Video: Morel Spore Kit & Soil Mixing

April 25, 2008

This is video from October 2007. I prepared the soil base according to the morel mushroom spore kit instructions. The ingredients include:

• 1-2 Gallons wood ash & burnt wood chunks
• 1-2 Gallons Peat Moss
• 1-2 Gallons Topsoil
• 1 gallon sand
• 1 gallon approx gypsum wallboard, crushed
• Morel Spore Kit

(These may not be the exact specifications of the mixture; they were called out in the morel mushroom spore kit instructions - they seem to have disappeared.)

These ingredients are for the Morchella angusticeps (or ‘fire morel’ mushrooms.) The spore kit was from Fungi Perfecti. The company is in Olympia, Washington. Important disclaimer: whether or not the spores actually fruit is not guaranteed. FP provides a healthy morel mushroom spore kit; it is up to the grower (me and you) to create a well-prepared morel mushroom bed ‘habitat.’ With a little cooperation from The Elements, morel mushrooms will hopefully begin to appear within one to two springs of planting.

Creating the morel soil mixture was actually the easiest part of the process in crating a morel mushroom bed. The site clean up and preparation was by far the most labor intensive. Oy, my back! Also, creation of anti-critter fencing was more work than the soil mixture creation.

I had a fun time compiling this video and editing it; if you’re interested, I used my ‘old’ Hi-8 Sony camcorder to film, and I used Pinnacle Studio 10 to capture and edit the raw footage. There’s actually about an hour’s worth of raw footage of the entire process; this 5 minute clip is one of three videos I plan on releasing.

Thank you!

Don, the urban morel farmer

Posted in Morel Bed Construction, Videos