# Morel Cultivation (holy grail) and Other mushroom Cultivation



## sb

It seems almost every wild mushroom hunter/lover eventually tries his/her hand at some form of mushroom cultivation. 

This Ohio Forum Topic on Cultivation is intended for those interested in starting or sharing their experiences with cultivation.

I am committing to making at least 1 post per month for the next year to keep this new Topic (Cultivation) toward the top of the Ohio Forum Topic list (which is now at 12 pages of Topics as of 8-2013).

I find the field of Morel information/shared experience available now is greater and of more applicability than what I found even 3-4 years ago. Lots of people are "gnawing at the Enigma of Morel Cultivation" and making contributions. From this process of shared collective experience I believe we'll have some refinement of understanding and successful formulas for getting results with Morels.

Some call this Crowd-Sourcing. I've participated in scientific versions that redefined the number of stars in the known Universe and one that created new tools for finding supernovas with half billion dollar telescopes -- and I'm not a scientist!!

The point is everyone's experience is valid and makes a contribution. So, it's not about right or wrong but about what we learn and how it moves us forward toward greater practical understanding.


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## sb

Timbuk2 - To grow out from the initial grain (or here birdseed) in quart jars II used various combinations of sawdust and wood chips with wheat bran and garden gypsum Each couple of bags I've tried a slightly different formulation. I'm still experimenting. I really wanted 20-30 bags to put out this late summer/fall.

I first tried raw sawdust from a sawmill and raw wood chips from a cleared forest plot that is now sprouting houses. Can't beat free. However I just bought a couple of bags of pellet stove hardwood pellets that I am going to dissolve back into sawdust and use..


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## sb

This link is to a video of one of the more successful efforts at wild cultivation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RssNIRwAko

This second video is of the nature of proofing that the wild cultivated morels are progeny of the fall inoculation and not morels that were already growing there by chance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvwoGLxmhs


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## morelseeker

SB keep experimenting and don't let anyone's opinions discourage you. Do you know of any morel growing kits on the market now that are proven to be infallible. I'd like to try it myself to "re-spore" in areas where the morels don't grow as many as there used to be. Most of these kits have wild claims and a price tag to match. I think you are moving in the right direction.


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## oldshroomer

It's pretty easy to get the mycelium to grow from stem buts, just follow instructions found everywhere on the internet. It's the fruiting that's tough. I'm about to put some in the frig for a week or so and then bring them out and see if I can get them to fruit. may next attempt is to see if I can get some to grow from mushrooms I've dried?! By reconstituting them and putting them in jars of substrate. be interesting to see if that works.
From the video it looks as if you need to plant outside in areas devoid of plant life under trees that harbor them.
not tried that yet, but that's next also. must wait until later in the season.


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## sb

Morelskeeper -- Most Morel Growing Kits I've seen on the web are simply bags of Morel mycelium growing on a substrate, usually sawdust. I've also seen morel mycelium for sale growing on grain in jars.

The point is you have to do something with it, put it into the ground, woods, flower beds, wood chip beds etc. then wait. I tried that too, but in the 3-4 years before I found Morels in the back yard, I'd also thrown so many bowls of Morel trimmings and bowls of wash water, that I had no idea what actually grew the Morels I found. I do know that the 7 Morels this year were from some of those efforts. 

What seems lacking is the knowledge and technique to create the conditions that will enable the mycelium to fruit predictibly the very next season. Results seem erratic with the "How to use" advice that comes with most web purchase.

What is different about the above video is that Paul Stamets basically proofed that the spring Morels came from his fall plantings. He got over 100 morels at the time frame of the video and they came up again in 2012 and again in 2013. 

I talked with a person there just last week. Fungi Perfecti hopes to have a "Morel Patch" to sell next year that has a high probability of fruiting the following Spring after using/planting.

I'll share what I believe that the techniques will turn out to be. This is based on my time researching and communicating with others who are far ahead of me -- SO, I HAVE NOT ACCOMPLISHED THIS YET MYSELF. I'm working on taking the shared insight and trying myself.


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## sb

Timbuk2-- Afterwards, please share your results of refrigeration of morel mycelium to induce fruiting.

I don' have any spare refrigeration. I read about the technique from "The Farm" in TN and have it in my saved research. Are you refrigerating before or after sclerotia formation.

I would be happy with a predictible technique where I can plant in the woods in the late summer/fall and collect them in the Spring -- letting Mother Nature do the work.

This Spring I grew out Morel mycelium from both blond and black fresh Morels from the local woods -- just diced up and put into quart jars of sterilized grain. From these I scaled up to myco bags of sawdust/wood chips. I have 9 growing now and another 10 bags to use.

I separately tried a reconstituted dried blond morel cut up and a dried one that had not been reconstituted. For me the reconstituted one worked better but not as well as a fresh. The one that had not been reconstituted went very slowly and that allowed contaminents to begin to grow in the qt jar of grain.


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## scott c

Trailwaker Julie gave me some Blue oyster spawn from a premade grow kit her daughter had given her as a present, which did recently fruit. She rarely posts here anymore but I will post my pics as this develops, lotsa good myc needing a new home. On a seperate note, a large chunk of maple broke loose with several pleorotus pulminarus attached ravaged by myc, which I took home and have been watering by my apartment steps under hemlock. This is where I placed some of Julie's delicious truffles to spawn a couple months ago, hope the stupid moles didn't make off with those truffle babies.


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## sb

Scott C -- . . . Look forward to seeing those pics. I love the dramatic look of Blue Oyster. Have yet to grow any myself.

Jack -- The ready to fruit myco bags are fun because there's little up front investment of time. Our grand kids enjoyed being brought into the adventure. To them it is magical. (well . . . to me too).

I got this bag on July 22, 2011 and harvested Shitakes in October , so some planning is in order if you want to have this be a winter adventure.




Short version of doing the logs:
Drill holes, pound in dowel rods impregnated with mycelium

I sealed with wax. Some people don't.


I also inscribed into aluminum tags cut from beverage can the type of mushroom, type of wood, and the date. I stacked my little collection of logs which eventually grew to 5 different types of mushrooms under a pine tree and covered with burlap.


First Shitake this Spring, 2013 after doing the logs in summer 2011.


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## morelseeker

Hi SB Was wondering if you tried to plant new young ash or elm trees beside spots where you put your morel spawn in hopes of starting a relationship. Or even putting the spawn in the same hole that a new tree is planted in. It might be worth a try.


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## sb

Morelskeeper -- That is such a wonderful question. 

The quick answer is that others have done that successfully.
This link: http://www.backyardnature.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=662 will take you to a 1 page description of Stewart Miller's work. It is titled <em>Grow Morel Mushrooms with Elm Trees</em>. 

Stewart Miller's web site is: http://www.morelfarms.com/
This extract is from his website:
<strong>"This website offers trees for sale that have been inoculated with the morel fungus.</strong> The discovery is protected by Patent Number: US 6,907,691 B2 and Patent Number: 6,951,074 B2 cultivation of morchella and cultivation of morel ascocarps respectively. Morel cultivation is briefly outlined in this website and is described in detail in the patents."

He has several pictures on the website of the Morel mycellium penetrating the root structure of an ash tree. This is the basis for their symbiotic relationship.

His minimum order is 10 trees at $15 each. Over 100 and the price drops to $12. The first link had projections of yields as part of the story. He has 10,000 trees of his own: 2,000 apple, 3,000 ash and 5,000 elm from which he projects 5 morels per tree after 7 years. Enough years haven't spun by yet to see if this will work out that way. He's sold out of trees available for sale for 2013.

That's a lot of "Twiddling of my Thumbs" waiting. You need the time, money, land and patience. I'm short on all of them, ha!

Sooooooooo . . . my focus is on creating the stimulus to fruiting that is caused by the death of a tree. Which is why in the east, we hunters commonly look for dying elm or dying trees that have started to lose their bark. Yes, morels grow in other situations, but it seems that the big flushes we all seek and dream of in our sleep come from some exceptional stimulus like the tree dying.

My take on that is that the Morel mycellium is losing its' symbiotic relationship with the tree. So it fruits or sends up the Morel Mushroom to enable the spores to spread.

So the successful aspects of wild crafting I believe are:

To plant <strong>small patches</strong> , maybe 15 to 18 inches square of mycellium innoculated <strong>rich media</strong> like the sawdust, woodchip with gypsum and nutrient booster such as wheat bran covered with cardboard and all this again covered with dirt, woodchips or what have you. The <strong>placement</strong> I'm going to try is to put these far from trees not close to trees. I don't want the mycellium to snuggle up to a tree and be happy. I want it to think the buffet table it is eating is emptying and they need to move on by putting all their resource into mushroom caps. 

The future may not validate this personification, however the characteristics I've outlined are meeting with repeatable success from what I gather from others.

So to repeat what I said earlier. It is easy to grow morel mycelium or buy it from 100 different venders on the internet. The success that is immediate--very next spring--in wild crafting is going to be in technique of using the mycelium.

Makes me think of wine making. After a few basic principles, there are many, many different techniques to apply them to get wine.

My endeavor reflects my values and attitudes. I love the woods. I'm not looking for a commercial enterprise, patents, etc. I'm looking foy a way to seed the favorable woods available to me to predictably increase the Morels _________fold. 2, 10, 20? 50? We'll see.


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## tb525

SB- Have you tried the method described by Paul Stamets in his book 'Growing Gourmet And Medicinal Mushrooms'?

In the book, he advocates inoculating a burn site or creating one using:

10 gallons peat moss
5 gallons wood ash
1 gallon of gypsum

I just created a patch using this method last week, so we'll see...


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## sb

tb525 -- Great! Keep us posted next spring on your patch outcome. What county/state are you in?

I have Stamets--Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms-- right now on my desk--from the library. First published in 1993 it is worthwhile for me to be rereading it. 

I haven't used that formula per se. I did use wood chip &amp; ashes as my first effort 4 years ago as mentioned above.

This pic below is of 1/2 the 20 bags I prepared for this fall patching. I've put out 3-4 bags already.



I did grow out from 2013 fresh local (central OH) tan and black morel mushroom fruit bodies and grow out of black morel mycelium from MI black morels. That is a scattershot approach but I am hoping on insight from this way. 

So far I have bags with just straight mycelia growth, bags with primordia or pins and with some with sclerotia. I'm having a hard time deciding on where to put which particular ones.

I'm using a small patch size 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 ft and digging down 4-6nches. filling with 80/20 sawdust/woodchip, garden gypsum, wood ashes and of course grow out from the bags. I then water,cover with a piece of cardboard, and cover further with the some soil from the dig out, leaf matter etc. Placement so far is in the woods in shaded open area between trees such that 80% shade would be the norm. My thought is that when the feasting is over under the protective banquet table, I want them to find nothing nutritious when they attempt to grow out. 

<strong>Last night I watched a 31 minute Chinese video of a company in China that is cultivating Morels.</strong> 

Well, I can't understand Chinese but seeing Lots and Lots of Morels popping out of the ground got me excited. They are doing it on a different basis and scale from the small patches in the Fungi Perfecti video at the beginning of this bulletin board topic.

From the subject matter ie, sterilazation, innoculation, growing media, substrate composition, moisture control etc. I could see what they were talking about and the video was good quality. I would like to find some that understands Chinese to watch it with me and basically translate.

Here's the link.

Chinese co cultivating Morels


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## sb

You may not want to spend 31 minutes looking at this so, there were some good shots of the cultivation from 24:30 on, or the last 7 minutes especially.


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## sb

If you watch the first 12 seconds, you'll probably want to watch the whole video.


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## sb

I would characterize the morel cultivation in the video listed just above as <strong>true outdoor cultivation.</strong> I'm more personally oriented to a style of <strong>wild cultivation</strong> -- more like Johnny Appleseed style.

Having said that I believe and hope there is transferable insight to be garnered from what they are doing successfully.

I'm not an expert. I just know how little I know and therefore am willing to ask lots of questions, endure failures and appear dumb in the process.

--All contributions to this topic are welcome and helpful.--


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## sb

http://sannong.cntv.cn/program/lczx/20120420/114402.shtml

The above link is again to the Chinese Morel Cultivation video. I hope it remains available on the web as I haven't been able to copy it to my computer successfully, even after several tries.

From what I understood from the translation:

1. The Chinese business owner and originator has been cultivating Morels since around 1980 ( 30 years).
2. The morels are cultivated through tissue cloning from wild harvested mountain morels rather than from spore germination.
3. The cultivator as I understand, uses no additives, nutritives, or fertilizers; just a preparative ground application of lime which is more related to insect control.
4. Morel production is primarily sold into Europe, none to the US and very little within China except to very high end restaurants. 
5. Moisture control is accomplished by hand dug irrigation channels that direct mountain runoff spring water to a soil sub level, below the height of the raised grow-beds and by hand watering. A figure of 85 % soil water moisture was stated somewhere in the process.
6. Taste tests were expressed as having been conducted that show no discernible difference between the local wild Morels and cultivated Morels under these techniques.
7. Rather than inoculating patches in woods as frequently done in US (what I call wild cultivation), large outdoor areas in open fields were inoculated and shaded by covering lashed bamboo arches with burlap for shade control, creating the equivalent of forest shade. They looked like long black Quonset huts.
8. The inoculation-harvest cycle time experienced in the US by outdoor cultivators using natural cycles -- of Fall/Oct inoculation, March/April/May harvest is experienced in China also, that being approximately a 5 month period. So it appears that they only get a single harvest per year, but perhaps running for 3 months from earliest to latest.
9. It looked like other plants were growing in the same plot space but this not addressed. No symbiotic relationship was overtly expressed. The other plants looked like greens and/or grasses. 
10. The individual mushroom grow-period cycle-time was expressed as approximately 14 days-- as experienced here in the US. Harvest is done at around 10 days because their experience is that continued growth into maximize or largest size is accompanied with a fall off in quality/best flavor.

I am now reaching the limits of the translators ability to tell me in English what was being shared in Chinese with the TV News interviewer by the grower/cultivator.

Well, That's it. I plan on finding some one with greater translating skills for a second effort This 30 minute video took 2 hours. Ha. Well, really a half day. I have at least 4-6 questions that I hope will shed additional light on how this may be incorporated into my version of -- Yea!! More Morels in my own woods or a really good wild-crafting technique.

I


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## sb

<em>Timbuk2</em> -- I noted you recently mentioned (on another topic page) putting some morel patches around the house. Was this the same morel mycellium that you had earlier said you were going to refrigerate for 4-5 weeks and see if you could induce some happy morel children to grow?

If so, what happened? My problem is most frequently a lack of a disciplined and timely follow through. That's why wild crafting is appealing to me. I think full cultivation for me would be too much (even if it were certifiably available!! ha).


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## sb

<em>Help-Anyone with ideas</em>: I began to put out morel patches this fall of the 20 bags I grew. I revisited one set of 4 after 3-4 days just to see and found animals had dug up 3 of the 4. Ha!? Raccoons?, oppossum? skunk?

Several years ago I had read that the Ohio population density of raccoons in urban areas is 10 times that of country — averaging 1 per acre in urban areas and 1 per 10 acres in the country. Anyone with ideas? I’m thinking of using wire mesh boxes I made to keep squirrels from digging up freshly planted stuff in our flowerbeds and garden. Maybe I just need to cover it for 4-5 days till the freshly dug dirt sent dissipates?


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## morelseeker

Just a thought. Check into how tobacco is raised. The ground must be sterilized first. I always find more morels when there has been deep long lasting snow falls in the winter. Maybe all that snow staying on the ground for long periods of time has a type of sterilization process.


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## sb

RE: <em> Help-Anyone with ideas:</em> Shagbarkfarmohiolic -- Thanks for the idea of using the green plastic mesh fencing with 2" or less squares lain on the ground and covered with dirt to keep animals from digging up our best efforts.

<em>Morelseeker</em> -- Thanks for sharing ideas. My intuitive response especially to the second item was: This person 'has a hold of the elephant' and what's being shared is contributive.

1. My immediate thought in regards to 'check into how tobacco is raised. Ground must be sterilized'. . . was forest fires out west -- some people express the belief that Morel flushes afterward are perhaps connected to sterilization of the soil and/or elimination of competition.

2. 'Long lasting winter snows and later spring Morel frequency': I thought of soil moisture immediately. The Chinese Morel cultivation video profiled above had a reference to 85% soil moisture. This is much above my experience "in the woods" of finding Morel flushes at or above 40% soil moisture. But, again, they have a consistent density 10 times or more higher than what I experience anywhere with wild Morels int he woods.

What was unique to the Chinese Morel Cultivation video was that they used irrigation ditches to maintain soil sub level moisture -- below the level of the elevated grow beds. The grow beds were 4-5 feet wide and as I recall 3 abreast within one of the bamboo quonset type structures covered with burlap like material.

It appeared that as mushroom fruiting time approached the narrow irrigation ditches were closed off and allowed to dry up. They became the narrow and deep paths through which people would walk between beds to hand water from above and harvest mushrooms.

Regardless, the 85% soil moisture and sequencing of types of watering are things I hope to hone on in a future 2nd translation go at this video.

Comments and contributions from any/all appreciated.


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## sb

One thing that the first translator did not express as being addressed was whether they were seeding the ground with Morel mycelium or Morel sclerotia.


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## 4yuks

Just found this topic while doing an internet search, trying to get some anecdotal reports on what kind of success rate to expect from planting purchased spores/spawn. By the way, I haven't been successful in my search. I can't seem to find a web page where a number of people are reporting their relative success or failure from planting. Which seems like a bad sign to me. It looks like even this thread hasn't had a post for a few months.

Anyway, I purchased some black morel spawn off of eBay last spring, shipped in a bag of coffee grounds. The bag filled nicely with mycelia, and my brother and I planted some in my niece's yard, and some out in the wild in a morel hunting area, in some places that looked like they should yield mushrooms, but where my brother had never found them.

I should probably note here that I live in Colorado, but my brother lives in Ohio, which is where we had the spawn shipped. My brother and I planted the spawn when I was back for a visit. So, I haven't hunted for mushrooms in OH for quite awhile. Colorado has a few morels, but I have never found more than two at a time, so it's not worth going out just to hunt them. Better to go out for a hike and if you happen to find any that's a bonus. Season is later here also; I've heard around June on the Western Slope.

Anyway, I plan on purchasing some yellow or "white" (from Michigan - is that the same as gray?) in the next week or so and having it shipped to my brother again. I'm not sure if I will make it back this spring, but my brother will plant this year's shipment and also check the spots we planted last year. I will report back on this thread if he/we get any blacks this spring from last year's planting.

Looking forward to hearing from SB on his results, maybe as early as next month?

p.s. Last year, we just planted the bags we bought, but I had already decided to try bringing back some culture to inoculate and prepare bags for planting in Colorado this year. So, it's great to see that SB was already doing this and it appears to work well.


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## shagbarkfarmohiollc

I also bought black morel spore and have a test bed I prepared last year. We are in SE Ohio - Adams County. I won't waste anybody's time describing it unless I see something come up in the next few weeks. But SB has done the most work as far as I have read in Ohio so far.


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## sb

Time for an update.

On my Morel woods patch effort. I spent lots of time last fall mixing, sterilizing, inoculating, growing out 20 bags of sawdust/wood chip composition. However, I only got 1/3 placed last fall (Oct): 3 different geographic locations of 4 patches each. I'll post my experience this late spring regardless of outcome. The rest of the bags are still in my basement and I'll add them to the gardens around the house soon.

I did a 2nd video translation effort of the Chinese Morel Farm video mentioned above. This time, I had a PhD Chinese language student who had spent several summers in China watch/translate the videos for my 2nd effort. Much, much better result. Read these numbered items below in conjunction with my Nov 7, 2013 post above.

1. Light was expressed to be controlled to 90% shade or 10% light penetration. That's just about what my intuitive 85% shade figure that I expressed in what I was looking for in potential woods patch locations.

2. Moisture was expressed at 80% soil moisture. This is higher than I've ever seen in soil moisture readings. I'm always finding morels when the soil moisture gets above 40%, but I can't say I've seen any saturation levels like that for any extended time in the wild.

3. Plant cover was optimized at around 10% with grasses. They expressed this as advantageous to soil moisture control and for protection from snow fleas (also called jumping bugs). No mention of symbiotic or mycorrhizal relationships. Mushroom yield fell off if there was too much or if there was too little plant cover. 

4. They use very mild salt in water or lime in water to spray for slugs in the early morning before the slugs hide for the day. They consider this a natural method as opposed to using any pesticides. This because most of their output is sold into European countries and pesticides are strictly no-no.

5. They have a snow flea pest that is very devastating. If it infects a crop area, they pretty much destroy the infected area. The larva stage devastates mushrooms but they don't cause damage to other growing plants, so little research has been done in China on it. I don't have any idea if there is anything like it here in the US.

Since the morel harvest here in OH would be before a typical May 15 vegetable garden plant date, I'm thinking of inoculating my raised bed garden this coming fall. Any morels the next spring wouldn't interfere with growing vegetables. I would have to engineer a shade cover though for several months use. Optimizing light and moisture can be done easily.

So on to the real issues.

6. They are not tissue cloning as I thought from the first poor translation effort. They collect wild morels each year and grow out mycelium from spores. 

7. Their experience is that only 25 to 30% of Morels yield spores. They say that mycelium can grow with beginning ratios of male to female spores different than 50:50 but that the yield of Morel mushrooms will fall off as a result. 

They examine the mycelium as it first starts, it appears, and they can tell visually, through a microscope, if the ratio is optimal. This is what they carry forward as a mother culture and multiply. 

In 1 of the 2 videos I had translated the farmer told of going from a 2% success of fruiting into mushrooms to 90%. I didn't quite get (yet) whether this was mycelium or sclerotia that they were putting into the soil of their raised grow areas in the Fall.

I'm getting Chinese patents on the process translated and will have more insight later.

They have been evolving the farming of Morels for 20-30 years. In China they have a government sponsored edible mushroom research institute. It's purpose is to help small farmers.

There has been past success with a bio-tech approach in the US with associated patents. Yet no one has successfully duplicated it. <strong>Working with Nature rather that overpowering it</strong> through capital intensive high tech is the way to go from what I've seen. That is my bias.

All contributions are welcome to this topic.


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## sb

This link below is of a Morel ascus that holds 4 male and 4 female spores.



Belos is a fast 250K frame/sec video of the spores being shot from the ascus.


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## sb

[video]http://s1256.photobucket.com/user/stuartb1/media/MorelAscusDischargeApril2011.mp4.html[/video]


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## bryan

Hope to see some success. I have put old morels and some rinse water in 2 different spots at my house. One spot is in a flower bed against the house. The other is out back near the pines and an ash tree. 2 years later I had morels in the flower bed and even more out back. The flower bed did not produce last year, but the other patch did. Roughly 4 lbs or so. BTW I have grown numerous species of mushrooms inside before. Good luck guys.


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## im hungry

ive tried the old shrooms and shroom water in the yard around a wood pile without luck..i have found the seceret to morels.......wait for it...........they will grow where and when they want to.....keep trying if they can do it we can do it better


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## sb

Shitake are growing on logs in the back yard. Picture is today, Thursday.


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## 4yuks

Update. I was not able to make it back to Ohio this year. My brother has been checking, and none of the areas we "seeded" last year have yielded any results this year so far. Disappointing. Perhaps we planted too small amounts of spore in each area, and it will take a couple of years to get to a fruiting density?

I purchased the whites growing kit from MI and had it sent to my brother. He is going to follow the directions exactly and plant in his own yard. Hopefully will have something to report next year.

I also bought a couple of sets of spores off ebay to try to cultivate my own supply for testing in Colorado. One set is dry spores, presumably for grays. The other is fresh mycelium for blacks on grain, from MI. I have inoculated 24 pint mason jars, 12 for each set. I loosely followed the instructions from The Farm website, http://www.thefarm.org/mushroom/morel.html. I used a substrate of five parts rice from the grocery store to one part cheap potting soil from Walmart (a $1 bag will probably last for another 6 dozen pint jars or so).

I am getting growth in at least some of the jars. About 9 of the jars of dry gray are showing some growth, about 8 from the fresh black. Note: I took a photo of the best jar from each batch to include with this post, but I can't seem to figure out how to embed them. They are only on my hard drive, and it appears they need to be on the web in order to insert them in this post.

In the meantime, I am out hiking nearby trails looking for planting spots. I've found some candidates. I plan to stick close to home for the first ones. I may look for spots farther up in the mountains later in the year. 

Again, hope to have some results to report here next year on my attempts to make wild morels more plentiful in CO.
<a href=""><img src="" alt="" /></a>


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## sb

To everyone who has posted here on cultivation so far. Thanks. That you've done so says you have more than a passing interest as most comments are a winging it from within other topic pages. I'm included there also.

I reread all the posts and realized that I'm not going to be able to respond literally to each instance where good comments, questions, and shared experiences would ideally call forth a response. So, sorry and also thanks.


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## sb

RE: Cultivation of non-Morel mushrooms.

It's fun to post success. Yea! ...Yet we learn from failure. Most people choose to not post about failure.

Here's what I've learned from mushroom cultivation failed efforts with other mushroom varieties.

In 2011 I inoculated logs with 6 different types of mushrooms, using mycelium laced plugs that you pound into drilled hole in logs: Shitake, White Oyster, Gold Oyster, Lions Mane, Red Reshi, Chicken of the Woods.

1. Seasonalityl. It was not a good time of the year -- August. Too stressful, hot &amp; dry. That happened to be when I had time, money, inclination, all together. But it wasn't conducive to the best propagation of mycelium through the logs.
2. Wood type. Some mushroom types like specific types of wood -- I put Red Reshi into Locust logs, because they were handy. Red Reshi would prefer hemlock . . . verified in my ability to go to moist hilly ravines with dead Hemlock in the Hocking Hills and predictably finding fresh Red Reshi on them.
3. Aging. Few writers define what fresh vs aged wood actually means and how it applies to inoculating mushroom mycelium into logs. Live trees naturally have anti fungal properties in their sap. So, when I used a neighbors 2 day aged apple limbs, they were so fresh that the mycelium wasn't able to live and spread. On the other extreme, 3 year old limbs are so old they are likely already infected with other varieties of fungus that would naturally compete with the desired (mushroom) fungus that you/I want to introduce.

What did I do right. Even at a less than ideal time (August), I used several month old cut down Oak for the Shitake mycelium plugs. I've since gotton 2-3 flushes each year for the pat 2 years. So, I had the right wood, right aging before inocutation,f wrong time of season. It still worked. Maybe 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

What's your experience?


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## sb

<strong>Effect of growth medium particle size: smaller size yields quicker, fuller growth</strong>

It's just physics. With volume of particles constant, as particle size goes down, surface area goes up. Mycelium needs surface area to grow on. Whether a jar of grain or a bag of sawdust, there will be a more vital end result with smaller particle size.

I learned the slow way. My learning experience has seen a progression from using free chipped tree wood mixed with pea sized sawdust from hardwood timber mill rough cut to using the pea sized rough cut with deconstructed hardwood stove pellet sawdust. (Just add boiling water and in 1 minute you have nice fine sawdust. You can even find these in tree specific varieties.)

Midway through this learning, I came across a European patent on idealized growth mediums for mycelium grow out. It basically said the same thing. Smaller particle size works better.

My experience with grain has included rye, wheat, rice, rice meal, birdseed. Smaller particle size again works better for quicker and fuller growth.

If growing mycelium initially on grain with the idea of using it to further expand into sawdust spawn bags, one technique I came across, tried and liked, used woodchip/sawdust tea instead of just water to moisten the grain prior to sterilization. So the mycelium grown on this grain was already biochemically acclimated toward wood before the transplant into the sawdust grow out bags.


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## dr_rezes

Awesome info @sb sounds like fun, how big were your oak logs, do you know what type of oak? Are they in full shade? and where did you get your  Shitake mycelium plugs? If you can tell i would love to try. Good luck this year!


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## jayfressh

The allure is hunting them, Chinese mass produce them in controlled environment, no? I see China Morels at grocery all uniform and same size.


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## sb

dr.rezes -- The oak pieces were approx 5-6" wide and 4-5' long. I don't know what variety of oak. They have been kept in full shade, under some pines in the corner of my back yard. Two of the 4 years I covered them with burlap to retain moisture.

I've purchased wood dowel plugs from 3-4 different sources through the internet. They all seemed equally good.

Because of the time to plan, do and wait for a year for your first rewards, you may want to try buying a bag of sawdust/wood chips already impregnated with mycelium and ready to sprout. 

It's fun and quick and will give you a quicker success from which you can determine whether you want to do something further.

Again, I've used several sources for this item. I'll outline just one below.

From this website: http://www.easygrowmushrooms.com/ 
I purchased their shiitake bags back in 2011.

This is what it looked like.



After an appropriate, varying number of weeks the block was stressed (soaked overnight), placed in a covered but vented fruiting box and buttons s started to form.



I got lots of shiitake. and more than one flush. It was fun.


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## sb

dr.rezes -- As it appears you are in or close to Central OH. another possibility I recently came across is at this link: http://www.blueowlgarden.com/index.shtml

Blue Owl Hollow has a Sunday and Tuesday mushroom inoculation workshop. If you help them by inoculating 10 logs then the11th is yours for free to take home. You can learn from experts and take a log home with you.

They are near Granville/Newark, OH.


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## nfea48

Hi: Our son gave us a gift of a morel habitat last year. We constructed the box under a lilac bush, and fed it all summer. Let it rest for winter. We are checking it each day now. No morels so far. Instructions say it may take two years, but first year can be several pounds (?!!!!) We are hopeful. We have a 4' by 4' box with recommended soil mix.


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## sb

All this Central OH (and midwest in general) rain is great for the mushrooms. This pic today of my last two cultivated Shiitake log shows the best flush I've seen in 4 years almost almost all from one log.


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## 4yuks

Hi all,

Haven't been on here for a long time, but thought I'd post an update with several observations.

1. Our planting efforts in Ohio and Colorado so far have not yielded any results. We continue to try, though. I have been cultivating pint-size mason jars of black and white spore and planting it in my yard in Colorado this year. This fall, I built some retaining walls and enriched the beds with aged horse manure. Then I planted about 25 small blue spruce trees. When I planted the trees, I rubbed either black or white morel spores onto the roots. I also mulched pine needles with a yard vac and spread them over the beds for moisture retention. I added more spore to the mulch and raked it in and watered. I completed all of this in early November, about 2 weeks ago. I don't expect any results by next spring, but if I get any, I will report them here.

2. I can report some success from Ohio, but not from our recent planting efforts. My parents moved into their house about 60 years ago, and I can remember hunting mushrooms from when I was very small. I will turn 63 soon. They always threw the mushroom wash water out into the yard. This spring, for the first time ever, morels came up in the yard. I will attempt to load a couple of pictures.


<a href="/Users/Loren/Pictures/Pictures/photo%201.JPG"> /Users/Loren/Pictures/Pictures/photo%202.JPG 

Hope that worked. Anyway, if it did, there are two pictures of grays. There was also a spike in a different part of the yard, but I don't have a picture. So, while this is a success, I can't call it a rousing success if you have to wait 50 years for results.

3. Regarding cultivating the spores, I bought some spores on eBay, and have been replenishing my supply by using some of the cultivated spore to inoculate new media, kind of like people do with sourdough bread and friendship cake. I have met with increasing amounts of success.

For the growing medium, I first tried a formulation I found on the internet, of 50% grain and 50% potting soil. I sterilized it in the mason jars in a pressure cooker/canner. It was not a pleasant smelling process doing the sterilization, and after growing the spore, the stuff in the jars smelled awful enough that my wife wouldn't let me keep it in the basement anymore.

For my second batch, I tried a mixture of half coffee grounds and half sawdust. This produced a much less foul smelling product. I didn't bother with sterilizing the media. To inoculate, I kept one jar of mature spore and divided it up between the other jars of new media. I made sure I kept the same spore in the new media that had been in the jars previously. The mature jars smelled kind of like earth, a little musty. I was very satisfied.

For my third and fourth batches, I have used straight coffee grounds. From my observation, this has worked the best. I again divided up the contents of one or two mature jars into the new media. I filled the empty jar about half way with grounds, then mixed about a teaspoonful of mature media in. Then I filled the jar the rest of the way and mixed another teaspoon in the top half. No sterilization.

With the pure coffee grounds, I found that the spore begins to colonize very quickly. The latest batch is two weeks old, and the jars already have a fine wool growing throughout. The spore seems to take to the coffee grounds very aggressively. No need to sterilize or use filter paper or any of that.

I also found that Starbucks gives away their used coffee grounds to anyone who wants to use them in their garden. The best places are the locations that put their used grounds back into the silver bags that the fresh grounds came in. One full bag is almost enough to refill about two dozen pint jars. The capuccino grounds are the finest grind, and they usually don't have used filters in the bags, either. This batch, I am also trying out just adding the spore to about a half bag of the used coffee grounds, and taping the bag shut with duct tape. I haven't checked the bag yet, but am confident that will work fine.

So, I highly recommend forgetting about all the grain/potting soil/filter paper/sterilization rigamarole. Just go with used coffee grounds from Starbucks. And seed new batches from old batches. Finally, if you do try to cultivate more than one variety or source colony, make sure to keep subsequent batches in the same container with the same seed culture.


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## 4yuks

Okay, apparently I don't know how to attach a picture. Just take my word for it that they were cute little grays about 3" tall.


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## jack

4yuks, if you belong to Photobucket just copy & paste the HTML Code to your comment. Also, Photobucket is Free to join.


<a href="http://s1197.photobucket.com/user/mushroomjack1/media/IMGP0003_zps53c0b2bb.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">







</a>


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## morel_scientist

To get morel spawn to form sclerotia per the Ronald Ower method that is patented, you must add calcium carbonate (lime) to the nutrient poor layer which could be nutshell hulls. 
In addition to this a small amount of nitrogen must be supplied which is done with urea of a small amount. The best way to get this would be to use Miracle Gro either all purpose or bloom booster mixed at the amount for indoor plant feeding per a gallon of water. You need it that dilute.
The same nutrients that plants utilize are the same ones the morels need. Phosphates as well.
This will be your "morel vitamins".


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## jdk32581

<a href="http://a66.tinypic.com/2hojymc.jpg">


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## sb

jdk - Nice pics of Chinese cultivation success with morels. The 4th pic looks like the partial success of a Michigan venture a number of years ago that was high tech, 24/7, biotech approach. Seemed that after a bacterial outbreak, they never were able to get the facilities sterilized for a restart and the investors wouldn't put in more money.

I'm still oriented to working with Nature not totally controlling it.

After sitting out several seasons after my mother died, I'm gloing to put more effort into it. I've learned a few things from perusing the Chinese patents outstanding (around 26-30) and the latest book of cultivation techniques by Tradd Cotter called Organic Mushroom Farrming and Mycoredediation.

Cotter gives a good trench stratification technique that incorporates the the dynamic evident in Chinese success of bringing into proximity a nutrient rich and nutrient poor area.

The first successful technique in China incorporated 4" wide (hoe width) trenches with adjacent 4" wide spacing. These were done in 4 ft wide beds of various length depending on the building, originally lashed bamboo arches making like a quonset hut style.

So the basic difference is the Chinese put down 100's of rows densely and Cotter basically does one row in the woods and in proximity to trees.

What I'm doing now is using local morels and taking action to have a mycelium slurry active and available for fall trenching.

What Cotter recommended that I'm going to use is adding some of the dirt from the stem base into the slurry after it develops sufficiently; keep it refrigerated and or at some point simply freezing it and thawing out in the fall and let it continue.

Interestingly, one of the Chinese patents i downloaded was for the time shifting technique of taking an apple, cutting out a plug and putting an inside tissue piece from the Morel cap into the apple hole and then putting the plug back into the apple, dunking the apple in wax to seal it and putting this into refrigeration. It would keep for up to 4 months and the mycellium would slowly colonize the apple so that when it was opened up there would be a more abundant amount of tissue to work with at that later time.










What I brought home from the woods was the mushroom cap and root dirt stem base.










Swirl the morel cap into two cups of boiled water for 30 seconds and put the cap back on. After 24 hours, refrigerate. After a three or more weeks a biofilm and brown coloring should be evident. Then add a small amount of the soil (soil yeasts, bacteria, microorganisms) from the stem base from "Home" with its teeming life forms is added to the water. After a few more weeks, freeze until ready to activate and use.










(note: I just cleaned up failed picture links 9-7-2017, sb)


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## shagbarkfarmohiollc

SB - my only problem with even trying to experiment is finding morels in the first place! I did try soil testing as we talked about in the past. In the areas where I have found them in the past the range is 5.4pH to 7.0. So I am not sure that is a factor. FYI.


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## sb

Shagbark -- I empathize with you. 

I was hoping to again find Morels in my own back yard to use as they would be site specific in terms of acclimation. 

As it was I found Blacks and Yellows on the same creek as runs along my back yard but maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. Maybe that's good enough. 

When my inspiration and aspiration boiled over into action this season, the Blacks were over I thought, but I made one last effort and found a still standing partially dried Black on Wednesday, 5/4/16. I'm using it as I noted that Tradd Cotter said that his experience was that the Morels he used to seed the boiled water (by swirling the cap for 30 seconds in the water) could be dried. They didn't necessarily have to be fresh.

Quote from Cotter's book: "I have also allowed the fruitbodies to dry completely and still had success with both sterile and nonsterile spore germinations. As for the soil, I either refrigerate or freeze it to preserve the microbial community.."

Do you have any "Dried Morels" from your farm that you saved? If so then you could still go forward.


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## shagbarkfarmohiollc

SB - the ones I have dried have already been "swished" in water and I have been dumping that water in our raised asparagus beds. The asparagus beds are new and we control the ph. In a farmer's world ph is one of the big things you fret about! pH is right at 6.8. Beyond that with the morels, it's hocus Pocus! However the asparagus are awesome!

I did read the material you sent and it all sounds great on paper! As a mechanical engineer (former life), retired, all the chemistry gets me lost! I will offer if you ever do get anything you believe to be viable for testing, I can offer about 400 acres of test spots around the farm. I would love to be able to cultivate commercially! Think about that prospect here in Ohio!


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## sb

5yuks -- Forgive the loooong delay in response to your 11/24/15 comment. I liked that last comment on finding non sterile techniques to be attractive. 

After all morels in the wild don't need sterile environments, they just need their own requirements or needs to be met and they do just fine.

I've tried some also and met with partial success as I tried a scattergun approach because I wanted to ride the learning curve more quickly.

So, for that reason, I've begun the approach outlined above for this season, to carry forward to next spring.

These are aspects of technique available or acessable to us all. 

There is an aspect of the Chinese success evident in one of the patents that I had translated that I've not done or even tried to do. They would physically examine 1st stage culture strains under 1,000 optical magnification and could identify the strains that had vibrant growth (superstars ha!) and these strains are the ones they would multiply and use for their outdoor cultivation. Other strains could produce fruiting but I seem to recall the rate could be twenty times higher with the "high chargers right out of the gate" so to speak.

I would love to get microscopic pics of what the differences look like and make it available for the more serious Morel cultivator, hobbyists. On this, I haven't started. Whether I or someone else does it, I believe it is inevitable.


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## sb

Continued:

I found notes from a (translation of) Chinese tv interview with the prime patent holder on Morel cultivation.

Here's what my notes were:

Morel spores can be separated into male and female spores.

They collect wild Morels each year for spores.

Only 20 to 30% of morels produce spores. 

In the Ascus, in the spore encasement there are 8 spores, 50% male and 50% female.

In the spore sprouting, if proportions are not 1:1 mycellium will grow but not be as productive of fruting, or production actual mushrooms.

Perhaps this is what the Chinese are looking for/seeing when they examine the potential mycelium strains just after spore germination, looking for the right strains for the mother strain to carry forward.


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## sb

Shagbark -- Cotter in his book considers pH to be important in forming the growing trench of three layers. On page 219 in Step3: Fill the bed (trench) with Nutritive Medium, he targets an expressed ideal pH of 7-8.

Again in Step 4: Add the Nonnutritive Casing Soil, Cotter expresses a pH ideal of 7-8 saying:

"You want the pH between 7 and 8. This is critical, since most morel strains are very specific about pH for optimum metabolism. If your soil is acidic, you will need to add lime, a cup at a time, mixing it into the wet slurry. Repeat the squeeze test until the pH rises to between 7 and 8 and stays there for at least an hour. Then drain the casing soil, pouring away the excess water, and use it immediately to cover your nutritive layer."


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## sb

Shagbark,

Last comment duly noted.


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## shagbarkfarmohiollc

Cotter makes a funny observation - because most of the soil in Adams co. is highly acidic. This I know because the first time we went to the feed store for lime they asked how many pallets we wanted....

Many of the old timers here find bread bags of morels in drainage ditches and other places you would not think to look. One of my neighbors gave up 2 spots, one was in a pawpaw grove - about 1 mile of pawpaws along a stream and another area loaded with trillium. Both require fairly acidic soils. one of the areas - pawpaws requie fairly acidic soil, but what was interesting about that area were the American elms. Some close to dead, others thriving in the marshy, pawpaw grove. He said in good years that area had bread bags of sponge mushrooms. Not this year because we looked (together) he's older - and not a one! I hope to test that area for pH.

As for pH in the asparagus bed - it's optimal for them...it's just a whim -- and a hope the morels pop up. If I ever get a great bag full I'll try some of the other things....


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## kridspy

nice photos


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## sb

10 days ago I found a dried shitaake on my logs, innoculated in 2011.

I thought, if the mycellium want fruit so bad they will try in that loooong dry spell, then I'll just water the logs for 10 days to two weeks.

So, today I took this pic below of the first 3 to pop. Yesterday like the end of your little finger, today like the end of your thumb.


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## sb

Hugh,

Don't know how frequently you check in . . . however I would like to ask a question.

I recall two years ago you posting about getting Wine Caps from your chip bed in the back yard and it I recalled that was the second year.

Question is: Are you still getting Wine Caps? Did you add to the bed to continue the fruiting:

I planted some Wine Cap mycellium 4 years ago. I can still find the mycellium strands in the chips but never got it to fruit.


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## sb

This is the Shitakke on June 30 -- I should have cut the two biggest then: slight in-rolled outer edge.









On July 1, the very next day, they had pancaked.










. . . and some little critter had nibbled on the edges.

Reminds me of leaving tomatoes on the vine "one last night". That's usually the night the raccoons get them. Ha!


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## sb

The gift that keeps no giving. (these logs were inoculated in 2011!)










My inoculated shitake logs responded to the 3 rains of more than 3 inches total week before last and these beaut's I harvested this morning.










When they first bud out on the logs, I create a burlap tent with a few small bamboo sticks over the logs and against the fence to create a better moisture environment for the development of the caps. I drench with water: the logs, the pine needle bed underneath and the burlap twice a day.

It works.










These are fresh perfection that you very seldom match at the grocery store, ha. Just slightly inrolled edges and they will be cooked tonight . . . yea.


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## sb

I've grown to like "Mother Nature" surprising me with Shiitake mushrooms in the back yard. After 5 years worth from my 2011 logs, I realized it was time to renew my small investment.

I bartered with a friend in Hocking County and we cut down a 6-7" thick oak and I took 5 nice pieces 36-40" long and 5-6" wide and he kept the rest.

The cold and freezing arrived before I could inoculate and still have 4 weeks of mycellium grow time before the freezing, so I took the logs into the warm basement this last week. I'll keep them there for 4-6 weeks.










I ended up getting twice the mycelium impregnated wood dowels I needed, so after doing mine and my Hocking County friend, I'm putting the rest in the refrigerator where they will keep 4-5 months till Spring.










While not necessary, I like tagging my logs with basic info: wood type, date, mushroom type, by cutting an aluminum can and inscribing tags.


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## shagbarkfarmohiollc

So I've been tinkering with growing morels based on the info SB has sent me. Fingers crossed: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1313914982026653&amp;id=432389456845881


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## morelseeker

MikeEIEIO	
When I have some morels, I wash them in plain cool water. Then, I pour the spore bearing wash water into 2 liter pop bottles 3/4 full. Squeeze each bottle so most of the air is expelled, then cap it and freeze the bottle. This helps keep it from splitting under ice pressure. After a few weeks, let the bottles thaw out. The next day pour the water where you want the morels to grow. Next year keep your eye on that spot where you poured the water. This has worked for me three times (different years). I live in southern Indiana and wanted to share this when the season gets started. Mike I saw this posted on the Kansas board. Has anyone heard of this?


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## sb

This magnificent mushroom sight put a smile on my face this morning when I walked to the back corner of the yard.










This is the first fruiting of the logs that I inoculated for Shiitake mushrooms last December (2016).

In the past I always just let nature take its' course and if it rained enough, they would start fruiting. I would cover with burlap to keep in the moisture and add water from a garden watering can. Those first logs sprouted Shiitake's for 5-6 years.

This year when I saw the first mushroom start on a new log, I took the remaining 4 logs and immersed them completely in water for 24 hours.

Within three days the mushrooms were budding and this pic is of 3 of the 4 logs about 5 days later. The log that wasn't immersed in water to "shock the mycellium into fruiting" has sprouted only 3 mushrooms so far.

You can pretty much guess what I'm going to do going forward.

Hmnn . . . the trade-off, however, will be that I'll lose one of my indicator events. 

In the past if I was busy and not getting out into the woods much, as soon as I'd see Shiitake on any of my back-yard logs, I knew that I better get out into the woods for wild mushrooms.

I kinda' liked giving "Mother Nature" the opportunity to remind me that way.


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## trahn008

Have always done the soak and bang them around. You'll only get 3 good years out of them with this method from what I've found. It is a lot of work soaking and banging around a couple hundred logs and never really get them all done so, always have some of those indicator logs laying around to tell me when to hunt. Happy Growing!!


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## trahn008

If anyone's interested check out pashroomin.com under the growing mushroom threads. A lot of good info on mushroom cultivation including morels. The shroomery is another good site for cultivation. Happy Growing!!


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## sb

trahn008 - thanks for the comments. The shortened productive life is what I expected.

Thanks for sharing info leads/links. I tried to bring up pashroomin.com and could not find anything. Am I misunderstanding something.


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## trahn008

Sorry SB..Try pashroomin.proboards.com.


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## sb

As an update, I'm re- posting this reply to a PA Forum/thread below:

pj estrada -
Morels are cultivated very successfully and profitably in China, outdoors, where they utilize the natural cycles - ie have a winter with freezing temps. Are there any mountainous areas in the Philippines with freezing winter temps for a month?

Otherwise you'll need to look at a more 24/365 higher tech bio-tech approach; indoor cultivation with refrigerators and freezers.

This is now being refined , again in China, and Chinese patents are starting to emerge on aspects of their process as they bring their outdoor understanding (born of 26 years of effort) into an indoor 24 hrs/day 365 days/year controlled environment where the cycle times come down from an outdoor Sept/Oct through April/may in China (about 5 months) to about 1.5 to 2 months or so. Quite a difference between one crop/year and 6-8 crops/year and in the capital requirements.

Do you speak Chinese?

I've paid to have a few Chinese patents translated, but if the translator is not a scientist/biologist with some understanding of mushrooms, some of the necessary finer nuances are lost and they are the differences between no or mediocre success and assured success, which the Chinese scientists consider 96 to 98% success.

And, personally, I've yet to experience what I would even call mediocre success. Ha! . . . but still trying - riding the learning curve with the investment of time here and there.


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## sb

*Mother Nature is teasing me!*

This morning I found a first Shiitake That *"Popped & Stopped"* in the back corner of the yard on cultivated logs. 

Only one . . . about the size of the end of my thumb.

Now, if there were a dozen or more . . . I'd be out in the woods looking for early Morels right now.


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## sb

Yesterday I secured a spore print from the last Black Morels I found.

I'm hoping there might be some "Home Team" advantage in using it as the Blacks came from the creek behind my house and just 1/3 mile away.

Perhaps this year I'll actually accomplish my intended effort using the stratified trench technique with a high nutrient-no nutrient layering that others have been successful with.

Proper timing of follow through has frequently been my downfall with other attempts.


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## Bencuri

Hello!

I am trying to make black morel grain spawn. I started the spawn on cardboard, and transferred a piece onto oat in a jar. I sterilized the oat, but not the cardboard. Can you tell me if the white thing visible on the photo is morel mycelium or just cobweb? It grew in 2 days from the cardboard pieces placed on the top of the grain.


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## sb

Bencuri - My opinion is that you have Morel mycelium. It appears that there is also a black spot, top center inside the jar, that looks like contamination starting to grow. May not necessarily be a deal killer. Look at how quickly the Morel mycelium grew before the contamination started.

How are you planning on using the grain spawn?

Did you use Morel mushroom pieces or inside-of-cap tissue to grow unto the cardboard? Did you use the technique of delaminated cardboard rolled up in a roll? 

Share with others what your results are as this unfolds for you.

For me failures are productive if seen as a step in the process of learning


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## Bencuri

I put some pieces of the cap of a 2 week dried black morel between cardboard sheets layered onto each other. I soaked the cardboard in water before that and squeezed the excess out. After a while some white web started to form around thepieces, and I transferred it into a jar filled with oat. I put it onto the top of the oat. The oat was boiled before and also sterilized in the jar for an hour. In 2 days, this white web formed. By now the web is more dense, you cannot see into the jar and it is milkwhite. But I am missing the orange sclerotia that the black morel mycelium usually grows. That is why I am unsure about what is in the jar.

The black spot you see is just a hole that the web left untouched.


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## trahn008

Sclerotia formation takes some time the myc is in running mode not storage mode yet. Morel myc is one of the fastest runner. Black morel will form micro sclerotia and a lot of them where as yellows form only one or two, which depends on the weight mass of your grain (medium). Happy Growing!


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## trahn008

Notice how the myc is more webby when you use a medium that has space between the grain. When you use a dense medium the myc is more thread like.


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## Bencuri

Then I will store it further and see what happens. How can I know the times has come to put this into the soil?


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## trahn008

I like to get my stuff in the ground when it's in it's running stage, timing is important.


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## Bencuri

What do you mean by 'running'?


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## trahn008

Running is like the point it is at now. The myc is running not storing nutrients (no sclerotium). The stage you use your spawn to make a morel patch is important. Happy Growing!


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## Bencuri

My other jar looks different. May I ask you to take a look at it as well? In this one there is much more orange color, some of the web is also orange. But this one has green and some pink colored contamination as well (the pink one is not easy to spot on the photo). Do you think I should put this into the trash, or the mycelium can still live happily besides these?


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## trahn008

Bencuri, yes you have some issues with contaminants. I would not through it in the trash but put in a place outside where you think morels would grow. The orange is good when growing morels it is at these places the myc is resting from it's nutrient eating path. This is the point as the myc network starts to for sclerotium.


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## sb

*My antidote to "Morel Season-end Postpartum Depression"*

Taken this afternoon, 3-4 days after a 24 hr soak of Shiitake inoculated oak logs.










If only Morels behaved like that! Ha!


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## farsouthsider

Hi all, this thread appeared in search results and brought me to this site. I planted morel spawn (morchella importuna) in spring of this year, and I'm hopeful for good results. I'm using the layered bed technique from Tradd Cotter's Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation. I produce my own morel spawn.

I found an interesting article today, talking about "the mysteries" of Chinese morel cultivation. There is a claim that the spawn is applied to the top surface of the soil, allowed to colonize into the top layer a little ways, and then the spawn is "removed", forcing the stranded high-energy mycelium to keep pushing outward, seeking to establish itself and fruit ASAP as a survival strategy. https://plantpath.psu.edu/research/news/2017/china-trip-unveils-morel-cultivation-mysteries

Cotter's technique is to leave the spawn where it is. I'm thinking that good grain spawn will be attacked by bugs and pests and microbial competitors anyhow, creating the need for a similar survival strategy.

Cool discussion


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## guillaume

Hello everyone,

I introduce myself, Guillaume, French and passionate about the cultivation of mushrooms, especially morels.

You will excuse my english which is not necessarily correct.

It's been a few months now that I'm looking for information on the growth of morels.

I was able to find and translate the various patents on this culture but I am always eager to learn and exchange about it.

I want to get in touch with people who cultivate, do tests, all for the sole purpose of improving the theory.

I could work concretely at the beginning of October, because I will receive correct strains to do it.

Thank you in advance to all those who will help me to realize, humbly, this dream.


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## sb

Welcome to this thread, guillaume.

In you statement that "I was able to find and translate the various patents on the culture . . ."; Are you saying you've downloaded & translated some of the 30+ or so Chinese patents on various aspects of technique on Morel cultivation as done in China?


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## trahn008

Is it just me when I hear Chinese and patent together I LOL! Not knocking the Chinese, but don't they just do what they want with are patents, but patent what they do.. That's just crazy funny!!


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## guillaume

@ sb: yes that's exactly it. The patents were for the most part in English which made it easy for me to translate. Those in Chinese, on the other hand, are a little less understandable. I used for this google translation. It is very interesting but I think everything is not ..... it would be really easy!

@ trahn008: I can not understand what you mean (at the translation level). You mean, the Chinese are smarter than that. That is, it does not really patent their actual inventions but rather a pale copy - a copy that does not really represent their advanced?


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## farsouthsider

Hello guillaume, I wish you success with your research. Do you have a plan in mind for how you will sow your morel spawn? We have been discussing recently that a nearby impermeable barrier can be conducive to producing morels, due to the morels' desire to "leap over" such a barrier.

So far I have used the layered bed method where morel spawn is left in place on top of the prepared bed, under a layer of straw - with morchella importuna spawn. I'm planning to attempt the technique of "applying spawn to top of soil for 2 weeks and then remove the spawn" as well, next. Personally, I've started to wonder if the addition of a plastic sheet on the long sides of the morel trench would be a good idea - to provide an impermeable barrier beneath the soil.


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## farsouthsider

Guillame, cheers to you, for an excellent tip in regards to the China patent office search function. (State Intellectual Property Office, or SIPO). I will just paste this here...

"
Method for cultivating morchella

Application Number 201310129134 Application Date 2013.04.15
Publication Number 103202177A Publication Date 2013.07.17
Priority Information 
International 
Classification A01G1/04 
Applicant(s) Name Sichuan Chuanye Food Company Limited 
Address 
Inventor(s) Name Chen Wen;Wu Guangshun 
Patent Agency Code 51214 Patent Agent wu panfeng
Abstract: The invention belongs to the field of morchella cultivation, and particularly relates to a method for cultivating morchella. The method is characterized by comprising steps of firstly, performing field preparation: spacing ridge compartments and ditching; secondly, sowing the morchella and wheat: broadcasting 75-150kg per mu of strains of the morchella on compartment surfaces, covering a soil layer on each compartment surface, applying compound fertilizers after the strains of the morchella are watered, broadcasting 2-5kg per mu of wheat on the compartment surfaces in 1-10 days after the compound fertilizers are applied, covering a sunshade net on the compartment surfaces, and watering the strains of the morchella and the wheat every 2-3 days; thirdly, applying morchella growth promoters: applying the morchella growth promoters in the compartment surfaces in 35-45 days after the wheat is sowed; fourthly, performing fruiting and harvesting field management for the morchella: shading and watering the strains of the morchella and the wheat; and fifthly, performing field management for the wheat: weeding and applying additional fertilizers. The width of each compartment surface ranges from 90cm to 110cm, the width of each ditch ranges from 30cm to 40cm, the depth of each ditch ranges from 20cm to 30cm, and the humidity of each compartment surface keeps within the range from 60% to 80% in the fourth step. The method has the advantages of low cost, high and stable yield, simplicity in operation and easiness in popularization.
"

I don't see any info regarding removal of the spawn. Nor, unfortunately, do I see a way to get more than the patent application abstract.

I'm wondering if "mu" above refers to a square meter.
"morchella growth promoters"?
"additional fertilizers"?

I've got some reading to do...


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## sb

1 acre = 6.01 Mu
or
1 Mu = .16437 acre

or differently; one Mu is abut 1/6 acre


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## sb

guillaume -

As you understand French language, check out this site: https://francemorilles.com
*Please share what insights you find.*

France Morilles licensed the Chinese Morel Cultivation technology and secured rights to all Europe about 5-6 years ago.

From my perspective, following the pics on their web site in the immediate years afterward, it appeared that they were getting light fruiting density compared to pics of the Chinese harvests.

Perhaps it is different now - or not.

The Chinese update web link from Penn State University: https://plantpath.psu.edu/research/news/2017/china-trip-unveils-morel-cultivation-mysteries
provided by farsouthsider (above) seems to characterize a Chinese cultivation issue of many small farmers having difficulty achieving positive cash flow and positive profitability.

I just spent time on the French site and it appears that they are now sublicensing and home licensing the techniques they payed to license and are selling the supplies to do it. I can't see evidence that they are harvesting commercial quantities of Morels for the wholesale or retail markets.

I hope you check this out and share with us what you find as they have been doing this a few years, now.

Whatever they are doing, it is not the end-all of techinques. What I have been trying to do is understand the universal aspects common to different techniques that seem to offer some degree of success.

Then again, I can't stand before anyone and claim any repeatable success. Ha! My view is that every failure is a step closer to success.


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## sb

farsouthsider:

Over past years, I've downloaded 14 Chinese Morel patents in their Google translation. Two
patents, I paid to have translated from Chinese into English. I used different translators for each and neither were scientists, much less biologists, much less familiar with mycology.

None the less, I found some trends and generalities.

The field is continuing to evolve in refinement of techniques and varieties of morel becoming subject to cultivation and in the number of people making incremental additions to the body of experience and knowledge.

The Chinese Gov has supported this effort as it is an attractive income opportunity for the Chinese small farmer and commands ready saleability into the European market.

The cultivation of Morels has opened up and there are many contributing to the extant body of understanding besides the original couple of scientists who broke this open, after 30 now years of continual experience and experimenting. 

So, we're going to get a home run in one season -- well yes, of course . . . in our dreams!! Ha!

More later on my ideas on the have/have not dynamic.


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## sb

Note: In the last year, Google changed out or upgraded their machine language translation algorithm resulting in less stilted and inverted phraseology in converting from Chinese to English. 

farsouthsider, I see this in your tanslation. I have that patent, but only in Chinese--not the Google translation. *My titling of the file is: Morel Intercropped with Wheat.*

So *some of the steps there may be directed toward getting the wheat growing as an additional crop.*


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## guillaume

Hello farsouthsider,

Yes I already have my cultivation plan, I'm going to do this under shade net - 75%, it will be 1m wide x 1m long, there will be irrigation ditches of 30cm wide on 20 cm deep. These ditches are intended to irrigate crops and move into the structure. The seedling white - sclerotia - will be planted and covered then the exogenous food will be brought a few days later for a while (to be determined) ..... the rest will be in the spring until the good weather comes.

I do not yet produce my seedling white - nor exogenous food but I continue to gather as much information as I can to do it.

I did not see the patent you are talking about, I was able to download it completely (if you wish, I can put you a link to do it).

The translation is not very understandable, in the details. It would be a method to improve the morel yield (maybe like a symbiosis), wheat bringing some elements - but there are not really any details. There is also an addition of liquid fertilizer that is done (to see if the mushrooms are not saturated with chemical elements, which would greatly reduce the commercial potential of the latter, even if there is more to pick). In addition, I also see an interest in the production of semi white if we use wheat in the composition of the recipe to do it.

As SB said, 1 mu is 666.67 m2

Hello SB, FM actually sells licenses, including the supply of semi white, exogenous food and accompaniment in culture. This can be interesting if you only want to produce morel. On the other hand if you wish to produce your recipes of white of sowing and your recipes of exogenous food, it will not accompany you to see you brake. Nobody knows the returns, it does not communicate on it.

My first attempts to produce semi white and exogenous food will be done soon, for now, I have not yet defined a recipe plan. If you have experiences sharing me on that, they are welcome.

I would be happy to give you feedback on the crop and express the yields obtained.

I also wish to be interested in the interior culture, to improve myself on the external culture.

On this last point, do not hesitate to share your experience.


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## guillaume

It seems that the cultivation of the morel, following the article that SB has transmitted to us, is exhausting the soils (but of what?) Is added some things on the ground, which has the consequence of reducing or eliminating all fructifications. One of the solutions could be to renew the land with forest humus, to make crop rotations ..... but as long as we are not enough on what happens in the soil, it will be really "haphazardly" luck " ....


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## primal man

Resurrecting this thread hoping to get some feedback. Anyone here want to update their knowledge on what sort of bed works best for fruiting morels? 

One of the main issues I'm stumped with: should the ground around the bed be tilled and mixed with other media...or left alone with sod intact? 

Another thing: it appears some make their beds on top of ground with log frame whereas others dig into the ground before layering their substrate. I can't see what purpose a log frame would serve in any case, fruitings occur outside the spawned nucleal area, outside of attempts at framing a bed. Which is why I think it is important to know what to do with the ground surrounding the main bed up to where it meets a barrier wall. Any ideas?

Also, when creating a barrier far outside (assuming up to 15 feet outside) the main bed...how deep should the bricks, rocks, plastic sheeting, etc., be buried in ground? 

Thanks for any input.

-A


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## sb

> redfred said:
> *How has the morel growing experiment been going??*


Hi Redfred--Thanks for asking.

--Basically on hold. I have still on occasion been collecting spore prints.

Somewhere I read a source I had found credible, that only 1 in 4 1 in 8, or something like that actually sporulated.

I thought about this a few days ago, as I left my 56 Black Morels on a green deck table, out in the sun after taking the pics I posted. What was there when I took the morels from the table several hours later was a statistical sampling of how many sporulated anything during that warm afternoon. The identifiable grey-white spore shadows on the green table surface showed only 6-7 prints out of 56 mushrooms.

So, maybe 1 in 10 or 10%.


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## sb

*Shiitake Mushroom Logs got Woken Up from their Sleep!*

Two weeks ago I soaked my Shiitake logs from 2016 & 2017.









Then I whacked them on the end with a sledge hammer, about 4 times each log.

Covered them with Burlap









and VOILA! Magic! happened in 4 days.










I cut perfect Shiitake each day for 4 days in a row; getting enough to make the Shiitake Bacon I've posted about on here, before.










Treat yourself. You deserve it! 
Get out into the woods!! 😎 🍾🍷


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