Wow, I didnt realize Nova Scotia got that much rain! Sounds like it would be a good climate for mushrooms.
I’m still a novice when it comes to identifying wild edible mushrooms. So far, the only thing I’ve found that I am sure is edible are chaterelle. I have yet to find any morels out there. My wooded area is predominantly oaks, red maple, black cherry, and hickorys, with occasional elm, birch, walnut, half dead ash trees, poplars, plus understory trees like serviceberry, hornbeam, hophornbeam, hawthorn. I’ll have to do some more reading to learn what, when, and where I should be looking!
I can never predict where or when my winecaps will come up. It took a few years before I started seeing them come up before July. Now they pop up in May, but in completely random places 20+ feet from where they were the year before, but never in the place I’ve intentionally moved the spawn.
Mushroom hunting is mostly a late fall/winter activity here away from the Sierra where there is an active spring season, but one of our best tasting mushrooms fruits only in spring:
This is Amanita velosa, the springtime amanita. Truly one of, if not the best, species for eating but hard to find in quantity (as you can see, slugs love them too) and most people are understandably reluctant to eat amanitas.
i had a dream about 5 months ago that i was walking in the middle of the woods and stumbled across a bunch of morels. Had no idea that would come true. Been wanting to try these forever and they’re just casually growing along my home. I was scouting the area to put my flowers in. I’m going to protect their little patch of grass lol. It’s going to look wonky but this would be so cool to have them coming back every year. They’re on a South facing area but hiding in the grass so I’m going to create a partially shaded spot since they seem to like partial shade. I have them on the other side of my home too. There’s a bunch and I’m so excited!
Hats off to you for having the confidence to eat Amanitas. I don’t think I would, but we also don’t have any of the famously good Amanitas where I live (velosa, jacksonii, coccora, etc).
@Melon … i hunted for morels on 3/31 and 4/5 here so far… and found none. I will go another time or two before I give up. They can be sort of hit or miss here… some years lots of them and some years cant find single one.
There’s much less competition for them
It took me a while to get comfortable enough to eat them, and they are the only mushrooms I collect where I keep a mental checklist of the distinguishing features as opposed to just relying on recognizing them by sight.
Omg now i know why people love them so much
Consider me part of the bandwagon…
I gotta find someone to shred me some poplar trees i cut down now so i can throw some of the water wash on them.
None of my neighbors have any. Just my house i went asking around today. This is life changing.
Also found some spidermites living in the ones by the ac unit so i threw those back onto the mulch.
Also the deer and animals seem to love them too. Found a bunch with the tops bitten off .
Also if anyone is nearby and want some mushroom water, i can share. I’ll have them for the next day or two. Also have poplars that i cut down as well that you can lob off a chunk of and take home/chip up to throw the spores on. I’ve read they like them. There’s a few tiny ones that i may let grow and die off.
Melon, those morels look like the type that grows in landscape mulch, and I noticed mulch in just about every photo showing where they were growing. I don’t know how recently that mulch has been applied, but I understand that morels are most likely to grow in mulch that was applied the previous year. It might help production next year if you added some fresh mulch this year.
I was actually planning on just that! Was weeding the area and looking for spots to put my flower bulbs along the south side of my house then i saw this and thought “that’s not a weed… A Morel? I have to ask everyone i know!”
I gotta find someone to help me shred some of the trees i took down. Just bought some flags to mark the spots that i found them. Was planning on removing a bit of grass too but i think I’ll leave the grass around the mushrooms.
Planning on doing a 4 ft border of flowers, a few shrubs and mulch along the house with a pathway to the back. I really want to make this place look effortlessly pretty. The wooded areas are beautiful but taken over by Scottish broom or whatever that yellow flower is and there’s a lack of food for the pollinators. Been buying a bunch of flowers to try to help.
Oh! And this house finished building on October 31st, 2024. What’s funny is my last house, we closed on October 31st as well and my last address was Brenden st. I’m now on a Brenda street all roads led me here
Super Shroom jealous! I bought like a hundred dollars worth of spawn last spring. Wine Cap, Almond Agaricus, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. I have a moderately green thumb, but it was an absolute fail. I did however have a bunch of white mushrooms where I planted winecap. Not sure how that happened but they popped up in a chip drop pile. I didn’t eat them because I couldn’t determine if they were edible. I’m a total shroom newb.
Where I planted the Almond Agaricus I got one mushroom. Just one and I gave it a huge amount of compost to play in. I ate that one as I could determine that was what I planted.
Other places where I planted winecap grew nothing but if I pull the wood chips back I can still see mycellium just no shrooms. And the logs never did anything for me.
Oh well, maybe I’ll try the grow bags next year. I would forage if I felt more equipped to not eat deadly mushrooms. LOL
I gotta learn about more edible mushrooms here. Every fall the ground gets carpeted with every mushroom under the shade and I’m getting tired of golden and white chanterelles.
My lastest haul was hedgehogs on 3/26. I found a new spot this year which I picked, but I left my old ones because it was getting past hedgehog season.
morel spawn, pine bark from our big trees and whatever branches they’ve dropped over winter, charcoal and ash from a bonfire, pine straw throughout, burlap, more spawn, more ash, more pine straw. in a very shaded area on the north side of the house.
I pulled back the burlap and the entire area is FULL of mycelium. I’m hoping it’s the morels - I do not see any fruiting bodies but it could still happen. there’s a month or more left in the season here.
i had a dream about 5 months ago that i was walking in the middle of the woods and stumbled across a bunch of morels. Had no idea that would come true. Been wanting to try these forever and they’re just casually growing along my home. I was scouting the area to put my flowers in. I’m going to protect their little patch of grass lol. It’s going to look wonky but this would be so cool to have them coming back every year. They’re on a South facing area but hiding in the grass so I’m going to create a partially shaded spot since they seem to like partial shade. I have them on the other side of my home too. There’s a bunch and I’m so excited!
i went asking around today. This is life changing.
.
all roads led me here 
