GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: mushroom identification

  • Oyster Mushroom Hunting – GF Video

    Oyster Mushroom Hunting – GF Video

    Here’s a mushroom hunting video about some really amazing oyster mushrooms we found growing along the side of the road right near our house

    A few things to keep in mind when you’re going mushroom hunting:

    • bring along several identification books we like a couple that we listed at the end of the video here
    • learn from someone who already knows what they’re doing take a class or ask if you can tagalong with someone who is a mushroom expert
    • Join your local mycological society, in other words your local mushroom group. You can learn a lot from these people and they might even take you long to show you some really cool spots to go mushroom hunting.

    When you find some mushrooms you want to harvest, don’t take all of them. Leave one third of the mushrooms there so the mushrooms can propagate they will release their spores and they will grow more mushrooms that you would go in harvest.
    After a while you’ll be able to recognize some of the common edible mushrooms in your area but bring along several mushroom identification books anyway. I really like the Audubon guide and there are also several regional guides. We  have a few for the Northeast United States or New England listed those below.

    Avoid mushrooms that have slugs or bugs in them, yes they are a protein, but many don’t taste that great. You can wash mushrooms, but they usually only need to  be brushed off. You can use a towel, I’ve seen mushroom brushes that look like a whisk broom/porcupine thing. So again, if you’re not quite sure don’t eat it or check with your friend who is an expert OK?

    Want to grow mushrooms, watch this vid: How To Grow Mushrooms From Plug Spawn – GF Video

    Here are more mushroom hunting and mushroom identification videos for your here on GardenFork:


    Oyster Mushroom Identification

    cook-mushrooms-play
    How To Cook Mushrooms

    oyster-mushroom-hunting-2
    Wild Mushrooom Risotto Recipe

    Click here to see our other mushroom identification posts

    Cross check the mushrooms you find with several sources, books are best, I think. I use several books for identifying mushrooms , below are the mushroom identification books I recommend:


    Click Here To Buy From IndieBound
    Click Here To Buy From Amazon


    Click Here To Buy From IndieBound
    Click Here To Buy From Amazon

  • How To Cook Mushrooms : GF Video

    How To Cook Mushrooms : GF Video

    Learn how to cook mushrooms in our latest foraging – mushroom identification video. We made a oyster mushroom identification video, and people asked us to show how to cook mushrooms, so here is our mushroom cooking video!

    The oyster mushrooms we use here were cultivated mushrooms, and you can grow your own mushrooms, here’s post about growing mushrooms here, but we bought these at the food coop. In the growing season you can go mushroom hunting, but be sure to learn from an experience mushroom foraging person, and bring your mushroom identification books with you. Below are a few of the mushroom books we like and use.

    To clean mushrooms, I just brush them off with a towel, you can also wash them, but its not always necessary, I feel, but you should do what you want, because you’re going to do that anyway…
    how-to-cook-mushrooms-2

    Butter, Salt, & Pepper are the key ingredients in this simple sauted mushroom recipe, and the cast iron pan is great for cooking mushrooms, holds heat nicely and its evenly distributed too.

    You can store mushrooms in your fridge or a cool basement, I keep them in a paper bag that’s not closed tight. Plastic bags will cause the mushrooms to go bad quickly, I think. Also when you are foraging for mushrooms, bring along a few paper bags, its the best way to store them while you hike around, IMHO.

    Below is my favorite book I use for mushroom identification, let me know any other suggestions you have in the comments below:


    Click To Buy From An Independent Bookstore

  • Grow Mushrooms In Your Yard, Backyard Oyster Mushroom Spore Inoculation

    Grow Mushrooms In Your Yard, Backyard Oyster Mushroom Spore Inoculation

    Growing mushrooms in my yard, instead of having to go foraging for mushrooms, is a goal of mine. Mushroom growing is not rocket science, but for mushrooms to grow, the environment must be perfect for that particular kind of mushroom. On our hike yesterday, I came across a dead oak tree full of oyster mushrooms, but the mushrooms were way past their prime, they were falling apart.

    I cut off about a third of the mushrooms and put them in a paper bag. Today, I went in the back yard-woods, and all while constantly tossing two tennis balls for the Labradors, I looked for a dead or dying deciduous tree.

    Oyster Mushrooms from a dead oak tree

    I have a number of mature birch trees in my yard, a few of which are dying, they have large woodpecker holes in them. I leave dead trees standing, to allow cavity nesting birds to have homes. Woodpeckers peck out nests in dead trees, then other birds use those nests after the woodpeckers have left.

    So today I had the paper bag of oyster mushrooms with me and I tried my hand at inoculating a dead birch tree with mushroom spore. My method was not very exacting, I didn’t drill holes in the tree and put spore in the holes, I placed pieces of oyster mushroom in between the bark and the wood of the tree where the bark had split open.

    Wedged the mushrooms between the bark and dead wood

    What was really cool was inside the paper bag the oyster mushrooms has released a bunch of spores, so I took apart the paper bag and rubbed the spore on the wood of the trunk.

    white powdery mushroom spore in the bag i had been keeping the mushrooms in

    It will take a few years to see if our mushroom spore inoculation project is a success. If you are interested in learning more about mushroom identification, I have posted photos of mushrooms I have identified in our Mushroom Identification series here on the GardenFork.TV site.

    Do you have some mushroom growing or mushroom spore inoculation suggestions? Please let us know below:

    Charlie Pup waits for me to throw her tennis ball again.
  • Puffballs & Mushroom Identification

    Puffballs & Mushroom Identification

    How to identify mushrooms. I get a lot of requests for more information mushroom identification, so i’ve started with this post to show GardenFork readers different mushrooms I run across in the woods and in the city.
    The Giant Puffball can be a common site in urban areas. You might see these large white balls that look like they are from another planet appearing on your lawn, or in a park or meadow. Puffballs like this are common on the East Coast, I’ve also seen them in the Midwest.
    The Puffball Mushroom in the photo here is one I found in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York. It was growing on the edge of a meadow near some trees.

    Puffballs such as this are generally edible, though double check with several references and experts before getting out your knife and fork. I have found them to taste underwhelming, kinda like tofu. So maybe you can use them in a stir fry or saute with other vegetables, or in a soup.

    Homesteaders, Urban Homesteaders, Foragers: Let me know how you cook puffballs.

    how to identify mushrooms
    Giant Puffball Mushroom part of the GardenFork Mushroom Identification series
  • Mushroom Hunting – Foraging for the Chicken Mushroom

    Mushroom Hunting – Foraging for the Chicken Mushroom

    One of my best friends drove over from NY state yesterday and arrived with a bag full of interesting mushrooms. He and his wife have become quite adept at finding Morels and Oyster mushrooms.

    He had found these near their house, down the road a mile or so, and stopped to pick a few.

    Chicken Mushrooms

    We brought them into the house and I pulled out my mushroom books. We found the mushroom, identified as the Chicken Mushroom ( Laetiporus sulphureus ), in my favorite book, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms.

    But to make sure we knew what this was, we cross checked with our other mushroom books, and confirmed that the mushrooms were indeed Chicken Mushrooms.

    Always make sure you know exactly what you are doing with mushrooms found in the woods, if you’re not sure, don’t eat them, OK?

    Considered Choice Edible by the Audubon Guide, we first simmered them in salt water, as suggested online, and then sauted them with a little butter. They were quite good. Not amazing, but good enough that we will pick these again and add to a meal.

    What fun mushroom or wild food finds have you found lately? let us know below:

    a quick simmer in salt water was suggested
    Sauteed in Butter, yum.
  • How to inoculate logs with mushroom spore – thanks to Cooking Up A Story

    How to inoculate logs with mushroom spore – thanks to Cooking Up A Story

    On  my to do list is to learn more about propogating mushrooms. I want to learn how to grow mushrooms, and here is a great video by Ashley Terry of the blog Cooking Up A Story. Ashley went to Oregon to learn about inoculating birch logs with oyster mushroom spore. Check out Cooking Up A Story for more cool info.

    WWOOF USA: Elm Oyster Inoculation from Ashley Terry on Vimeo.