Transplanting Wild Mushrooms

October is also a great time to “transplant” mushrooms to a new spot.

 

This might be to expand your present patch or gather mushrooms

from an undesirable place and move them to a desirable place.

 

When you find wild mushrooms that are old or just in the wrong place, pick them up and move them to a new place. Choose a spot that you have access too and throw them there to survive on their own. My favorite way is to hold them just like they grow and step them into the ground! This places the stem right in the ground and the cap protects and provides added spores to help the mycelium get started. This is what I call the poor boy method, and it does not always work, but it is cheap and it has worked for me many times!

5 thoughts on “Transplanting Wild Mushrooms”

  1. This is a very interesting idea and one I have not heard of before. Next time I get some good mushrooms I’ll try stomping a few of the older ones. Besides it might be fun.

  2. I don’t think it would be a good idea to “transplant” mushrooms. Many ectomycorrhizal fungi could be transplanted with tree roots. Human introduction of mushrooms might bring more invasive macrofungi and blur the biogeographic history of them.

  3. Hello and thank you for your comment.
    Yes, this is what I call the low tech method of growing mushrooms! The main point is to not throw any parts of the mushroom in the trash! Mushroom trimmings and old specimans all go in the yard or compost pile for a chance to reproduce. You never know when your mushroom patch may become a condo or a parking lot…it’s good to have backups!
    Dean

  4. Hello and thank you for your comment.
    You bring up a good point and I agree with some of your concerns. I am mostly moving mushrooms around in an area that would be considered the same geographic area. The same thing happens when we walk around and spread spores every where we go. We do need to be aware of some aggressive fungi out there like the honey mushroom and others, that can be very destructive to trees. I also see myself as helping to restore fungi to some areas that have been sterilized for human activities. My theory is to keep the mycelium running…at whatever cost…the strong will survive!
    Dean

  5. This is an interesting idea. We have lots and lots of wild oysters around. We don’t always have time to go out and pick them. So I started some totems we with commercially purchased. Works but not cheap on my low low budget farm. Think I’m going to try putting the old in sellable mushrooms between the same kind of trees they are growing on in the wild and see if I can get any to take. Probably slower to get going than the store bought stuff. But we’ll see I guess.

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