Mushrooms 2020

I would start by growing shitake on fresh (less than 1 month cut) oak logs of 6-10’ diameter about a yard long innoculated in the Spring.
Of the various Shitake spawn sellers around the country, this is THE BEST by far.
https://www.fieldforest.net/category/mushroom-spawn

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Is fresh wood from wild pear trees good enough? I think this is considered hardwood. I can cut down 3-4 of them.

Pear tree wood will do just fine. Pine and Hemlock should be avoided.

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How long those logs can last? One season?

Pugged these in 2018, When a Nor'Easter fells a tree in the woods (Growing Mushrooms) - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit

I think the first flush was in 2019 and still going strong in 2020. I should start looking for replacement logs next spring but i would guest these will not be totally done till 2022.

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That is a good one. I just fell a few trees. But most of them are red cedars. I recall two wild pear trees. Not sure if it is going to be too late to spring time. I can always cut down more wild pear trees in the woods.

I get a few of these beauties each season. This King was in prime shape.

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Is this a safe, and edible mushroom?

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Just now noticed you folks discuss mushrooms too… love the pics.

I hunt morels each spring, here in TN, usually first week in April is when I find them. When redbud trees have been in bloom for a while and dogwoods are just starting to bloom, that is when I normally find the most of them.

They taste so good. Below is a pic of a few I found just across the hollow from my home.

TNHunter

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What are these?

It takes a lot more to identify mushrooms. Some edibles are distinctive and can be named by just a single photo, but to identify most you need to look at many more features. The gill/pore details, spore prints, what the mushroom is growing from, smell, texture, sometimes even chemical reactions.

You don’t have a common edible mushroom there, the smart way to get into edible mushrooms is to learn about the species you want to find. Learn where and when to find them, how to identify them, and how to identify poisonous mushrooms that look similar.

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Yeah
The woods near my house are full of mushrooms.
I’m not going to eat this one :mushroom:.

Oyster mushrooms might be around now, you’d be looking on dead and dying trees for them.

@Boizeau I would add that the first thing you should do is learn how to identify the handful of mushrooms that are genuinely dangerous. That way you can quickly and easily avoid any unfortunate mistakes, and feel more confident about trying edibles that you find. Mushroom ID is best approached as a process of elimination (presumed guilty until disproven), especially when you’re just getting started. Fortunately, there are only a few that will kill you and a few that will make you wish you were dead. Most of the rest of the poisonous ones will just make you… uncomfortable…

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That is the main reason I haven’t gotten in to the mushrooms because I don’t know which ones are eatable and which ones are not!

I been so curious and would like to know more about the shiitake / oak logs but I do not know anything about how they do them? Would be willing to learn about them and to know where to get more information kind of step by step and where to get the materials from.

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A few other people have mentioned them on this thread, but probably the best source of spawn and info is fieldforest.net

It’s actually not too hard to learn which ones are safe to eat and which aren’t. Some are more challenging than others, but some of the best ones are also the easiest. I think where a lot of people get into trouble is they don’t know the proper descriptors and what to look for. If you didn’t know what apples or tomatoes were and I asked you to go to the store and get some round red fruit, you might easily confuse them. That’s the sort of information people go on to ID mushrooms and get in trouble, but it doesn’t take much reading to know what to look for.

If I told you chanterelles are orangey-yellow mushrooms that grow in the woods, you could end up with a poisonous jack-o-lantern mushroom. But if I added that they only grow on the ground (never on wood), in scattered groups of single mushrooms (never clusters), and never have sharply defined gills but instead have fleshy branching gills running down the stem, the differences are obvious. And once you’ve ID’d each, it’s as easy as telling apples from tomatoes.

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It’s worth while to do a little homework and see if you have local mycological society(aka mushroom club). While you will certainly meet some interesting folks, you can learn much about what the main edibles are in your region.

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When a Nor'Easter fells a tree in the woods (Growing Mushrooms) - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit

Everything Mushrooms – Fungi Supply and Resource Center

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@jcguarneri @cis4elk @lordkiwi
Thanks for the tips, information and the links! I would be checking them out! But any other information that you all think I/we should need to know would be well appreciated!

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Those are LBM’s…

Little Brown Mushrooms (well… perhaps not too little).

I was told that LBM thing one time on another message board, while discussing some brown mushrooms… trying to identify some… and they basically said that there are so many different types of LBM’s that it makes them the most difficult to clearly identify.

If they were yellow or red instead of brown… you would have a better chance identifying them.

I am no mushroom expert myself… I do harvest and eat morels, chanterelles. Those I know.

TNHunter

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