This is good luck - porcini mushrooms in the country!
Silent hunting, mushroom picking, mushroom picking - this is how mushroom pickers jokingly call their hobby. Of course, communication with nature, touching its secrets is a great thing. But just to eat these amazing gifts of our mother land is not the last thing. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to go to the forest for mushrooms.
Breeding mushrooms at home
What enthusiasts do not grow today in their cities and dachas! So why not organize a mushroom garden bed right on your site?
It has been known for a long time that oyster mushrooms, champignons and some other cultivated types of mushrooms are grown. Most often, breeding them requires a special room with the required temperature and ventilation, a substrate, and mycelium.
Is it possible to grow forest mushrooms right on the ground to collect them in the same way as in the forest: pushing the blades of grass and looking under the leaves? The experts answer: yes, you can!
How to prepare the soil for a mushroom garden?
This question is far from idle. After all, all attempts to grow forest mushrooms near fruit or berry trees, as well as near garden plantings, are doomed to failure. It is necessary to find a place that maximally repeats the natural forest environment. Moreover, mushrooms are planted under the trees under which they usually grow. If a gardener decides to breed boletus, then he will need an oak, best of all, one that is over 30 years old. Although some, they say, tried to grow porcini mushrooms under birches and pines and even boasted that he succeeded.
Landing is carried out around the trunk, but not closer than one and a half meters from it. The procedure is performed on a cloudy day. It is also necessary that the place of the "mushroom bed" be in the shade.
But the substrate also needs to be prepared. To plant porcini mushrooms, you need to mix a bucket of peat soil, for example, land purchased in a store for seedlings and indoor plants with two kilograms of wet coniferous sawdust and two kilograms of fallen leaves.
Where to get mushroom seedlings of boletus?
In fact, it is best to take a live mycelium right in the forest. To do this, you need to carefully dig a piece of earth 20 cm deep and 10-15 cm wide where porcini mushrooms grow. But you should be very careful to take this lump to the place so as not to damage the mycelium.
You can also prepare mycelium yourself from the collected mushrooms. It is important that the starting material was cut no later than 10 hours by the time the solution was prepared, and that it was not frozen and overheated.
Well-ripened mushrooms are crushed, a little flour and jelly made from gelatin are added. This liquid, diluted with water, is poured over the soil under the tree, which was previously fertilized with a substrate of peat, sawdust and fallen leaves.
There is another option for purchasing "mushroom seeds". Mycelium is simply bought in specialized stores.
Planting the mycelium of porcini mushrooms
Around the oak, in a circle with a radius of 1.5 m, they dig holes 20 cm deep and about 10 cm in diameter.About 30 cm gaps should be left between the holes. You can make 2-3 rows of such holes, placing them in a checkerboard pattern.
Less often, the mycelium of forest mushrooms is planted without trees, using artificial shading and a substrate with oak sawdust, infusion of oak bark and acorns for irrigation. Then the holes are dug not in a circle, but in an arbitrary direction.
A prepared and moistened substrate is placed on the bottom of the dug pits, then either the dug out mycelium is laid out (then the holes should be made a little deeper), or the substrate is spilled with a solution of homemade mycelium, or sprinkled with a purchased one. If possible, the mycelium is buried immediately after transfer from the forest. The boletus is propagated in late summer and early autumn, when the season for distilling fruit bodies outside begins.
Growing mushrooms from purchased mycelium is not tied to the season. Here it is important to create in the room where it is planned to breed boletus, optimal conditions for temperature and humidity, as well as ventilation.
Mushroom garden care
What is needed for mushrooms to bear fruit well? Of course, regular watering, enough warmth. If all these conditions are met, the first fruits will delight mushroom growers the next year, sometimes only the second.
When using a solution of mycelium from harvested mushrooms, the harvest is not as plentiful as the gardeners who buy ready-made mycelium delight. It is all the more insulting that after 4-5 years it may stop altogether.
With the use of ready-made mycelium, you can count on 7-8 years of fruiting of the mushroom bed.
In order for the yield of mushrooms not to decrease, experts advise regularly placing pieces of boletus caps on the chosen place, watering not only with ordinary rainwater, but also with infusion of overripe mushrooms.
Of course, picking up mushrooms in the garden is unlikely to replace the joy of walking through the woods in search of “antoshka on one leg”. But for elderly people and very small crumbs, such a replacement for real mushroom hunting is fully justified.