Wild mushrooms.

[UShadItComing]

Anybody interested? I live on Vancouver Island which is not one of the best mushroom hunting areas for a lot of species but we have plentiful amounts of boletes, chanterelles, pine mushrooms, etc. A few morels which I am especially interested in learning more about and apparently some truffles which are quite interesting.

 

[Libsmasher]

Anybody interested? I live on Vancouver Island which is not one of the best mushroom hunting areas for a lot of species but we have plentiful amounts of boletes, chanterelles, pine mushrooms, etc. A few morels which I am especially interested in learning more about and apparently some truffles which are quite interesting.

Yaaaaa - EVERYONE likes trudging around in a pathetic Canadian backwater looking for fungus.

 

[The Scotsman]

...tried magic mushrooms once....

 

[UShadItComing]

Yaaaaa - EVERYONE likes trudging around in a pathetic Canadian backwater looking for fungus.

Actually I'm more interested in Americans with experience on finding morels and then exchanging my limited informatiion on them with others where morels are very plentiful. I'm also interested in talking to somebody who would be interested in exploring the idea that white chanterelles can morph into yellow chanterelles in some way.

 

[UShadItComing]

...tried magic mushrooms once....

I never have but I do have a crop of bell-capped Panaeolus growing in my pasture in the fall. They're mildly psilocybin. And B.C. has the best and the strongest of course when it comes to magic ones.

I have European friends who are very knowledgable on wild mushrooms because it's a more developed passtime in Europe as well as in Britain. I'm sure Scotland is the same. Those who have not tried wild mushrooms are missing a lot.

 

[dahermit]

Anybody interested? I live on Vancouver Island which is not one of the best mushroom hunting areas for a lot of species but we have plentiful amounts of boletes, chanterelles, pine mushrooms, etc. A few morels which I am especially interested in learning more about and apparently some truffles which are quite interesting.

I live in South Central Michigan and have harvested morels on my five and one-half acres. I have also seen an abundance of Shaggy Manes and Giant Puff Balls. I have tried the Shaggy Manes and Giant Puff Balls, but do not care for them.
I have all three varieties of morels, Blacks, Whites, and Half-Caps. The harvest has declined over the past five years despite my best efforts to use methods that are supposed to be friendly for their continued abundance, including using a mesh bag to carry them (so their spore can spread), and cutting them off at ground level instead of picking them. Nevertheless, I have been getting less and less for the last five years.

 

[UShadItComing]

I live in South Central Michigan and have harvested morels on my five and one-half acres. I have also seen an abundance of Shaggy Manes and Giant Puff Balls. I have tried the Shaggy Manes and Giant Puff Balls, but do not care for them.
I have all three varieties of morels, Blacks, Whites, and Half-Caps. The harvest has declined over the past five years despite my best efforts to use methods that are supposed to be friendly for their continued abundance, including using a mesh bag to carry them (so their spore can spread), and cutting them off at ground level instead of picking them. Nevertheless, I have been getting less and less for the last five years.

thanks for you answer dahermit! I've heard tht Michigan is one of the best areas for Morels but I sure didn't know that you got 3 varieties. And while I'm on that, what is this half-cup morel. Is that what my book would call a half-free morel in that it is not one chamber as the black and yellow?

The only Morels I have ever found around here on Van island have been on a coal slag heap and then just a few on a grassy shore overlooking the ocean on a northern exposure. Yellows only. The latter I have checked year to year for about 5 years and have found nothing. The slag heap I keep going back to and it's produced a few nearly every year. One year about 20 with the biggest being the size of a grapefruit!

Shaggy manes I have eaten and I like them and puffballs are o.k. by me too only they are the pearshaped buffballs. Boletes are o.k. but I've never found the better boletes such as the king bolete. Do you have boletes there?

I always pick mushrooms by cutting them because I think that may be less harmful than pulling them out or breaking them off and of course we want to do what is best. Except the pine mushroom (matsutake) which needs to be twisted out of the ground carefully. Do you have them?

I was out looking for Chanterelles one time a few years ago and I ran into some Pines. I was inexperienced and I cut them off. There were too many to keep for myself so I took them to a mushroom buyer to sell them. A food store bag full so about maybe 5 or 6 pounds. The buyer almos cried when he looked at them and that's when I learned that they should not be cut. Because I had cut them I practically totally ruined them for the Japan market. He graded them nonetheless and weighed them and paid me $60 for my efforts. Then he told me that had I not cut them I would have had about $250 worth. Ahhhhhhhh! Do you have pines?

And do you have Chanterelles? those are the mushrooms I spend most of my time looking for as they are usually fairly plentiful and of course very good.

I'm interested in picking your brain a little more on Morels if you are interested in continuing.

 

[9sublime]

I never have but I do have a crop of bell-capped Panaeolus growing in my pasture in the fall. They're mildly psilocybin. And B.C. has the best and the strongest of course when it comes to magic ones.

You into that then mate?

I have European friends who are very knowledgable on wild mushrooms because it's a more developed passtime in Europe as well as in Britain. I'm sure Scotland is the same. Those who have not tried wild mushrooms are missing a lot.

Its still a dying thing in England, I don't have an interest in mushrooms generally, but my father does and lots of his generation and older.

 

[Bunz]

When I was going to college in Fairbanks quite a few of us would go through the post burn areas and collect morels by the game bag full, made enough to keep us in beer for the summer. There would be valleys full of them in the year after there was a fire. I am not an expert, but worked with a guy who was. Basically, I used a sheepsfoot blade and would cut them one finger width above the ground while having my thumb on the opposite side of the blade. Then placed them in a game bag, and moved on.

We dont get them in my current area of the state to speak of. But I spent more than a few summer hunched over among the burned standing dead trees. Otherwise I dont bother. I am kind of moreled out to be honest.

 

[UShadItComing]

When I was going to college in Fairbanks quite a few of us would go through the post burn areas and collect morels by the game bag full, made enough to keep us in beer for the summer. There would be valleys full of them in the year after there was a fire. I am not an expert, but worked with a guy who was. Basically, I used a sheepsfoot blade and would cut them one finger width above the ground while having my thumb on the opposite side of the blade. Then placed them in a game bag, and moved on.

We dont get them in my current area of the state to speak of. But I spent more than a few summer hunched over among the burned standing dead trees. Otherwise I dont bother. I am kind of moreled out to be honest.

I didn't know they were plentiful in parts of Alaska but I did know that burns are supposed to be the best place to look. Now it's a matter of trying to figure out just when to look. It's an ongoing study. Burned out on eating morels? IMO they are one of the most fantastic tastes in a sauce to go along with so many different meats. Chicken, veal, even white meat fish but I don't know about salmon. You?

Thanks for the response Bunz.

 

[UShadItComing]

You into that then mate?



Its still a dying thing in England, I don't have an interest in mushrooms generally, but my father does and lots of his generation and older.

No, I'm not into that and I was just saying that they grow in my pasture area.

I'm into a lot of other mushrooms but not into eating a lot of the others until I am confident I know what I'm doing.

If you are into that then watch out for the Amanita buttons and some of the Agaricus buttons. You don't get a second chance with those bad boys.