Mushrooms growing and I want to expand! What now?

My wine barrel’s soil is a mix of soil straight from the garden, cheap potting mix, seaweed, compost, and horse manure.

Last week I threw on some more old horse manure, it rained a lot, I’ve been peeing on it daily, and now I have mushrooms!

I want to eat them soon (no idea what type they are but I’ll take the risk). But I also want to grow these all over the yard. What should I do?

I live in the inner city so this happened through dumb luck, as there’s no nature around here.

I use to grow mushroom. I would not take the risk eating unidentified mushroom. there are mushroom strains that are extremely poisonous.

Tim Kivi wrote:I want to eat them soon (no idea what type they are but I’ll take the risk). But I also want to grow these all over the yard. What should I do?

What should you do? You should find a local mycologist to positively identify that species before you even think about putting those in your mouth. You should be 100% sure on the identification. MushroomObserver.org is a great starting point.
List of deadly fungus species: note that there are several on this list that look pretty darn similar to the pic you posted.
I'm really not the type of person to tell people what to do & what not to do, especially when it comes to their own bodies, but OUR BIOSPHERE NEED AS MANY LIVING PERMIES POSSIBLE! WE NEED YOU TIM, PLEASE ID FIRST!

My general strategy for growing mushrooms  is to blend up a mushroom into small pieces, in lots of water, and dump it over places where I would like mushrooms to grow. It helps if I do that during rainy weather, so that the spores and mycelia  have a chance to germinate before it dries out. Oh, and I always sing or chant while planting mushrooms. They seem to respond well to music.

I want to eat them soon (no idea what type they are but I’ll take the risk).

Please don't even nibble them without a firm ID....as others have said this is an unnecessary risk and could be deadly.

Unless a mushroom is something so clearly unmistakable, maybe like a morel or chanterelle, and has no toxic look a likes, I research for ever and it takes a long time to be confident of an ID.  

We are lucky in that there are many in my area who know the local mushrooms well and I can get confirmation...and even then I'm cautious.  

When making a slurry to spread around as Joseph suggests, be sure you are not using the kitchen blender...get an old one to designate for the garden.

The wine barrel soil sounds wonderful.   What do you plan to grow in it?

Tim, If you have a death wish, instead of eating the mushrooms shoot yourself in the head, it quicker and much much less painful. Some mushrooms will destroy your liver and give you a very painful death.Please make sure you positively identify any mushroom you put in your mouth. The one your showing I cannot Identify but I know some poison ones look kinda like that, but I'm not an expert either.

What they all said ^^^!!!

I am very happy to see any mushrooms growing in my mulch or wherever, but I won't eat them unless I had learned the ID from a local mushroom person. I do taste random plants, but as somebody wise said, toxic plants tend to tell you they are toxic by tasting bad, but some mushrooms do not have that courtesy, and may taste nice while killing you.

It seems it’s not a bright idea to eat them then and I don’t know anyone who can identify them. I suppose I can try make a slurry to try spread it as a soil improver in the meantime. However if it’s poisonous it’s not wise to use a blender either because I prepare other food with it too.

This is the fourth type of fungi that’s grown in my yard: one was a strange cloud-type growing on the bark of a termite-colonised dead stump (I ate a bit but it didn’t taste nice. I felt a bit intoxicated but maybe I was just being over sensitive and imagining it); the second looked like enoki growing in a fresh horse manure pile in the compost bin; the third is a fluorescent orange one growing on another tree stump (it’s weakened nearly the whole tree stump in a year), and now this! What I really want is a yard covered in mushrooms though.

The half-wine barrel has a grapefruit tree growing in it and strawberries as a living mulch. Strawberries don’t flourish at all in my ground but when I put them in pots using the same soil they flourish.

Looks a bit like amanita phalloides to me. If it is and you would eat that, you would get sick in about two weeks and maybe the happy-go-lucky people you invited to your meal. It destroys your liver, is extremely painful and no anti-dote, after a terrible deathstruggle of say ten days you suddenly feel better, the next day you're dead.
Glad you mentioned it here though, you're warned, buy a good mushroom book. And always check on the internet for local dangerous look-a-likes or doppelgangers.
Happy mushrooming.

Hugo Morvan wrote:If it is and you would eat that, you would get sick in about two weeks and maybe the happy-go-lucky people you invited to your meal. It destroys your liver, is extremely painful and no anti-dote, after a terrible deathstruggle of say ten days you suddenly feel better, the next day you're dead.

https://ru-clip.net/video/nqq8fG5l4Kg/blackadder-kills-the-scarlet-pimpernel-blackadder-the-third-bbc.html

 Like I said always be very positive about identifying mushrooms, If you want mushrooms to eat try buying mushroom kits. I have grown several type, I even have taken spore prints buy laying the mushroom cap on a piece of paper overnight and put the paper in sterilized grain in a jar until it starts to grow and transfer it to a growing medium. Shiitake are pretty easy to grow, oysters mushroom, I think, taste really good as well as wine caps. Check out my video on Shiitakes


  Also if you have the space and the means, start a little garden or small patch with wood chips. Under fruit trees is an excellent place and creates its own ecosystem type of environment where everything benefits from each other.  I have so many different types of mushrooms I can't count them all. It would be an excellent place to try some wine cap mushrooms and they are really good tasting and relatively easy to identify. The wood chips will turn any type of soil into great and fertile soil and the fungi will make your plant really thrive. Have a look at what it did to my clay soil, watch the part where I compare the soil 3 feet from my garden.