I did the equivalent of high fence mushroom hunting today.

Last July, I inoculated around 35 or 40 truckloads of wood chips from tree trimmers (arborist chips) with winecap mycelium. 4 days ago there were no mushrooms, because I looked hard. Today there were several hundred winecaps. Most were frosted and many had already spawned. I still picked around 12 pounds and could of easily picked over 20 pounds. I think there were literally be thousands of pounds of mushrooms out of all those truck loads of arborist chips, over the next few years.








Are any of the rest of you growing winecaps or other mushrooms.

I will be eating them for the first time very soon.

Keith

Update after you cook them, I have chips and would love growing mushrooms in them. Hardwood, softwood or doesn't matter?

Yum!!

Pray tell us the flavor, and where you purchased them.

Nice,if it's ever warms up here our Morel's will be starting 20's for lows and 30's for highs are not cutting it.Next week it will be in the 60's so we will running at least a week behind.

They were good. Strangely they taste very similar to asparagus, which is my favorite vegetable. I had read they taste like asparagus, but didn't really believe it until I tried them. The raw cut stems smell like asparagus too. If someone popped a piece in my mouth and I had to guess what it was, I would guess asparagus, with no hesitation, though the texture is different. They are firm for mushrooms.



There's literally thousands of recipes for wine cap mushrooms online. I'm going to try a bunch of them. Tonight Diane just cooked them plain in butter. I did put salt and pepper on them. They are supposed to absorb flavors well. A lot of people pickle them. They only store for 3 to 5 days when picked and they are super productive, so we should preserve them. They are supposed to freeze well, if lightly cooked first.

They should grow well in both hardwood and softwood chips. They will grow in hay and straw too. They popped up well where the wood chips touched the ground and even a couple of feet out into the grass. They can take sunlight, but prefer shade. The color was more burgundy on the better shaded wine caps.

I bought the wine cap mycelium from Field & Forest. It worked.

https://fieldforest.net/shop/by-mushroom/wine-cap/

I'm going morel hunting again tomorrow, hopefully with better results. I've gone twice and haven't found any yet this year.

Keith

Awesome Job

Thank you sir.

You're welcome.

I cooked some in garlic. They were good, but the garlic over powered their flavor, so that I mostly just tasted garlic.



I used AI to look at what wine cap mushrooms sell for in Ohio. Apparently the wholesale price to customers, like restaurants is $10.00 to $15.00 a pound. The Farmer's Market price is $20.00 to $25.00 a pound with some higher end markets averaging $40.00 a pound. I'm going to try selling some this weekend for $20.00 a pound.

Keith