Here is another potentially edible mushroom in our yard: wood ear mushrooms. I did look it up, and one enthusiastic blogger described eating one as “crisp, followed by slither and slurp”. Um. No. I’ll file these with oysters and cilantro on my “thanks, but no thanks” list.
They are quite wiggly after the rain, and I quite like the soft brown coloration, but they can happily stay and do their decomposition job without fear of me gathering them up.
I found a puffball mushroom in our yard. I have read that they are edible, after I threw one over the fence after finding it last year.
I broke this one open and the inside is soft and spongy, rather like pound cake, but it smelled of dirt. I hope a critter on the other side of the fence enjoys the snack.
We had this large mushroom pop up inside our fence. Rather than risk the dogs getting sick, I took my picture and threw it out into the back woods. It was quite heavy for a mushroom. I showed the picture to my eldest, who responded: “Aren’t those edible?” Hm. I looked it up and puffball mushrooms can be edible, but don’t mix them up with earthball mushrooms, which are not edible. One of the ways to tell is to cut it open. Did I do that before I threw it into the woods? Nope, of course not.
We’ve had a nice wet Spring. I think I’ll take a knife with me when I go back out into the woods.
I took some green time and walked through the woods. I can still see the results of the heavy rain we had, the path I cleared years ago had been swept clean by the water, making a path about two feet wide through the leaves.
I saw some nice mushrooms too, another sign we’ve actually received significant moisture.
I have what I believe is a mulberry tree in the back woods. It is growing under the canopy, so is spindly but keeps making a go of it each year. I was sad to see that something, probably deer, have stripped the bark on one side of the tree.
And of course there were cats. I was able to get a picture of Mr Tom in his glorious winter coat before he wandered off.
I’ve had a little more growth on my cultivated Pearl mushrooms, but no mushroom heads, so I poked some holes into the substrate using bamboo skewers to let the water in. Now we wait. Again. I purchased this kit about eleven months ago. It produced about five small mushrooms, then I accidentally broke off the stems (they really do mean it when they say cut the heads off with a sharp knife, it needs to be seriously sharp to leave the stem cluster intact). No more fruiting bodies since then.
Critters and Craft 