*nods* Cross-contamination is important to understand. There weren't many patches of poison ivy, oak or hemlock near our lot, but bracken would spring up in the rills.
Morels are tricky to find. The ones I've come across were always in hot, clay soil with good drainage and a covering of well-rotted sumac leaves or cedar leaves — under the southern face of a rock wall or stack of timbers, for example, literally in that sawdust mess left behind by carpenter ants. I've heard they are notoriously difficult to cultivate, and although I followed my naturalist brother-in-law's suggestion to cull only half the crop and try to 'smoosh' some of the remaining mushrooms back into the ground in order to spread their spores (something I do with all the mushroom woodcrafting, btw), there wasn't a sign of new ones in that spot when I returned the next year. I suspect that there's an alchemy of weather, pH and soil consistency conditions that factors into their growth, and they only seem to come up at a specific time in the year (autumn in my case.) So if a person misses the week or so when they are out, then it's probably like a run of salmon, it could be hopeless for that year.
That was certainly the case for the lobster mushrooms, which sprouted up from a well-shaded carpet of forest duff which was mostly created by fallen larch needles, or the cauliflower mushrooms which seemed to like being planted near pine trees (like the pine mushrooms.)
Western puffballs came out throughout the summer and autumn, though, so it isn't always the case, but it may be that the spore remain dormant until the conditions are just right. That may be why your supplier wasn't too concerned about innoculating the logs in the fall. After all, if crops of mushrooms come out in the fall as part of the natural cycle, then that's when their spores would be released anyway.
no subject
Morels are tricky to find. The ones I've come across were always in hot, clay soil with good drainage and a covering of well-rotted sumac leaves or cedar leaves — under the southern face of a rock wall or stack of timbers, for example, literally in that sawdust mess left behind by carpenter ants. I've heard they are notoriously difficult to cultivate, and although I followed my naturalist brother-in-law's suggestion to cull only half the crop and try to 'smoosh' some of the remaining mushrooms back into the ground in order to spread their spores (something I do with all the mushroom woodcrafting, btw), there wasn't a sign of new ones in that spot when I returned the next year. I suspect that there's an alchemy of weather, pH and soil consistency conditions that factors into their growth, and they only seem to come up at a specific time in the year (autumn in my case.) So if a person misses the week or so when they are out, then it's probably like a run of salmon, it could be hopeless for that year.
That was certainly the case for the lobster mushrooms, which sprouted up from a well-shaded carpet of forest duff which was mostly created by fallen larch needles, or the cauliflower mushrooms which seemed to like being planted near pine trees (like the pine mushrooms.)
Western puffballs came out throughout the summer and autumn, though, so it isn't always the case, but it may be that the spore remain dormant until the conditions are just right. That may be why your supplier wasn't too concerned about innoculating the logs in the fall. After all, if crops of mushrooms come out in the fall as part of the natural cycle, then that's when their spores would be released anyway.