Any harvest in the PNW yet?

[JKsea]

Just wondering if anyone had seen anything pop up in the PNW area. Especially Cascades.

I've gone out a few times and seen nothing yet. Any guesses on what the Chanterelle and pine mushroom outcome might be this year? We had such a dry summer and haven't seen rain much - not sure what to expect. Thanks.

[troutddicted]

If its been dry and hot a bit of rain and cooler temps will certainly liven things up soon 😀

[vitog]

In southwestern BC there has not been a decent rainfall since the middle of April.  Drought cut short the morel season and no other mushrooms have come up since.  Rain is finally in the forecast, starting tomorrow, but I'll believe it when and if it happens.  I've seen several forecast periods of rain come and go with only a few useless showers, if anything.

Even if it does rain now, I'm afraid that the situation will be the same as last year, when there was also very little rain in late spring and summer.  Although it rained lightly in September, the first heavy rain didn't arrive until mid-October.  Even with lots of rain in October, there were practically no mushrooms to be found that fall or early winter.  And the Winter Chanterelles, which usually don't arrive until November and December, barely showed up, but not nearly in enough quantities to be worth picking.  It was definitely the worst fall mushroom season that I've seen during the 45 years that I've lived in the Vancouver, BC, area.

I suspect that the fungal mycelium needs a certain amount of moisture during the late spring and early summer to gather and store enough nutrients to produce fruiting bodies (mushrooms) during the fall season.  Rain during the summer would probably help, but our summers are normally quite dry.  So, I don't have any great expectations for this year's fall crop; and I hope that this is not going to be the new normal as a result of global warming.

[The Mushroom Whisperer]

Since many of the quality edible mushrooms, grow with a mycorrhizal relationship to trees, I always figure if the trees and plants have a good summer, the mushrooms will have a good fall.

[JKsea]

Thanks guys for your thoughts. As mentioned already, last year was the worst for me, too. Never seen such condition in the last 20+ years of wandering in the woods. It rained last night, and looks like for the next few weeks as well. Hopefully we'll see some pop up at least some Chanterelle's.

[JKsea]

Went out last weekend and found one white and one yellow Chanterelle at about 3k ft - where I usually find loads of 'em.

[JKsea]

Once again, I took a short hike up the middle cascades this morning and found these two. Also found a very first Bolete/jack. This looks like an orange aspen.

[vitog]

I went out to my best Chanterelle area last Monday and found about 4 quarts of them, which is much less than usual but way more than I found all season last year.  Many of the usual spots are not producing yet; so the finds are widely scattered.  At least it doesn't look like this year is going to be a complete disaster.

[JKsea]

12 hours ago, vitog said:

I went out to my best Chanterelle area last Monday and found about 4 quarts of them, which is much less than usual but way more than I found all season last year.  Many of the usual spots are not producing yet; so the finds are widely scattered.  At least it doesn't look like this year is going to be a complete disaster.

I hope so. I went to an Asian market place the other day, and saw some really young Matsutake mushrooms from Oregon selling at very high price. At least it's a sign that there are some Matsutake's popping up down south.