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There's more to the jelly babies than just fun though. Around here they grow in nearly identical conditions to our other yellow mushroom friend.......they're just easier to handle, feed, and fruit.

I have learned much from our two years together, and I think I'm going to try to keep them going with that pine tree when I transplant it next spring.....I owe it that much.

I didn't want to jump the gun, and I still may be doing such. But the main reason for my jelly baby experiment had been leading up to these:

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I have two more eastern pine saplings potted which are showing a good handful of little buttons and three which the mycelium has taken, but no fruiting has occured. This one gets the best light situated next to the jelly babies. Oddly enough, these have done better in less time than the jb's.

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Wowwwww...that is so cool! Did you do the cultures yourself or have you just transplanted mycelium from the wild into these pots with saplings? You don't have to tell if you think you are on to something, but I'm very interested. You can PM me if you'd rather keep it quiet. This is a very neat experiment. I just came home with some samples of super cool pink chanterelles found in Miami, FL. I'd love to transplant them to my yard but they were growing with Pigeon plum which I don't have.

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PM sent!

I'm going to do a little research on the Pigeon Plum. There might just be an equally suitable tree that's slightly less exotic that you do have, that might just work. Remember.... the chanterelle, or any mycorrhizal mushroom isn't tied to the tree. It's tied to the nutrients that said trees fix into the soil and the rate in which they do it. The information is out there, you just need to know how to schmooze it. If not, if you have the space for the trees, I'll pay for them. Dead serious. Having you down there doing this could help advance my own project exponentially. I have a couple other mushrooms I'd like to get cracking on. Did you document the other living plant species in the area as well? Just to be safe, I added the mossy stuff to my containers. I also feed the soil with the same types of plant matter decay that you find in the wild. Oak leaves, pine needles, and I tossed some microgreen seeds in there to get some extra "ground cover". I made the microgreen mistake a couple years ago and really had no use for the seeds.

I'd love to see this up and running. Imagine begining to cultivate a mushroom that has literally just been discovered by science? Brutal!

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Brianf, did you try inoculating a pot full of the same substrate but with no tree saplings (a control pot), to verify that the tree is actually necessary for production of the mushrooms? Regardless, it's a fascinating result; I'm trying something similar with morels but still waiting for production of the spawn.

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Yes, I have been able to both keep the mycelium living and produce VERY small button caps in past attempts(they were more like super-mini chanterelle sticks), far from exceptional, but without the tree. I started the potted pines 2 years ago, innoculated 6 in the containers last spring (2013). They just finally started fruiting late last week. I have managed to develop(seemingly) a solution that is able to keep the mycelium living stand alone indefinitely, successful lush fruiting has evaded me until I was able to establish the relationship with the tree. (and in my opinion, the other nutrient fixers always found in close proximity.) At this point, I don't think our understanding of genetics has come far enough to be able to determine EXACTLY what they need and when they need it. While I'm willing to concede on needing the tree. I believe I can help control the relationship and at least make my mushrooms more predictable and productive. Making personally consumptive cultivation more than feasible. Not too concerned with commercial production. If I get anywhere someone else can run with that.

I have the next phase of trees growing. I will innoculate them as soon as I build the enclosure and get the climate control installed this November. I'm also considering incorporating some other farious fixing plants that require partial shade. I have some other parts of the equation that I'm not going to reveal quite yet. In due time though. I'm going to give this two more years. I'll either have achieved a successful means of cultivation, or I will have wasted 8 years of my life. Most importantly, the tail end of my 20's.....but then again failure is unacceptable and I might die still plodding away.

If you plan on doing the standard outdoor morel garden, I recommend heading to the beach and collecting some seaweed. (Check on bag limits though, you can get in trouble!). Lay it down like you would your normal veg. garden and let it start to decompose. Then layer down your mix of burn material and wood chips (you should try an equal mix of hardwood and softwood, get some fruit tree HW if possible, I have an inkling that this will work even better than straight oak or elm). I also think the morel gardeners should steer towards some more useful nutrient fixing plants instead of wild grass and tall weeds. If not edibles, try planting some fern or other ground cover type. You should also try to do several various innoculation...."clusters?". Maybe take 1/4'' thick peices of untreated plywood and cover with a layer of the substrate. Innoculate these in a controled environment, let the colonization take firm hold, and then introduce these innoculated sections into various parts of the garden. Like planting two seeds at once to make sure you get something.

Also, I stopped worrying about sterlization and all that jazz when dealing with wild mushrooms a few years ago. They live for filth. And face it, some mushrooms can colonize in crap. Hopefully there's nothing more caustic just laying around on the local surfaces where you're working. We're not curing cancer here......though.......it wouldn't suprise me if it's cure came from fungus. It is another rapidly "self-replicating" species....there must be something to learn there.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 6 months later...

The outdoor pine tree pots are very aggressively colonizing right now. I expect many this year.

Also have hydnum rependum and boletus edulis colonizing for the first time this year in potted pine seedlings. Might see something in these early fall, but nothing worth harvesting. I expect this to work as both mushrooms are pretty easy going.

Managed to fruit four decent sized golden chanterelles in a tree free environment under greenhouse conditions this winter. I've got some new ideas to start incorporating some metals into my substrate as we have found, on occasion, high rates of occurrence of a handful of elements in soil testing from areas with large flushes. Several of which were on relatively recent land reclaimations (within, roughly 40 years)

Also threw some stipe butts from some chrome footed boletes into an a pot containing a dead hydrangea and there appears to be some sort of colony starting. For all I know it's just some wind born LBM, or mold. This is highly dubious and most likely not going to produce any results.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry to hear about the edulis. It seems to me that I've read about other controlled experiments to grow chanterelles, B. Edulis and a few others that were able to grow mushrooms but we're not commercially viable and were abandoned. It would be nice to be able to plant a B edulis tree

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Planting B. edulis trees happens occasionally around here (Vancouver, BC), but it's never done on purpose. You can find some very nice specimens growing around European linden trees that were planted by the city in boulevards beside the streets. They don't look quite like the local native species; so they must have arrived with the trees. This indicates that it should be possible to inoculate appropriate host trees with Porcini.

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