Summer Mushroom Near The House

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

This amazing and aromatic mushroom is familiar to many. The summer forest gives us a large harvest of summer mushrooms from June to September. But not everyone knows that honey mushrooms can be grown with success in their summer cottage. Let's talk about how you can do this

Description of mushroom

This mushroom grows in almost any forest. It has a flat, slightly convex cap, in the center of which a rounded tubercle protrudes. The edges of the cap are slightly down. Its color is rusty-yellow or yellow-brown. You can see lighter concentric stripes, which are clearly visible in the light, and its diameter reaches 6 cm. The legs can reach a height of 5 cm, but they are very hard and are usually not used during cooking

You can recognize the mushroom by a thin plate on the leg, it is the same color as the hat. If the mushroom is very mature, then it can disappear, but still a trace of its presence remains on the stem. False honey agarics do not have such a ring on a leg. You should also pay attention to the plates. In a real young mushroom, they are creamy, in an old one, they are brown. And in a false mushroom, they are yellowish at first, and with age they begin to turn green.

This mushroom is prized by culinary experts for its delicate taste and aroma. As a rule, dishes are prepared from fresh mushrooms. They do not need to be boiled in advance, the dish is prepared immediately. The hats can be dried, and in winter they will add an incomparable aroma to meat and vegetable dishes.

Honey mushrooms spoil quickly, so they cannot be transported and they also need to be processed very quickly. This is the reason why mushrooms are not grown industrially. But for yourself, you can grow a mushroom in the garden.

How to get mycelium

For these purposes, you can take old hats with dark plates, grind them a little and fill them with water. In this form, hold for one day and strain. This is a concentrated infusion of mushroom spores. This infusion will need to be impregnated with wood.

The second way is to bring pieces of wood with the existing mycelium from the forest. Such wood is harvested in the forest in June, during the mushroom picking period. Where you find a large family of summer mushrooms, there are also suitable pieces of wood. They can be recognized by their strong smell and many light threads that penetrate the entire thickness of the wood.

Growing honey agaric

To grow these mushrooms, you need hardwood. And birch is best for these purposes, but fruit dead trees can also be used. It is necessary to cut chunks up to 35 cm in size and put them in pre-dug holes in the shady part of the site. Lumber blocks are buried to a depth of 20 cm, the distance between the posts is about half a meter.

Dry wood must be soaked in advance for two days; freshly cut wood is not necessary to soak. An infusion of mushroom spores is abundantly applied to the upper cut; mushroom caps can be laid out on top with the plates down. You can make additional notches on the sides of the posts and pour the infusion there too. Further, the stumps are covered with moss, bark or shingles. The entire landing must be protected from drying out, so you can put a tarpaulin canopy. Fungal spores germinate rather slowly, so the harvest will have to wait two years.

But there is a way to get the harvest faster. If you brought wood infested with mycelium from the forest, then it can be placed in holes, notches, or on the surface of harvested stumps. Large pieces can even be nailed down with cloves. All this is again covered with moss, the soil near the stumps is well spilled and protected from drying out. With this method, the crop can appear as early as next summer.

Such mushroom plantings need to be well watered and mulched with sawdust. If you use a vacant greenhouse, then here the mushrooms will begin to bear fruit even earlier. Since the temperature regime lends itself to regulation.

Usually honey mushrooms bear fruit twice a season. On the same stumps, they grow up to 7-8 years. The first harvest is always small, but every year it becomes more and more abundant. The success of the cultivation depends on the type of wood taken and the weather conditions.

For growing honey agarics, you can also use wood waste. Branches, small trunks and chips are infected with mushroom spores and buried in holes up to 25 cm deep. Cover with sod on top, watered, and then covered from direct sunlight. In a couple of years, it will be possible to collect fungi without going into the forest.