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Growing butter mushrooms on an industrial scale is fraught with certain difficulties, since too much open area is needed to obtain a large crop. But in order to grow butterflies in the country, as practice shows, there are no obstacles. Having obtained mycelium from the spores of wild mushrooms, you can sow a specially prepared area and get the first harvest in a year.
Butter mushrooms belong to the Boletov family, which has about 250 different types of hat mushrooms. In nature, several types of oilers are common, of which the most common are the late or real oiler, the larch butterdish, the soft butterdish, the yellow-brown oiler and the granular butterdish. All these species can be cultivated in household plots or on specially organized mushroom farms, depending on the conditions created, the composition of the soil and the presence of host trees with which these fungal species form mycorrhiza.
In the wild, butterdish grows mainly in the forest zone with a temperate climate on the edges and clearings of coniferous forests, along roadsides, in young plantings of pines and spruces; larch butterdish is found in larches. The oiler is widely distributed in Europe and North America, lives in Asia and Australia. In Our Country, butterdish lives everywhere: from Arkhangelsk and Vologda in the north to the forest-steppe zone of the Saratov and Voronezh regions in the European part of the country; it is typical for the Urals, Siberia and the Far East.
Butter mushrooms are traditionally considered summer mushrooms, they grow in coniferous forests from June to October, and in warm autumn in the southern regions they are found until early November.
You will learn about what butter mushrooms look like and how to grow them correctly in this article.
Description of butter mushrooms
By the nature of their nutrition, butterflies belong to the category of mycorrhizal fungi, or symbiont fungi that form mycorrhiza with the roots of young coniferous trees. In nature, the mycelium develops for about 13-15 years until its maximum fruiting, prefers sandy soils that are light in structure, high in limestone and rich in organic matter, and grows mainly on coniferous litter.
The description of oil is so characteristic that they are confused with any other mushrooms due to the characteristic oily hat, covered with a sticky layer on top, and yellowish pulp. In most species, the oily film separates easily from the pulp.
See how butterflies look in these photos – the color of the mushroom cap is brown; depending on their type and soil characteristics, it can vary from yellowish-brown to red-brown or brown-olive:
The mushroom cap on average reaches a diameter of 5–6 cm, but it is often possible to find mushrooms with a cap diameter of 8–12 cm. At the initial stage of development of the fruiting body, the cap is either hemispherical or convex, and as the fungus grows, it straightens and becomes flatter. The height of the fungus is on average 6-10 cm, the stem is often cylindrical in shape, in some species it can be club-shaped.
The mushroom has a harmonious taste, high nutritional value, and can be subjected to any processing method: from drying to boiling, roasting or pickling.
Some types of oil, such as larch and graceful, contain medicinal substances that can bring relief from severe headaches and alleviate a gout attack. These properties of oil are widely used in folk medicine.
This selection of photos shows how butterflies of different types look like:
How to grow butterflies in the country
In industrial mushroom growing, oilers are bred to a limited extent due to the lack of a highly profitable technology for intensive cultivation in enclosed spaces, and therefore large areas with coniferous plantings are required to create industrial plots. However, oil cultivation is typical for amateur mushroom growing due to the excellent qualities of mushrooms, as well as the high fertility of the mycelium.
To date, in the culture of oilseeds are grown by amateur mushroom growers using an extensive method that is as close as possible to natural
Due to the characteristic feature of mushrooms to form mycorrhiza with the roots of young coniferous trees, oil plantations select a plot with several young pines, cedars, larches or spruces, depending on the type of butter dish and the growing conditions of the mycelium from which the mycelium was obtained. The desired age of the trees is from 10 to 15 years, it is with such a neighborhood that the mushroom mycelium develops as actively as possible, since young trees take less nutrients from the soil and water, leaving more food for the mushrooms. Some types of oil taken from mixed forests can be grown under deciduous trees with which they are able to form a symbiosis. Butterflies love light partial shade, but they can also grow in sunny areas, prefer acidic soils, and are able to grow on enriched peatlands.
Before growing boletus, you need to remove the top layer of earth in the selected area to a depth of 20 cm. This is necessary to create soil optimal for the development of mycelium. The soil nutritious for butter is formed from several layers. The first, lower layer is made from vegetable raw materials – it can be mowed grass, fallen leaves, chopped wood, needles. It is desirable to create the second layer from the earth collected at the place where the mushrooms grow – in this case, its acid-base balance will be as close to optimal as possible, but you can replace it with ordinary garden soil. Depleted garden soil must be enriched with humus. Mushroom mycelium is sown on the prepared soil.
To date, most mushroom growers prefer to use spores of overripe mushrooms collected in the forest for planting, despite the fact that specialized online stores now offer laboratory-grown mycelium oil. This is due primarily to the nature of the nutrition of the fungus, which receives most of the organic matter from the tree with which it forms a symbiosis. With such nutrition, the composition of the soil, as well as the type of trees with which the oiler forms a symbiosis, are of paramount importance. As a rule, under conditions that are very different from the natural ones in which the mycelium developed earlier, fruiting bodies are not formed, despite its successful development.
The propagated mycelium is added to the trees in spring. The substrate filled with mycelium is evenly distributed in a thin layer over the prepared area, after which it is covered with a layer of plant material from leaves or grass, a layer of garden or forest soil is added on top. The sown area is watered from sprinkling installations with a fine spray or drip method until the upper soil layer is moistened. From above, the site can also be covered with a thin layer of leaves that protect the soil from drying out. As the soil dries out, it must be moistened.
Fruiting occurs a year after sowing, continues in one place up to 15 years. In autumn, beds sown with mycelium should be additionally covered with straw, grass, and leaves. In the spring, the protective layer is removed, leaving a thin layer of plant material.
Unlike forest oils, garden oils are almost never wormy, since there are no natural fungal pests characteristic of the forest in the garden soil.
As a rule, the harvest is insignificant in the first years, since the mycelium continues to develop for another 5–7 years, after which the number of fruiting bodies will increase significantly. The butterflies are harvested by hand, twisting the mushrooms or cutting them at the root. After 10–15 years, with a decrease in fruiting, the mycelium can be replaced. To obtain stable yields on plantations, several plots are created with different ages of mycelium, which allows you to collect abundant harvests of mushrooms every year. Butter mushrooms after cutting can be used both for cooking and for harvesting for the future – mushrooms need to be dried or pickled.
How to grow mycelium oil at home
As practice shows, it is possible to grow oily mycelium at home. To do this, the collected mushrooms must be mixed with a specially selected substrate. The substrate for the development of mycelium is prepared on the basis of peat and coniferous sawdust, which help to create a nutrient medium close to natural. To obtain sawdust, it is desirable to use those tree species near which the mushrooms collected for cultivation grew. For the propagation of mycelium, ordinary three-liter jars are better suited. The carefully dried substrate is laid out in a jar, lightly tamped until the container is about half full.
Additional nutrition of the mycelium is provided by a special nutrient solution, which is prepared on the basis of sugar syrup with the addition of yeast suspension at the rate of: for each liter of water, 1 tsp. sugar and the same amount of yeast. For each three-liter jar, 1,5 liters of nutrient solution must be prepared. It is brought to a boil, after which the peat laid out in jars is poured over it. Then dried sawdust is added until the entire volume of the jar is filled, tightly closed with a lid and left for 5 hours to saturate the substrate with nutrients. Then the remaining water is drained, the substrate is thoroughly mixed, punctures are made with a thin stick in several places and pieces of mushrooms with spores are placed in the holes made.
The jar is tightly covered with a lid with a hole 1,5 cm in diameter made in it, which is plugged with a foam rubber stopper and left for 3 months, maintaining the temperature in the room at 23–25 ° C. After the development of hyphae, the substrate with mycelium is removed before sowing in a cold dark room with a temperature of about 6 ° C.
