Hi, I'm new to the fungi lovers community. So happy to find out there is, not only a fungi lovers community, but there's a #fungifriday!
In 2017 I knew nothing about mushrooms. Without doing sufficient research, I tried to grow winecaps in my yard, but nothing came up for two years. So I had completely given up even hoping.
Only yesterday morning, after a rainy night, I went out to the shed and noticed, growing out of the wood chips that I used as mulch in my garden. There were three mushrooms I'd never seen in person, but knew from quite well from pics. King Stropharia, the winecap mushroom!
I'm afraid I picked these two before I thought to get pics.
The gills are grey but almost look lavender.
I left this little guy in hopes he (or she?) would spore some more.
And as if that were not exciting enough, I then took my dogs for a walk in a state forest. And couldn't believe what I found there.
The ever elusive reishi mushroom. I knew they were a big deal for some reason, but had never found one so, basically, never researched them. I took the larger one and left the small one to hopefully perpetuate the species.
Then, maybe ten minutes later, on another moss covered log I found some more.
They were all quite fresh and not yet hard. So I took some more of the larger ones home with me, but still left one or two behind.
But that was, for me, a wildly exciting mushroom day. If you guys are really fungi lovers, you know what it's like. So thanks for sharing it with me:)
And thank you @ewkaw for hosting fungi friday. Hope we can do this again sometime. It was fun:)
Who doesn't love a good fungus!!! They were great!
!tip
Has to be one of my best all-time finds, and they are very beautiful, but I'm not sure they're quite as pretty as flowers;)
Don't tell Ewa that! :)
enjoyed your story! seems you just tuned to the right tune (i.e. on the same wave with mushrooms... which is great and very important, to discover them!)
oh, can you tell me what is good about this certain species, so that you even chose to grow it at your place?..
I do know what you mean about tuning into that world. I started foraging the same year that I was trying to grow them. Learning about the about spores and mycelium, all this stuff going on you can't see is combined with this shift in focus when I was out hunting for them in the woods. You feel yourself hooking into an new aspect of Mother Earth. And every time I have a good find it feels like She's lookin' out.
As for the reason I chose the winecaps to cultivate, mostly it was that it was considered one of the easiest cultivars to grow. And also that it grows in wood chips. The other ones that are recommended for beginners were oysters that are grown on logs. I'm a gardener, so it seemed more like the type of gardening I actually knew something about.
Only it was different, very different.
Maybe King Stropharia finally forgave me for all the mistakes I made:/
Cool, great finds. I guess the winecaps took their time to finally grow. Hopefully the mycelium is nice and established now and you'll get harvests each year. What did you end up doing with the reishi?
Thanks. Yeah, and I've walked by that spot a million times too.
l would love to get harvests every year. That would be amazing, but these guys showed up in spots I never even put stuff. It all seems way too mysterious to predict its comings and goings.
I know the reishi get super hard when they dry, so I decided to grind them up before they dried. Idk. I'm really just winging it. So here's the state of the reishi so far
I believe my options are to make tea or a tincture, but I'm open to suggestions.
Yeah its just tea or tincture. If you have a dehydrator you can dry them out the grind them into powder for a better tea concentrate.
They will grow then they feel like growing!
Having those in your yard is pretty cool :)
Thanks for participating! :)
When and where. It's beyond me, if they never fruited, how they spread to distant spots in the yard.
Thank you so much for all the support. I really appreciate you making me so welcome to the Community.
That's the mushroom magic.
They just appear :)
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hey, happy Fungi Friday; and -- good hunting!
Thanks! May all my hunting be that good!
And thanks for checking out my post.
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