Wine Cap (Stropharia rugosoannulata) Mushrooms

[MikeH]

Anyone had any experience with these? They seem to be the easiest to naturalize without using logs. Apparently it does not require sterile or pasteurized media, just plant the spawn into a mixture of wood chips and soil.  Renewing the woodchips seems to make a patch permanent.

And they get BIG!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I planted Stropharia rugosoannulata in my garden last spring in a pile of wood shavings and straw. It produced a few tiny fruits. The mycelia was still alive in the fall, so it may produce a harvest again in the spring.

[steev]

That's a pretty impressive mushroom, Mike; how's the taste?

Couple years back, I got Clitocibe nuda (my favorite) where I'd dumped some oak leaves; I've seen none since (the climate has been inhospitable to fungal fruiting) but I keep dumping leaves there.

If we ever get another early, heavy wet Fall, I think the fungi are going to go batshit productive; I'll be working the dehydrator full-on.

[MikeH]

Couldn't tell you about the taste. As for size, there are stories of enormous sizes - up to 2 feet in diameter, and weighing over 3kg each although those would be firewood I suspect. Joyce and I are going to have a go at trying to naturalize them in different areas of our woods. Patience is required.

[MikeH]

This gets more and more interesting - us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=15e749d2cd641286217a55794&id=0bab0fb75d&e=52c961a438#mctoc2. It seems that getting these going out in our orchard in the wood chip fungal duff around each tree would be a really good idea not as a crop to eat but as part of the biology activity that we're looking to establish in the orchard. There's enough shade under the comfrey and other plants growing there that they'd get some protection from direct sun.