A friend of mine from church is an expert morel mushroom hunter.
The temperatures have been going up and down, but I do remember 73 as a high last week, so we started our annual talk about looking for morels.
My friend has shared a number of morels with me over the years. I believe that “Shroom” hunting season is getting ready to open.
My friend reported that one of his friends saw a morel under some trees this past week. He also told me that we need to look for May Apples as the fruit drops and the morels are ready to be found.
I remember eating my first morel more than 30 years ago, and I loved them then, as I still do today.
The question I got from a reader was, “Can you grow morel mushrooms in your own yard?”
My answer was I don’t know. So, this column is dedicated to my friends who never get enough morel mushrooms during the spring.
Morel mushrooms are a part of the Fungi Kingdom and have been a part of our environment for quite some time. In order to grow morel mushrooms, you first need to keep in mind the kind of environment these mushrooms thrive in.
My intent with this column is to grow morels in your own yard so as to avoid picking the wrong mushroom, and go to a reputable company and plant the morels from a grower into your own yard.
Domesticated mushrooms are safer and taste just as good as the wild morels. From this information, these morels and other mushrooms help trees, and garden vegetables and fruit trees take up nutrients through the roots.
One of the recent discoveries about how mushrooms function is that mycorrhizae, or mushroom root hairs, and other small fungi work hand in hand, helping tree and vegetable roots get nutrients into the trees, and the mushrooms receive nutrients from the trees.
Paul Stamets, noted author of “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World,” writes about some of the critical studies done in this field. In the world of mushrooms, Stamets is widely recognized for his expertise.
David Sumerlin noted mycologist mentioned by Stamets recently conducted a study with a control. The results were exciting. In Sumerlin’s study, the elm oyster mushroom or Hypsizygus ulmarius growing in the same bed as the vegetables had 2.47 times greater dry weight for their harvest over a controlled bed.
This is what I find exciting: potentially infertile soil has started to become fertile with this concept of planting a block of mushrooms in a garden.
From the research I’ve done, you can have a morel or other mushroom bed in your yard for many years. You need to pick a site with filtered sunlight and well-drained soil to plant your morel garden.
The site you pick needs to have all the weeds removed, and the area excavated to a minimum of 2 to 3 inches deep. I would recommend a 4-foot-by-4-foot bed.
To fill your morel garden with soil, back-fill this excavated area with equal amounts of peat or peat muck, wood ash, and ground gypsum. The wood ash you use should be no more than 48 hours old to be viable after burning the wood.
Improvement of the soil is key.
For an active bed for growing vegetables and mushrooms symbiotically, you first remove all the weeds and debris from the future bed. Second, you cover the area with untreated cardboard.
You next layer one to two inches of wood chips and loose straw over the cardboard. Then you need to allow enough time for the cardboard to decay.
Once the cardboard has decayed, build a raised bed with an open bottom over it. You then need to turn the soil inside the raised bed and plant your vegetables.
The fun part is to spread the pure sawdust spawn over your bed. Once you have laid this mushroom spawn-treated sawdust over your bed cover, lightly with more sawdust appropriate for the spawn.
Finally, spread a layer of loose straw over the bed.
Great idea, right?
Fresh morels to harvest when they are in season. You can still hunt them, but knowing you can step out the back door and safely pick your own is a wonderful thought for those of us who love morels.
I shall write more about mushrooms soon.
Have a nice stroll through your garden this week, and happy morel season.
If you have any challenges in your garden, drop me an e-mail at ericlarson546@yahoo.com.