Tuesday, October 18, 2011

MUSHROOMS!!


It's the season for mushrooms and their hunters! 



In our part of Oregon, mushrooms are plentiful in September, October, and November.  Some of them can be worth quite a bit of money, especially to restaurants and suppliers.  It's an equal-opportunity fungus (unlike those growing in our nation's capitol), not caring who picks 'em.  Whether you plan on selling them to the buyers who suddenly appear along our roadways,  or are just picking them for your own enjoyment, mushrooms are a fantastic find. 

In this coastal area, you can collect lobsters (pictured above), morels, shaggy mane, chicken of the woods, boletus, pine mushroom, chanterelles, among others.  These wild mushrooms can fetch a tidy sum, depending on their quality and the market.   It’s  possible to make $400-plus after a day of picking mushrooms.  It's not glamorous - walking in the woods can bring ticks, spiders, injury, mud, etc.   And mushroom hunting tends to bring out the criminal in many of us.  Even the most honest souls, caught up in the hunt, can forget that searching on someone else's property is trespassing.  They are not worth a ticket from the sheriff or, worse, the threats of an angry property owner!

You can grow your own if you have land with the right soil and trees.  Take lobster mushroom for example.  Lobster mushroom is a parasitized white mushroom (Russula) that grows under older Douglas fir trees.  You can pick up spores from any mushroom buyer’s place of business - they are all over the floor.  You then scatter the spores (waste) on the soil around the tree bases.  Two to three years later,  you could be picking lobsters. 

Chanterelles can be found in the moist soil under older Douglas first trees (approximately 30 years or older).  I’ve also read that OSU has developed a media that chanterelles can grow on.

Plenty of information on harvest and culture of various mushrooms can easily be found on the internet.  Years ago, my wife and I had classes with Paul Stamets in Washington State.  It is not that hard to grow your own mushrooms and Mr. Stamets had it together, showing us how to grow various mushrooms on bags of media and adding spores of our choice.   Mixing spores in soil, media, hard wood logs and compost allow you to grow your own.  It also saves the walks in the woods, and the various threats that go with it!

Here is a link to info on Paul - you'll learn a lot from him.  Happy hunting!

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