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Well, this morning is very wet warm and windy, but still VERY early for morels here (south central CT on the river). We used to have them under the old apple tree every May 10, like clockwork.

Good luck!

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Good luck Evan!

Heather I'm with you - I'm in Fairfield CT. Been looking for apple trees wherever I go but I haven't found any old orchards yet. Plenty of tulip trees though! With this weather I've got to head out this weekend - I'm sure it'll be a scouting mission not a picking mission but you never know, there might be something sprouting out there even if not morels.

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Where did I read this... just recently! To be careful about morels from old orchards as they may be high in arsenic, which was used extensively on apple trees in the past. All mushrooms are great for picking up heavy metals.

That said, I wouldn't say no to a nice mess of them and wouldn't really care where they came from. Just wouldn't eat them every day....

I used to find lots of morels under tulip poplar in Indiana woods, also under white pine.

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The arsenic/lead problem has been reported from New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Testing soil for arsenic is difficult... and costly. But one may acquire lead-testing kits that are relatively cheap and easy to use. I tested 4 of my favorite orchards here in PA last spring, and found no signs of lead. My assumption is that, since the pesticide contained a combo of lead and arsenic, if the lead's not there then neither is the arsenic. My lead-test kit cost about $35, and included 10 or 12 applications.

http://www.fungimag.com/winter-2010-articles/shavit-morels.pdf

http://www.fungimag.com/winter-08-articles/Rev_Medicinal.pdf

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Today's the day!! I just checked Matherly's site and someone from south central PA found 34 small blacks. I figure I'll find at least a few. Dave, I'm gonna try to check the far side of the hill where we found all the half frees in past years. I think that might be the early side.

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That's not so bad, Dave. Even I could afford that!

Now all I need's an old orchard. :)

Great news, Evan! Wish I could get down to PA for a couple of days but just too much to do in the next three weeks.

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I checked a place by the river -- we had rain Sunday night. No morels,

but there were some patches of Coprinus micaceus, so I know the moisture

level's about right. I've found yellows in that spot, so I'm expecting

them to be a bit later. A bit more rain last night, so this weekend's

hunt should be productive.

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Vlad responded to my introductory address with an injunction to seek out Morels in my area. I thought I should respond here with, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Ironically enough I live in the county which hosts The Mountain Mushroom Festival dedicated to Morels, and yet I am unable to find diddly on my own property of 20+ acres of woods (including tons of Tulip Poplars). It could have something to do with the herds of wild turkeys which I see out my window each dawn, combing the hills. I stay off other people's property as competition is rather stiff and even asking to hunt on someone else's land is a bit of a faux pas.

I did try a neighboring county a couple years ago in an area where a biologist friend of mine had found several during an unrelated Department of Transportation survey. (He doesn't like Morels - can you believe it?) Just as I was getting out of my truck with my mesh bags, an elderly couple pulled up with bags of their own, and if looks could kill... I'm pretty sure they could have taken me, so I scarpered. I don't believe in claim-jumping, especially when the claim-owners have big walking sticks!

Anyways, the bright side of all of this is that once Morel season is over, mushrooms cease to exist for the majority of my fellow citizens, and I have a grand time soothing my wounds with Chanterelles, Bolets, Milk Caps, etc., etc...

Tamara

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Tamara, are you certain that nobody else is hunting your 20 acres of Tulip Poplar :creepycrawly: ? Actually, I often tell people... for every acre of Tulip Poplar/White Ash where I find morels, there's another 10 that just don't seem to pan out. But, as I understand these things, Kentucky is a whole lot better for morels than NE Pennsylvania. Of course, y'know the grass is always greener... or maybe in this case bluer.

Took me 10 years of searching before I found my first morels; a patch of blacks in the woods adjacent to the campus where I was a grad student. Got about 45 that day.

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Hi Tamara, welcome aboard!

I can maybe offer up a couple of suggestions that might (or of course might not) help..

1)If you are fairly new to the morel game and dont have several years of eye training under your belt then one thing you can do is to slow down a lot. When I say a lot I mean right down to one step each 10 seconds. Morels have the ability to disappear right before your eyes and in my opinion rank in the top 3 or 4 mushrooms for being tricky to spot. Concentrate on areas right around fallen logs, branches and twigs because morels will often like a bit of nearby cover.

2)Be persistent. Just because you didnt find anything today doesnt mean you wont find some in 2 days.

3)If you are sure the time is right and that you are being super thorough in the woods then get out of the woods. Look along the edge of the woods in grass even if that means looking in a ditch along side the road.

4)If all else fails there must be some public land in your area that would be productive. I wouldnt worry too much about running into strangers on public land. They dont own the forest any more than you do and by keeping an eye on strangers you might learn things. One of the things I just love to do when I pull into a spot and see folks just getting ready to head into the woods is play stupid. Hi folks are you off picking berries? Mushrooms? really? there are mushrooms in here? that is scarey arent they poison? Mind if I tag along with you for 20 minutes so I can see what wild mushrooms look like? Thanks, do you just pick your mushrooms here or are there other places you go also? heh you just never know what sort of gems you will uncover that way. :dancing:

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Thanks Guys,

I appreciate the encouragement and tips. I was especially moved by the assumption that I might be a "newbie" at Morel hunting; however, my embarrassing confession is that I've been hunting Morels since childhood... and appear to be only getting worse at it! I blame it on the location(s) where I hunt, but it may be that (despite having the attention span of a gnat as a child) being closer to the ground with newer, fresher eyes may have contributed more to my early success than I care to admit!

Hmmmm... as to finding gullible, experienced Morel hunters, are there really any out there? They/we seem a naturally suspicious bunch, to me! Besides, wouldn't poaching be somewhat (wait for it) im-Morel? (badump-ching!!) My apologies, I couldn't help myself.

I'm off to comb the hills again - Good Luck, all!

Tamara

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Tamara I would tend to agree with you that most mushroom hunters are “naturally suspicious bunch”. I would go further and say that some are paranoid about keeping their spots secret. Take a look at Chris’s Morel board and you will see some hunters who will not even say if they found their Morel in the USA, never mind giving the state and town!

I corresponded with Jim who lives in Western part of Kentucky and he claimed that edible mushrooms did not grow in Kentucky until he found some growing on his lawn where he cut down an Elm a few years earlier. Later he learned that Chris M holds a Morel hunt only a few miles from where he lives.

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I know how you feel, still looking for that first one this year ...

I've always considered posting an ad like this:

WARNING!!!

post-12-0-15217700-1302552294_thumb.jpg

If you see anything in the woods that looks like this,

BEWARE! They are DEADLY POISON! Call the professionals

at XXX-XXX-XXXX, and we will gladly removed all traces

of them from your property.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN! B)

(And this one IS from a few years ago ... still waiting for that spot to produce again.)

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Hello ladies and gentlemen. Haven't stopped by for a while,found my first morels of the year on Sunday. Little ones growing everywhere I check. Looks like it could be a banner year here. Good luck to everyone.

morels2011016.jpg

morels2011019.jpg

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Looks like you might have a good season, Bob. I guess you just can't trust the books on ground temps, can you?

Don't put alll your faith in the online maps either, they are good but way too general. Everybody should carry a thermometer with them for just one season. It's amazing what you can learn. Ground temps can fluctuate wildly in just 24 hours, I have seen as much as a 10-12 degree warmup from morning to sunset only to fall back overnight. But, not all locations do that. ;) The added bonus of checking temps is that it slows you down and gets you closer to the ground. I probably wouldn't have seen the one in the pic if I hadn't knelt down to check the temp. :)

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Ok... now I'll start to take mother earth temperature... well not right now... everything is still frozen... but I should check for what temp... morels pops in witch range???

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Ok... now I'll start to take mother earth temperature... well not right now... everything is still frozen... but I should check for what temp... morels pops in witch range???

As the picture shows, low 50's is the general fruiting point. I'll get some measurements when I start finding them!

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Whoo Hoo!!!

Took DufferinShroomer's advise in tip No.3:

"If you are sure the time is right and that you are being super thorough in the woods then get out of the woods. Look along the edge of the woods in grass even if that means looking in a ditch along side the road."

I found about a dozen Half-free Morels, Morchella semilibera in a gravel, drainage ditch alongside the road as I was walking my dog last afternoon. Took them home and made Heather's Wild Mushroom and Potato Pie, only a smaller version... more like a potpie. Broke open a bottle of wine and lit the candles for dinner. Morels in any form are reason enough to celebrate! Half-free Morels are supposed to be inferior to other Morels; however, they were delightful in this recipe.

Still no joy in the woods, but I'm thinking of posting FeralBoy's warning poster - Ha! According to what I've read, these are the forerunners to even the little Black Morels. I don't know, having never found the Half-free Morels before.

Tamara

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Tamara --

Good going! Half-frees can be either real easy or real hard to find, there are years when

there are tons of them, and then nothing for the next few years. I found a hundred and fifty

one year near Glen Cannon Dam, none since then. They are pretty good, just kind of fragile,

so work better in something like a duxelle (chopped and cooked with onions), or baked in a pie.

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Congrats on the find Tamara. If there are half frees then there is a good chance there are blacks. I generally find them in the same area. The blacks are a little harder to spot. The don't normally get very tall and blend in with the leaves.

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We got tons of rain last night. The storm system that killed several people in NC came through southern PA and dumped on us. There was a tornado warning on the other sida of our county where my mother and in-laws live, but they're fine. Still no word on whether it touched down anywhere. Even with all that rain, I',m going to check the woods today. A friend is helping me pick up some rabbit hutches and mentioned hunting mushrooms today. We'll see what happens, but I doubt we'll find many. The ground will probably be pretty squishy.

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