Morel Season Recap

Morel season is officially well behind us here in the East. For my own part, I headed off into the wilds or Eastern Ontario in search of both yellow and black morels. I spent several days fending off hoards of mosquitoes, eluding coyotes and dodging black bears in search of my prize. The yield was not bad. Not great, but not bad. The mushrooms that I found were relatively small and quite scattered about. It required a fair amount of running around to various locations to gather them up. All in all, I felt like this year's crop could have been much better.

I arrived home after dark. It wasn't until the next morning when I got to the bottom of my driveway and saw them... Across the street in my neighbour's front yard... A great big bushel of yellow morels!

Being newly transplanted to the neighbourhood, the entire area was unexplored ground for me. And with a quick tour of this new region I found that I was living in the midst of a great big morel patch!

That's going to make next season's hunting a little more accessible...

Half-Free Morel Recovery!

Following up on my half-free disaster from a week ago I'm happy to report that the morels seem to have made an incredible recovery! In fact it looks like a banner year for the half-frees in my favourite patch, not only in quantity but also in their size.

Mushroom Marc and I brought in a harvest of 60 just yesterday and we left plenty behind. The prize winner in this photo is at least 8 inches in length.

We also came across three meager yellow morels which had been feasted upon by slugs. They looked at least a week or two older than the half-frees. No luck finding any other yellows so far however. But with the half-frees emerging somewhat late, there still may be hope yet.

Mushroom Houses

Nope, not talking about little blue gnomes here. Much in the same spirit as the mold grown mycelial car parts or packaging material I've told you about in the past, mushroom bricks are now being tested for use in construction.

"Brooklyn based Planetary ONE is experimenting with the idea of grow-your-own construction materials by making bricks from mushrooms." [Read More]

If someone would just knit me a mushroom sweater I think we'll be all set!

Mushroom Guide for the iPad

I think I'll stick to my trusty old, paper bound field guides but for the tech savvy forest runner this may be something interesting for the mushroom season: A mushroom identification app for Apple's iPad. I can't speak to its accuracy and this is not an endorsement, just letting you all know what's out there!

""Fungi Kingdom" is the iPad adaptation of the "Fungi" mushroom identification application." [Read More]

Man Pulls Gun On Mushroom Hunters

Remember, mushrooms don't kill people, people kill people.

"... a property owner pulled a gun on two mushroom hunters, who were allegedly trespassing on his property..." [Read More]

Half-Free Disaster!

My first trip out this season revealed a trove of half-free morels just barely breaching the surface of my sure-thing patch. A week later I returned with great expectations. To my dismay, the patch was bare!

As I hopped around from rock to log to make sure not to accidentally trample any precious specimens, my mind went back to what I'd seen on a few days earlier... How could they all be gone? Other animals? I've yet to come across any forest animals that prey on morels. Then I remembered the hikers. A pair of them had wandered by as I studied the ground last week. One of them took a long look at me. Could he have been a rival mushroom hunter? Spotting me for what I was and circling back after I was gone to find my secret stash?

Then I found it. The same little half-free cap that I'd found last week. It hadn't grown. It had instead begun to dry out and shrivel up! True, it hadn't rained since last week but I didn't think it had really been so warm that it would have killed off this entire harvest... But as I looked closer, sure enough all the caps were still there. Like little raisins. Will they recover? It's raining today, so maybe, but it looked pretty bleak. More to come.

On the bright side, the hawk's wings (Dryad's saddles) are out and thriving. In fact I came across this lucky find (see photo) and decided to bring it home as a bit of a consolation prize. My own little hawk's wing home hobby kit. More to come on that as well...

Morel Hunting in Missouri

The accompanying article to this multimedia video has some tips and tricks on finding morels. Morel hunters are all about the tips and tricks... And morels are all about defying every one of them.

"They are dependent on the temperature of the soil and the amount and timing of precipitation during the season" [Read More]