Whenever I’m going mushroom hunting and picking, I get up early – as soon as the sun rises. I prepare coffee as well as a few sandwiches in order to take them with me for lunch Peyote in USA. Mushroom hunting is normally a time-consuming undertaking and a couple of hours of open-air activity on fresh air makes me famished. I grab my tools organized the previous evening and proceed. In order to avoid wasting valuable early morning time I take my snacks along with me and actually eat it while travelling.
It is definitely quite clever to begin mushroom hunting as soon as feasible for the reason that early morning daylight helps you to find edible mushrooms and refreshing atmosphere supports you to smell these. Other mushroom pickers will likely not disrupt you and by lunch break you will be done leaving the complete afternoon for cleaning as well as preparing mushrooms.
So, I arrive to the particular selected woodland and I look at the trees and shrubs. I head towards pine and spruce trees checking at the surface which is coated by pine and spruce fine needles. From time to time, here and there I see green moss. I inspect such sites with moss to begin with as there is more dampness that mushrooms appreciate. I look for the convex (outwardly curved) formed mushroom cap (most of wild edible pore fungi have convex cap form). It will be tinted in any kind of shade of brown from light yellow-brownish right up until dark-brown. Among pine trees tend to be found more typical wild mushrooms with dark brown convex cap.
After that I walk in the direction of oak trees and shrubs where I check out for convex mushroom cap form of the colours as explained earlier on. That is to some degree more challenging activity mainly because in the woods with larch trees there are usually a large amount of leaves on the surface and mushroom heads have themselves disguised just by having colorings of those foliage. Therefore, I must take a look tightly to the ground, flip the foliage about if I think covered mushroom there. Between oak trees are a lot more prevalent wild mushrooms with light or dark brown heads.
And then after that I get nearer to birch trees and shrubs, where the pore fungi have more light brown or reddish cap.
Wild mushrooms from Boletus family are generally just about all edible along with yummy. This is exactly why they tend to be so valuable to any wild mushrooms hunter!
When I discover wild edible mushroom I slice it with my pocket knife (it should be cut to be able to avoid destruction of the spawn left right behind). I slice it as near to the ground as possible so that I really don’t miss out on the delicate mushroom flesh and also to uncover the mushroom root as less as achievable so as to retain the spores for the long term.
There are several guidelines I follow:
– If I am picking wild mushrooms I make perfectly sure that I do not collect all edible mushrooms out of the actual place where I have discovered them. I leave behind (really don’t even touch!) about 10% of edible mushrooms to develop further to ensure that those species can be protected in the nature.
– I pick up younger edible mushrooms (let’s say 7-9 cm in height). Old mushrooms usually are not really as firm and tight as they have to be for transporting; they aren’t as tasty as young ones and do not fit for storage.
– If I observe that cut mushroom is eaten by earthworms and there isn’t anything I might make use of for cooking, I disperse mushroom cap bits inside the location in order that spores spread on a larger space (“Fungi recreate via spores, which are generally usually produced on specialised structures or in fruiting bodies, such as the head of a mushroom.”)
– I don’t pick mushrooms near to streets and commercial areas as wild mushrooms take up metals coming from the environment and could possibly grow to be toxic.
– I do not pick wild mushrooms which I do not recognize or cannot fully recognize. Every time I am in doubt I take only a single mushroom of unknown kind and detect it at home using different sources.
The second I get home I take care of cleaning, cooking and preservation of mushrooms on the actual same day. It commonly requires a lot of energy but it requires to be done since freshly harvested mushrooms can not stay fresh through the night (not even in cold water in the fridge!). That’s one extra motivation why I get up earlier for mushroom hunting.
