Season over?

For me the season is basically over. I stopped at my only remaining morel spot today and found no morels and the underbrush coming up in many places to my knees. I still have some yet unexplored territory to check out but I expect that my harvest total for this year will four.

by Joe  Contact Me

Almost time to call it a year.

Today I rechecked two places where I had found morels in the past. I came home with my spirits dampened and exactly zero mushrooms in the bag. The undergrowth is coming up fast, knee high in this special place. The elm who was mother to the morels has shed a lot of bark over the past year. Perhaps I found my morels fruiting during its last productive year.

by Joe  Contact Me

Today I doubled my find of morels

Today I doubled my find of morels. Yup I'm now up to four. If you take into account all of the trips that I've made I estimate that it comes up to one morel per ten miles walked. The two morels were in a place where last year I found about twenty seven. I had to look very closely to find these two. Basically it was a hands and knees search and I almost missed these two because the undergrowth is coming up fast.

I noticed that the flox are beginning to bloom. That tells me that the morel season is about two-thirds over and I've only found four.

However, I did flush out a flock of turkeys and saw a mama with a nest with ten eggs.

by Joe  Contact Me

Is it too cold for the morels to fruit or is it global warming?

It's so hard to figure what kind of a year this will be. Some things had appeared on time but got frosted. Others delayed their appearance and are now playing catch up. Still others are right on time. I had hoped to find the morels bumping into each other in some woodland traffic jam. I've spent quite a bit of time the past few day looking for morels and I've had so little success that I'll probably wait until the weekend to try again.

What is apparent to me is that harbingers of the morel are not appearing in their usual order. I haven't taken my garden soil thermometer with me into the woods, I'm afraid I'll end up sitting on the thing, but my asparagus bed is producing a picking of asparagus daily and that indicates to me that the soil temperature is conducive to morel fruiting. I wouldn't think that soil moisture would be a problem either. I base this on my experiences with working the soil in the garden and hands on experience, I fell in the mud, while looking for morels.

But plants and obviously mushrooms are appearing out of order or late. Leaves are showing up on elms and tulip poplars. Trillium and violets are blooming. Apple trees have blossoms. I haven't encountered any skunk cabbage or seen many Dryad's Saddles. In some areas the undergrowth is coming up quickly in other only the meadow grass is growing. That would make for some great morel picking except that there are no morels.

It will be a strange year indeed if the morels are very late and the chanterelles are very early.

by Joe  Contact Me