Any mushroom fans on the forum?

[Austin]

I'm curious to see if anyone else shares my passion for hunting wild mushrooms and growing them. I have grown Portobellos, White Buttons, Blue Oysters, Pink Oysters, Criminis, Morels, and attempted truffles (and failed ) I grow all from culture syringes and spores.
I hunt morels every spring and chanterelles in the summer. I enjoy selling my homegrowns to the local supermarket.
And now some pics of my homegrown tasties ~
1 - Pioppino's (Don't know latin name)
2 - Blue oysters (Pleurotus Ostreatus Var. Columbinus)
3 - Blue Oysters (Pleurouts Ostreatus Var. Columbinus)
4 - Portobellos (Agaricus Bisporus)
5 - Portobellos (Agaricus Bisporus)
6 - The biggest white button I have ever grown or seen. (Agaricus Bisporus mutant)

Just had to share my hobby.

[Cameron Cheri]

Those are some neat and tasty looking fungi Do you only grow edible ones to sell or have you tried growing non-edible varieties for the fun of it? Very neat and thanks for sharing!

[Eva]

I am a huge mushroom fan!
Spending a day in the forest picking them, bringing them home to clean them and finally cooking and eating them beats everything
Your cultivated ones look fantastic. I assume you have a huge cellar?

[Austin]

I have grown non-edibles for fun. I have been successful with Galerinas (Very poisonous, one mushroom and you're dead!). Also tried Amanita Muscaria (aka Fly Agaric. It is red or yellow with white warts!). I grew Amanita Muscaria by spreading spores and water around a pine tree in October. They are mycorrhizal, meaning they'll only grow in symbiosis with trees. So uhh, you can't really grow them indoors! I
Eva, what species do you hunt?
And yes, there is actually a room in our basement devoted to fungal experiments and mycoculture.

[Austin]

Some more cultivated mushrooms -
1 and 2 - This was a for-fun project. I injected a stump outdoors with some Hypholoma Capnoides spawn. They fruited beautifully!
3 and 4 - My portobellos. I chopped these up and put them into rice and chicken. Very delicious.
5 - My favorite, Blue Oysters.
Grocery store mushrooms seem to be extremely bland and flavorless. Homegrowns are very flavorful, delicious...after you eat a homegrown mushroom, you'll NEVER buy from the grocery store again!

[Coastal Groovin]

I have been wanting to know how to grow mushrooms that glow in the dark. I want to feed them to glow spot roaches. It collects in the roach and makes their spots glow in the dark.

[Austin]

Omphalotus sp. are a good choice. It's called the Jack-O-Lantern mushroom, glows in the dark. They grow in your area. In which case you could harvest a small amount of mycelium from the parent fungus and add it to some pasteurized straw/sawdust. They only fruit in the fall though. Unless you want to go through the hassle of ordering online spore syringes, you'll have to wait until October-September next year.
Note: Watch animals around this fungus if you intend on keeping it in the house. It is very poisonous.

[Elena]

The hiking trails up here and around my college have huge mushrooms, and giant mushroom patches. I'm not sure what they are. But there was a colloquium at my college on how mushrooms could cure cancer.

[Caleb Leeke]

I'm another mushroom fan. I don't get much time to go hunting them these days (puffballs, Chicken-of-the-woods, and parasol mushrooms were my favourites when I had the time), but I've started growing blue oysters as well. Spawn is really cheap on ebay, and it seems like it will grow on almost anything...

[Eva]

We didn't get many mushrooms this year because it was terribly dry. Normally we would pick ceps, different types of bolettes and brittlegills, blushers and some other mushrooms. We found lots of amethyst deceivers in November this year after it finally started to rain again but it was too late for anything else. I hope next year will be better.

I wish we could cultivate some mushrooms like you but sadly our house doesn't have a cellar. I also wish I lived somewhere with truffles - I would keep a pet pig and go hunting with it.

[Austin]

Originally Posted by caleb

I'm another mushroom fan. I don't get much time to go hunting them these days (puffballs, Chicken-of-the-woods, and parasol mushrooms were my favourites when I had the time), but I've started growing blue oysters as well. Spawn is really cheap on ebay, and it seems like it will grow on almost anything...

Ahh, Blue Oysters will always have a place in my heart. They were my first mushrooms to grow. They are super-fun to grow from spores, much more than spawn. Just sterilize everything with alcohol and boiling water, and they will grow on coffee grounds, rice, grain, sawdust, woodchips, logs, straw, certain vegetable oils, and leaf litter. It's quite an amazing fungus, it seems to decompose anything in its path. Lately I have been trying an experiment with the Blue Oysters. I started inoculating logs in a 2-mile radius outdoors with the Blue Oyster fungus, attempting to naturalize it in the area. It is just a variation of the white blue oyster, which is natural in my area. If I could naturalize it, it would spread all over Northeast Ohio. I could get recognition!

[David Pinckney]

I have read that P. Cyanescens grows as far down south as the San Francisco peninsula. However, I have not seen it in SF, or San Mateo county. What's the closest place to San Francisco where one would be likely to see them?

[Rachel]

i LOVE mushrooms, well done! what a great thread!

[Coastal Groovin]

Well I guess that would make the roach toxic then.....not what I was really looking for I still wanted to use them as food for reptiles.

[kerosseno]

I do not usually cook, but mushrooms are definitely my speciality.
I wish I had knowledge to go pick them myself...

[Vagus]

I used to pick wild mushrooms until 1 misidentified specimen made its way into a mushroom stew.

Never been sicker in my life.
8 dinner guests, all relatively experienced gathers, all wondering who screwed up.

Now, I buy my wild mushrooms from someone who grows mushrooms themselves. The hills around here often get over-harvested anyways.

Still, I do enjoy going out and poking around for boletes and chanterelles.

[Coastal Groovin]

I would blame the Chef......lol. He is the last one to look at them.