Morels in pots

Morels now colonizing the pots growing figs.

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Wow, cool. how did you do that, did you plant mushroom spores in the pot?

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That is cool, I’ve been thinking of buying spawn and soaking it in a 5gallon bucket then diluting. I think this method I’ve seen on YouTube, idea is to spread spores to as many places as you can hoping that some of them end up being decent morel habitats.

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They self-spawned. I am thinking of spreading the spores as much as possible since they seem to love my yard and are cropping up everywhere.

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Is that shredded cardboard in the potting mix?

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Do you use any fungicides, pesticides, herbicide in your yard ? I would think the fungicides we use for fruits trees might kill the mushroom ?

No fungicide or pesticide use except very targeted.

Yes, I use shredded cardboard as mulch

ram, if I were you I would harvest the morels, and in early summer re-pot your fig, spreading that soil heavily under similar mulch somewhere in a garden bed or under trees…it can be hard to grow morels period, but they do randomly pop up in mulch beds sometimes…your odds are probably best working with an established mycelium and not beating it up too hard, but spreading it somewhat thick in the mulch. Still no guarantee, but perhaps your best odds.

So if it was me I would pick an apple tree or similar in the yard, scrape the old mulch if there is old mulch, in june/july, spread that soil like an inch or 2 deep, then cover with a heavy wood chip mulch or perhaps in your case chips mixed w cardboard. Keep it well-watered at least 2 weeks and prevent it drying horribly a few more while the mycelium (hopefully) begins to colonize. You MIGHT get a crop next year off it.

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I sent an inquiry about Morels to the production manager at Mountain Meadow mushroom farms – the largest local commercial source for edible fungus. His response was that NOBODY in the southwest was commercially propagating Morels … but he gave me a reference to a specialty produce distributor who obtains them from folks that harvest wild Morels in our local mountains.

My conclusion is that you folks are pioneers. :slight_smile:

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Now they are colonizing the raised beds.
I prepared a few batches already. So delicious!!

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no, we’re sadly not. Morels pop up sometimes by very fortuitous accident, but nobody grows them reliably. If you’re looking to buy mushroom spawn/cultures, and you want to know how full of sh*! the vendor is, look at how they do or do not promise success with morels.

Black morels seem a bit more reliable, in that they really like colonizing burns and some people have had luck exploiting that and growing them in ash beds, but honestly I’ve grown a couple dozen other mushrooms, I do the sterilizing using a pressure cooker as an autoclave, I can do tissue culture in my sleep, and if I had 20 tries I would be really surprised if I could get morels to grow in a “patch” 2 of those 20. There probably ARE pioneers out there, with limited success and a lot of caveats whenever they describe their experiences. The folks selling kits with big promises are less pioneer than charlatan, though. :frowning:

Morels (and chanterelles and other mutualistic species that grow as symbiotes with host trees) are tough to get intentionally fruiting by anything more than chance.

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