Mushroom foraging

Already started - found some massive Parasol Mushrooms in west Wales last week.

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Jealous, my favourite.

What a beauty!!

A couple of Liberty Caps on the way up Ben Chonzie today. That's after spotting a patch of absolutely massive Liberties on Ben Vorlich two weeks ago

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Yep, tis the season!

A few from our holiday site

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Saw this guy in the quantocks

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Today's haul, Winecaps from the woodchip bed in the garden and some chicken of the woods from Sunray Park in Herne hill, was gassed to find the CotW as I've been on the hunt for ages to culture them. The woodchip bed has been pumping out a couple kilos of mushrooms every few days for the last 6 weeks or so, at the tail end now so less from each flush

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I'd love some more info on your woodchip bed mushie cultivation?

Cherry blossom trees seem to be the best place to find chicken of the woods in my experience. My wife spotted this one out and about but despite it being the perfect age for eating I’m banned from eating foraged fungi (she read the horse whisperer guy’s story)

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So woodchip beds are in my view one of the easiest methods of cultivating mushrooms as there's almost nothing that needs to be done to maintain the bed once it's established. It does require a serious amount of hardwood chips though, we used an entire truckload from my tree surgeon housemate which had to be lugged through the house.

The chip is then laid onto cardboard, mixed with a load of sawdust spawn and then watered in. That's pretty much it, after a few weeks you can start to see rhizomorphs (super thick root-like strands of mycelium) growing everywhere and then a few months later it'll start churning out mushrooms and should continue to do so for a few years with pretty much no maintenance.

We also grew a load of veggie's which were planted straight into the woodchip just out of curiousity and they were all really successful as well so it wouldn't have to be some ugly pile of woodchips indefinitely.

Shit about not eating anything foraged, chicken of the woods is one of the best wild mushrooms in my experience, way up there with porcini and chanterelles. Cheers for the tip about cherry trees!

oooooo really wanna try chicken of the woods. thanks for the tip.

I've eaten it too, very good. It's ceps/porcini I've never found! To be honest I could probably get away with eating COTW, but there'd be a lot of worrying, some complaining and a little 'well you're not giving it to me or the kids' so it's just easier to leave it.

set up a club where people can eat COTW in a lovely stew without persecution.

had some amazing hen of the woods in a miso stew at a fancy veggie restaurant here recently - accompanied by HOTW pakora. so tasty

I'm team tonts' wife when it comes to park foraged mushies tho. britain should bring in the 'mycology-trained pharmacists' approach you find in france

The first rule of fungi club, you do not talk about fungi club… to my wife.

Found these in local Cemetery

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Amazing, thanks! You should start a project thread for the process with pics 👌

I hadn’t heard the Horse Whisperer story. Just looked it up. If you don’t know enough about fungi to distinguish a fool’s webcap (gills) for a cep (tubes) you should probably stick to Sainsburys. Chilling.

It’s a great example of people deferring the identification to each other and everyone assuming someone else knows what’s what.

This is exactly what he said in an interview. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a kidney.

Liked reading about the woodchip mushroom farm earlier, then I spotted an accidental one at work

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Loads about at the weekend.

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More

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