family growing them in their yard. Wow that is great. From what I have read Morels are really hard to try and grow. Hope it works.
I've only found a hand full of them. Generally we find them on the southern (depending on other cover) side of hard deciduous trees that are dead or dying. But yeah. Elm and ash a lot. But it's been up and down in temps so much here that it may be a bad year for them. What I want to do is dig a trench along my southern fence and bury some elm branches. Then cover with compost and pour a slurry. Fungus doesn't need light to grow. As I'm sure we all know here. (however when exposed to sunlight they do produce vitamin D) so once I have this slurry im going to pour it over the bare ground up against the fence and build an overhang. I have a bunch of cammo netting i got from daddy to simulate light through tree branches Then wait over the next few years and see what happens. I may also collect soil samples from a few different spots where (if) I find large morels and send them to the university of iowa to find out exactly what's in it. Or at a minimum check the ph. Then try to match it. The morel is the only mushroom I like. And it goes for 30 bucks a pound here and upwards of 60 a pound wet and 100 a pound dehydrated in Chicago. So it's worth a go. But from what I've read it can take up to give years for them to start growing. I'm almost willing to bet that they like a nitrogen deficent environment. Burried wood leeches nitrogen out of the soil. And Forrest soil is full of it because of all the composting leaves and what not. But these dense hardwood roots dying suck it all up. And boom. Fungus. Or that's my theory anyway.
CJ--I just did an online search for growing mushrooms from spores. Here is one website that sounded really good and had a wide variety of spore for sale. www.sporetradingpost.com If you order and spores be sure you try the Chicken of the Woods. It is suppose to be a really good tasting. I had thought of getting some spore and plant if that is the right word. Plant them in our small woods. We have a great woods for growing mushrooms. Boy, now I am really seriously thinking about trying to grow some. They aren't to expensive and would be super fun to see what happens.
I've never been much of a fan of store bought mushrooms. But I don't pretend to have tried all of them. It might be a good idea to try some simpler types before moving to trying to grow morels. Which I still haven't found many of. So thank you much for the link. I'm sure I'll find something there I like.