Decorative fungi.

bédé · October 2021

For the past 4-5 years I have had a good half dozen Fly Agarics growing in a group on my fine lawn. Very decorative.

I take care: not to mow them, to let them spore, and to do my early winter anti-moss FeSO4 watering well after everything has gone.

Looking at an illustrated mushroom book, I see that there are many extremely decorative native fungi. Has anyone tried deliberately growing fungi? What varieties, where and how?

Buttercupdays · October 2021

I haven't tried growing them deliberately, I suspect they may be too sophisticated to transplant easily. We get plenty of Larch boletus under the trees in our garden, they are quite colourful, and in the sheep field, historic grazing land, there were lots of specimens yesterday, including both white and red waxcaps, small brown puffballs and perhaps the most decorative, several clumps of violet coral fungus. This is quite a rarity it seems, indicative of impoverished pasture and disappearing because of modern farming practices. Our sheep graze it the way sheep always have

Dovefromabove · October 2021

We get a fair few different ones from time to time when conditions have suited them. We try to garden organically and don’t use weedkillers, pesticides or fungicides (obvious really 😉) and have woodpiles etc, so they have the optimum chance to appear.

This may be of interest https://www.milkwood.net/2016/09/05/starting-a-mushroom-garden-5-ways-to-do-it/ … although it deals with edible fungi, it also gives good ideas about conditions that are suitable for many varieties.

steephill · October 2021

It can be very difficult to deliberately cultivate most fungi but there are kits available for a range of edible varieties like oysters. I have snowy waxcaps which come up on the drive each year and I have just finished picking clouded agarics which have been spreading around one area of the garden for over a decade now. Interesting varieties found in the garden include beefsteak fungus, chicken-of-the-woods, deathcaps, shaggy parasols, wood blewits, orange peel fungus, The Blusher, The Miller and various boletes. There are probably many dozens of other varieties which I just haven't noticed yet.

bédé · October 2021

I can add that I have plenty of Honey Fungus and Sulphur Cap. Though would prefer to be without.

In about August most years we get one Stinkhorn, or out neighbours get it and we just get the smell. Interesting, is the best word, though I could easily live without it.

I also get the odd Bolete, possibly Birch Bolete, but I don't risk eating it.

At the moment in the herb garden, I have what might be Death Cap, definitley not even for touching.

I tried planting a exhausted common mushroom kit. I think I got 2 one year only.

Dreams. But there are some lovely reds, purples, greens and oranges.

Uff · October 2021

I don't have any fungi growing in the garden but there's some woodland at the side of me. My favourite this year has been ceps and amethyst deceiver both of which made it onto my plate.
If I come across any manky chanterelles or even ceps when I'm foraging away from home I collect a few and make a type of broth and spread it in areas in the woodland hoping that they might grow.

I friend had to fell a diseased monkey puzzle tree last autumn and by late Dec early Jan the slices that the trunk had been cut into was covered in grey oyster mushrooms. She gave me some of the wood and I'm hoping like mad that they appear again this year in the woodland where I placed them.

bédé · October 2021

Oyster mushrooms are not my favourite taste, mainly the slimy texture. Nor are they that decorative. But that's just me.

Please exlain more what you mean by "type of broth"? I normally just leave the caps to distribute their spores. Is there some trick I am missing?

Decorative fungi.

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