North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Mike Levine <mlevine@umich.edu>]

I have tried planting some morel kits outdoors on 2 separate occasions.  So
far I've gotten nothing, but I keep hoping.
Planted oysters last year and am amazed that they are already fruiting this
year.  Oysters for dinner tonight!  Shiitakes are reliable too, but usually
take more than a year to get going.
I think that maybe if I tried a casing on my morels they might work better,
but I haven't tried.

Mike


----- Original Message -----
From: "Lucky Pittman" <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>; <ruralKyIn@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 11:26 AM
Subject: [NAFEX] Morel mushrooms


> Folks,
> I've been trying to get a couple of free hours to get out and roam the
> woods for the past couple of weeks, to check out the morel mushroom
situation.
>
> Finally got a chance to do so on Friday afternoon - and again, between
> thunderstorms, yesterday afternoon.
>
> Ran across several  likely spots throughout my 80 acres or so of mixed
> hardwood forest.  Most were on east-facing slopes, moist areas - and I
> could usually spot evidence that the deer had been pawing around, looking
> for the mushrooms.
>
> First 'shrooms I spotted were black morels(Morchella angusticeps), which
> are typically the first to emerge.  Many of these were beginning to 'melt
> down',  or were showing evidence of critter-munching.
>
> Once you spot one, you just sit down and start looking around - where
> there's one, there will be more!  Didn't take long to start spotting the
> occasional 'yellow' and 'gray' morel (Morchella esculenta).  None were
very
> big - or at least not as large as the ones that used to pop up in the yard
> of the farmhouse where we lived in MO, back in the early '90s.
>
> Managed to gather about a gallon of yellows & grays, and about half that
> amount of blacks.  Took 'em back to the house, cleaned 'em, and fried up a
> bunch of those "dry-land fish" at supper on Saturday night.
> My wife, the eternal pessimist, continually questioned my ID, but I was
> absolutely certain of my identification of them.  Since some folks
> evidently have an adverse reaction to the black morel - and I'd never
eaten
> them before - I only cooked a couple of them, but ate them with no
> gastronomic upset.
>
> As I was harvesting, I tried to get the base, along with some associated
> leaf mold and (hopefully) vegetative mycelia, which I cut off once I got
> back to the house, and am experimenting with 'seeding' the fungus into
some
> well-rotted logs, woody plant material, etc. that I've been piling into a
> big gully below the pond for the past 9 years.  Don't know if I'll be
> successful in getting a colony established there, but figured I didn't
have
> anything to lose by doing so.
>
> It's been a while since I researched it, but at one point in time, a
couple
> of the mushroom spawn vendors, either Fungi Perfecti or The Mushroompeople
> at The Farm(at Ethridge, TN, in the county where I was formerly in
> veterinary practice), or both, were offering morel-growing kits.
> Wondered if any of you folks had ever attempted to grow morels?
>
> Lucky
>
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