I know mushrooms are a year round thing but I associate looking for them particularly at this time of year. Mushrooming was how Sara and I got interested in foraging in the first place. Our long detour away from the frustrations of mushroom hunting led us to all the other stuff in the foragers basket – which has been fantastic – but I think this autumn we’re going to spend, some time, at least, trying to find some mushroom goodies.

Our original frustration was to do with the painstaking process of finding and identifying mushrooms. Our first forages led us to hundreds of different mushrooms – so they’re easy to find, but they’re difficult to identify accurately and with mushrooms that really matters. And, it turns out that it is hard to find the ones you’re looking for.

We adopted this approach, instead of stopping at each mushroom and trying to identify it in our various field guides (there are over 3,000 out there and less than 300 in our books) we learned how to identify the top 15 worth eating, like Ceps, Field Mushrooms, Chanterelle, Puffballs, Boletes, Chicken of the Woods and Oyster mushrooms.

The problem then comes in trying to find them. But that is a good excuse to get out here of an autumn weekend.

Anyway. I’ve started this thread to see if anyone wants to talk about mushrooming this Autumn. We’ve so far found Shaggy Ink Cap in the lawn of the Arch-deacon of Halifax’s garden. And my garden has sprouted a huge mass of brown toadstools under a rotten log – but I’m not going to bother identifying them as I know they’re not on my list of the ones worth eating.

Below are Puffballs and Amethyst Deceivers we found and cooked last Autumn. Happy Hunting.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the post on fungi/mushrooms.
I love the whole foraging thing which you do so well but I am also keen to grow mushrooms and others here in Knowle West are also interested.  Have you some tips about how to get started and how to do in an eco and inexpensive way?  Have you tried growing more than just the standard mushroom in your garden?  If so what and how?  Can we grow mushrooms in lofts? Someone says they are smelly !

Alister

Hi Alister

I’m afraid that we haven’t had much luck with cultivating them ourselves. We did try with a kit from the garden centre, which ideally should have gone on rotted horse manure which we didn’t have. Perhaps that the problem ... if you’ve got access to horse manure, maybe they’d work for you.

Alternatively you can buy inoculated dowel that can be put into logs for a crop a year or so later. You would need a cool, dark, damp place to store these.

I was given a mushroom growing kit one year. It did work and gave me a fresh appreciation of “mushroom” as a wonderfully descriptive verb but I am not sure that it represented brilliant value for money (although the spent mushroom compost got reused in the garden and the polystyrene box served for another two or three years as a place to hold pots with seedlings).

Wulf