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Mushrooms are loved by many, to have them on your table, you need a trip to the forest. City dwellers, with their frantic pace of life, do not always have time to visit the forest, and the result of a mushroom picking trip can be extremely unpredictable.
There is an exit. You can grow mushrooms on your own in the country. And the most amazing thing is that it can be porcini mushrooms – the most desirable in the kitchen, and not oyster mushrooms or well-known champignons. Growing porcini mushrooms in the country is a fascinating and interesting process, in addition, it saves money and time.
Ways to grow porcini mushrooms in the country
When growing mushrooms in a summer cottage, their biological characteristics should be borne in mind. Spruce, pine, oak, birch grow in symbiosis with porcini mushrooms. The older the trees, the better. Trees must be at least 4 years old. Mycelium or mycelium is introduced into the roots of trees and forms mycorrhiza or fungal root.
If the tree lacks any nutrients from the soil, then it provides nutrition for the mycelium. The fungus grows, penetrates into the roots of the tree, supplies it with dissolved mineral salts. In return, it receives carbohydrates and can form a fruiting body or a fungus.
In order for a tree to need food, the soils do not have to be very fertile. White mushrooms most often grow on sandstones, sandy loams and loams, which are moderately moist and well drained.
So, how to grow porcini mushrooms in the garden? If there are old trees and suitable soils on the plot, then the cultivation of porcini mushrooms will be successful. There are several ways to grow mushrooms in the country.
Sowing with porcini spores
First of all, prepare the planting material. Old porcini mushrooms will do. Their maturity is determined by color; on a break, the color of the fungus is greenish. Collect 7-10 large caps of porcini mushrooms with a diameter of 10 cm or more. It doesn’t matter if they are clean or wormy.
The collected hats are soaked in a 10-liter bucket of water. It is better to take rain water. After a day has passed, the mushroom caps will absorb water, soften, and you can easily knead them with your hands to a jelly-like mass.
You can go the other way. The collected caps of porcini mushrooms for seed material are passed through a meat grinder, and only then they are poured with rainwater for a day for better discharge of spores into the water.
Then the mushroom mixture is filtered through several layers of gauze. This is done just for convenience. So that when sowing, the holes in the watering can are not clogged. The mushroom mass is not thrown away, it will still come in handy.
In the meantime, you should prepare the site for sowing. A shady place or light partial shade next to a tree trunk is best suited. An ideal mushroom bed will turn out on an area of u1bu1,5b10-20 m around the tree. This area is freed from the sod, without deepening too much by about XNUMX-XNUMX cm.
Next, the filtered liquid is poured onto the prepared soil, and the resulting mushroom sediment is evenly distributed there. For 1 sq. m of soil use 2 liters of planting material. For uniform distribution of porcini spores, use a watering can. In this way, the roots of the tree are infected with spores, from which the mycelium, the mycelium, will grow.
A solution of spores and a mushroom mass is used, which also contains a huge amount of spores. That is, a kind of double guarantee is obtained, in which the chances of developing mycorrhiza increase. After sowing, the previously removed sod is laid in place, watering it well. Use at least 5 buckets of water per trunk circle.
You can count on the appearance of mushrooms only next year if spores from fungal tissue take root. It is possible that mushrooms will appear only after 2 years, which means that mycorrhiza has developed from spores of mushroom infusion. With the optimal development of events, in a year you can get a crop of up to 5 kg of porcini mushrooms.
Caring for the mycelium is simple, you just need to water it if the season is too dry. Artificially grown mycelium will form fruiting bodies for 3-4 years. Since the mycelium has taken root on a small part of the roots, as a rule, on young shoots, and they cannot provide good nutrition, therefore, over time, the mycelium will degenerate. It will need to be updated.
The mycelium cannot completely take over the roots of the tree; the microflora that lives and develops under the tree interferes with it, and it does not easily give up its positions. Therefore, the defeated mycelium is forced to retreat and cannot develop.
In nature, porcini mushrooms and trees form mushroom roots at the stage of the appearance of a young tree as a sprout. Over time, the tree grows, the mycelium grows and develops, and no microorganisms and microflora can interfere with it. The garden plot will have to be sown from time to time, again infecting trees every 3-4 years.
For the successful formation of a fungus root, spores must be supplied with food. When preparing the seed, add to the water:
- Sugar – half a glass / 10 liters of water;
- Dry yeast – 1 sachet or fresh yeast – 30 g / 10 l of water;
- Alcohol – 4 tbsp. l. / 10 l of water.
Top dressing activates the formation of mycorrhiza, which will positively affect the future harvest.
Watch a video in which gardeners share their experience in growing mushrooms in their area:
Planting white mushrooms from the forest
This method involves the transfer of the finished mycelium to the garden plot from the forest. The mushroom picker, together with the soil, is dug up and transferred to a new place of growth very carefully, trying not to expose the mycelium.
The seat should be prepared in advance. Near a related tree, stepping back from the trunk of 0,5 m, they remove the top layer of soil along with vegetation, 30-40 cm deep. The exposed soil is spilled with an antiseptic, covered with a layer of fallen leaves and wood debris. Variants of natural antiseptics and their preparation:
- A decoction of oak bark is prepared in the following way: they take 100 g of oak bark and 3 liters of water, put it on the stove, wait for it to boil, reduce the gas and simmer over low heat for 1 hour. When the liquid boils away, the volume is brought to the original. The finished broth is cooled and the soil around the tree is watered;
- Infusion of black tea can be prepared from low-grade cheap varieties. 100 g of brewing tea is poured into 1 liter of boiling water, insisted for 20-30 minutes, cooled and spilled over the prepared soil.
Such antiseptics are prepared simply from natural raw materials, they will not harm the mycelium. But pathogenic fungi and microflora will become less active and will not harm the mycelium, which adapts to new habitat conditions. You can use a light pink solution of potassium permanganate for disinfection.
A layer of soil is laid on top, watered well. Then place the soil brought from the forest with mycelium. Once again, everything is well spilled with water, preferably rain, the soil is covered with forest debris from above: leaves, needles, tree branches. If the weather is dry, then regularly water the mushroom bed using 3 buckets of water.
The transfer of mycelium from the forest is best done in mid-August – mid-September. The mycelium will have time to adapt and start growing before frost. In a month, it will get stronger and endure the upcoming frosts.
Reproduction by ready mycelium
In garden centers, you can buy ready-made mycelium of porcini mushrooms. For its planting, a site should be prepared. They choose a place near the tree, stepping back from the trunk 0,5-0,6 m. The topsoil is removed. The area of the site will depend on the weight of the mycelium. The manufacturer indicates all data on the packaging.
Sod and part of the soil will be removed to a depth of 0,5 m. The surface of the planting pit is lined with a woody substrate, 20 cm high. Then a layer of soil is laid again, 10 cm high. Next, a part of the soil is taken, so much that it is enough for the next 10 cm layer. It is mixed with a woody substrate, soil mixed with ready-made mycelium is laid on top of it, lightly clapped with palms. It is recommended to add any growth activator to the soil with mycelium. The topmost layer is soil, well watered and covered with fallen leaves.
At first, make sure that the soil always remains slightly moist. After 2 weeks, water only if there is a drought. The first mushrooms will appear next year, the mycelium will begin to bear maximum fruit after 2 years. And in the next 2-3 years it will be possible to harvest from the planted mycelium. The soil should be loosened whenever possible.
Tips to help the mycelium take root better:
- When growing mushrooms from the collected planting material, remember that if the mushrooms were cut under a pine tree, then they should be planted on their site under the pine tree;
- Do not store planting material for a long time; it is better to soak the mushroom caps immediately;
- Do not use frozen mushrooms for planting;
- Best time to plant: May – September;
- If there are no trees suitable for planting porcini mushrooms on the site, then it is quite possible to plant mycelium near a wooden frame on the shady side;
- If the area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbyour site is quite large, then you can transfer the mycelium along with the young tree.
Try, experiment and luck will surely smile at you. By growing porcini mushrooms on your site, you will be sure of their environmental friendliness.
Conclusion
It is not always possible to go to the forest for mushrooms, especially since porcini mushrooms are not so common. However, you can grow them on your site. Worth a try, an interesting activity, suitable for lovers of quiet hunting, does not require physical and material investment. If everything is done correctly, then even in the current mushroom season, their own mushrooms may well grow, which are less susceptible to insect attacks, have the taste and appearance of forest mushrooms growing in natural conditions.