Tag: mushrooms

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Mushrooms (Part 5)

AI does not like to identify mushrooms. Mushrooms are difficult to identify, so I get it, but I’m also a 90s kid who saw playground equipment removed from schools and warning labels applied to coffee cups. I suspect that AI could give a probable identification, but doesn’t want the responsibility of someone poisoning themself if the identification were incorrect. So alas, despite my curiosity with this kingdom of lifeforms, I can’t fully catalog them.

But I can photograph them! Here’s some more from Easement Acres:

Hopus lionus (I hope this is the Lion’s Man I inoculated into this stump earlier this year).
Schizophyllum commune?
I know this one, because I seeded it! Stropharia rugosoannulata
Galerina marginata? AKA Funeral Bell. Might be Desarmillaria tabescens, but I’m not going to try eating them.
Some form of Crepidotus

Lots of rain bringeth lots of mushrooms. Don’t eat them, or at least don’t blame AI if you do and die.

–Simon

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Mushrooms (Part 4)

In what appears to be a mushroom theme as of late, here’s a newcomer I haven’t seen before. AI has made identification significantly easier now, taking some of the fun out of the search. Can’t stop what’s coming, I suppose.

Anyway:

Peziza vesiculosa

They grow in nutrient-rich mediums, such as this layer of mulch.

They’re also apparently inedible. Oh well.

–Simon

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Wine Cap (Pt. 2)

I assumed these would come back, judging from the quantity of embedded mycelium that remains in the straw. And they did.

Wine Cap

I did not, however, harvest them. I should have, to give to my dad, but I didn’t get around to it. Oh well. Still neat to look at. If not palatable, they’re still aesthetic, and it’s an interesting concept to consider that I now have a multi-year self-sustaining mushroom colony, provided I keep feeding it wood and straw. I’m still holding out of the blue oysters!

Blue Oyster

–Simon

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Blue Oyster

My last mushroom farming attempt was successful, however the variety of mushroom I found to be unpalatable.

Wine Cap

So this year, I’m attempting Blue Oysters. I like oyster mushrooms. I hope this works out. This variety came as plugs, which I then embedded into chunks of a freshly-cut maple branch lost to high winds.

Here’s hoping! If they don’t take, I’m sure the wine caps will be back. The straw in the bucket is heavily packed with mycelium from last year.

–Simon

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Stumpery

Following the great firewood processing of 2025, I was left with some junk wood remnants: rotten chunks, un-splittable end pieces, wood that absorbed too much mud over the years, etc. So I carefully stacked them into a pile and ended up with a…

No, not a haphazard pile of junk wood. A stumpery!

No really, this is a thing. The great Monty Don – Britain’s most famous master gardener, told me so.

And no, I’m not making this guy up either. The Brits are weird. He’s on Amazon streaming. Look it up.

The premise being, a pile of large chunks of wood can add visual interest to an otherwise over-manicured garden. Maybe, or it might just end up looking like a pile of junk. Which is why I’m attempting to inoculate it with mushroom spores.

I did successfully grow a mushroom patch last year, though the mushrooms themselves weren’t very tasty.

Wine Cap

But for the purposes of the stumpery, I intend the mushrooms to be more ornamental than edible.

These packets are interesting. Little wooden plugs coated in mycelium, meant to be inserted into logs.

We shall see.

–Simon