Morel cultivation
My first attempt at
home mushroom cultivation involved morels. It was a dismal
failure, although I'd like to try again this year with all of the new
tricks I learned during my oyster
mushroom propagation semi-success. Meanwhile, Mark
talked me into adding a few morel plugs to this
year's spawn order.
The spawn arrived this weekend, and I quickly set out to plant the
morels.
The factsheet that came
with our order made planting morels from plugs seem extremely
easy. First, find trees that morels like (apples, ash, aspen,
elms, maples, or birch.) Make sure the soil under the trees is
appropriate --- no long-undisturbed soil like you'd find in a mature
forest, but plenty of organic matter and good drainage. We have
six young apple trees and six morel plugs, so it was easy to decide
where to plant them.
Next,
push the plugs all the way into the ground with your fingers at the
tree's drip line. Five minutes later, I was done planting.
It's really that simple!
Now, the trick will be
getting them to fruit. Field and Forest Products asserts that
it's quite easy to grow morels in the soil (as long as you put them
near an appropriate tree.) The difficult part is getting them to
fruit. No one's quite sure how to do it, so your best bet is to
plant morels in several different areas to hedge your bets, then wait
and hope. For $7.50, I'm willing to gamble.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I love your blog (and thanks for dropping in at mine)!
I am so excited about the upcoming wild morel season but I haven't tried cultivating them yet. I have tried oyster mushrooms, also with partial success. My discovery: fruit flies will eat them! Next time I'm not buying any bananas until my mushrooms have fruited.