How to grow landscape morels in your garden

I've been growing several different species of mushrooms for over 30 years now- shiitake, oysters, lion's mane, winecaps, etc. In the past few years I've also had some success with morels. I'm posting this now because I think that  early September is a good time to start morel projects in the Pacific Northwest.

One of the keys to success with morels is to grow the right species. Although I've had some success (and plenty of failures) with other species of morels, I've come to the conclusion that growing the  landscape black morel (Morchella importuna) is the easiest one to cultivate in the Pacific Northwest. Here is a timeline of how I learned to grow morels:

March 2019: I ordered Landscape Black Morel spawn from everythingmushrooms.com in Knoxville, TN.

4/4/19: I started 3 beds of morels in my forest farm garden in heavily shaded  rectangular beds in between various fruit trees including cherries, plums and an apple. In two of the beds, I created lasagna-style beds with hardwood chips, agricultural lime, morel spawn and cardboard sheeting in 2-3 different layers. The third bed was simply a shady unused veggie bed where I sprinkled lime and spawn, watered it  and then covered the bed with cardboard sheeting. All beds were heavily watered.

3/21/20: In the third bed, I noticed my first landscape morel next to the cardboard. No morels were ever found in the two lasagna (layered) beds.

April 2020: From the third bed, I harvested about 13 nice sized morels. The flavor was excellent.

Spring 2021 and Spring 2022: I harvested dozens of morels from the third bed again. I also sprinkled more lime in bed #3 right on top of the cardboard and around the edges. Also covered up some of the rotting cardboard with some fresh pieces of cardboard.

Spring 2023: No morels in the garden this year.

Labor Day Weekend 2023: I ordered more Landscape Black Morel spawn from Everything Mushrooms.

9/26/23: I broadcasted the morel spawn onto three beds in the heavily shaded area of my garden, including bed #3 again. Also sprinkled lime and covered the areas with new cardboard. We received about 1.6 inches of rain during this period. I covered the beds with chicken wire to prevent birds from digging around the edges.

3/1/24- 3/5/24: It was extremely cold and wet here with lots of rain and a sprinkling of snow.

3/5/24: I noticed the first landscape morel in old bed #3. On this day I also picked several landscape morels from bark dust landscaping beds next to a local supermarket parking lot- a typical habitat for "wild" landscape morels. These beds were surrounded by concrete curbs and had dripline irrigation in place for the ornamental plants- also typical.

3/26/24- 4/20/24: I harvested several landscape morels from my garden, some of them quite large. Most were from old bed #3, although a couple were from one of the new beds. During this period I also started some new beds with soil and spores from the parking lot morels using bark dust, lime and cardboard. I'm hoping for bigger crops next spring...

I'd like to hear from other folks who might have had success growing morels.

I'll attempt to post a photo below. (Wish me luck, since I'm not good at this!)

M.K.,

What would be the optimal temperature range for them to grow well?
When you seed the spawn, do you have to keep the spot constantly moist for entire year?
Will it stand 110 F dry heat?
I had zero success with mushroom and I tried a few times - on logs and and on wood chips.

Another photo (I hope!)

Cristobal, I'm not sure that landscape morels would do well in a hot, dry climate. In nature, I think they prefer the milder, wetter climate of the maritime Pacific Northwest or coastal northern California. In fact, the strain from Everything Mushrooms that I use is originally from western Oregon and that's why I selected it. But maybe someone else has grown morels in your area. I've seen plenty of other black morels in the Rogue Valley and it routinely gets up to 100 degrees there in the summer.

Besides living in a climate with an average of about 48 inches of rain per year,  I also do some watering on my morel beds using a sprinkler in the summer months and also a mister on a hose nozzle  or watering wand during the spring fruiting season. I hang the hose in a plum tree next to the morel bed, set it to "mist" and let it thoroughly water the area. This also increases the humidity. The fruit trees also like the extra water during the spring/summer and they usually produce more fruit. I also stack some shiitake logs next to morel beds and they can get extra moisture as well. This is an example of what I call "stacking functions".

Michigan State  University has a new program to help folks grow morel mushrooms. Here is a link to their "Cultivation of Morels- helpful links" homepage:

https://sites.google.com/msu.edu/bonito-lab-morels/cultivation-of-morels-homepage/helpful-links?mc_cid=7cab8356b9

Here is their video showing their technique for growing landscape morels (Morchella importuna) entitled "Outdoor Morel Inoculation Overview":

https://mediaspace.msu.edu/media/Outdoor+Morel+Inoculation+Overview/1_hvolozia

Their technique is more complicated than mine, but it might be worth trying.

Field & Forest Mushrooms is now selling a bundle of landscape morel sawdust spawn with 3 nutrient bags. I have not tried their morel spawn yet, but I've had great luck with almost all of their mushroom spawn products.

I thought I'd bump this thread back up because so many people want to grow (and eat!) morels. Landscape morels can be started in the spring or the fall in the Pacific Northwest. I also noticed recently that Field and Forest is now selling Landscape Morel spawn and has their own technique on how to grow these elusive mushrooms. I haven't seen any true morels in my garden yet this spring, but it's still too cold. I'll keep you guys posted.

A couple of questions since you're good at this:
What's up with the lime?  Why/how does it help the mushrooms grow?  Is it necessary to add to other types of mushroom growing like oysters, etc.?  Come September I'm going to try to start growing mushrooms, as I'll have a yard with plenty of shade.

I dream of a little morel patch. I have heard of finding them in the oak-heavy forests of New York but have had no luck.

The idea of adding landscape morels to my plot is interesting. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on some hardwood chip as well as some oak predominant leaf litter and give it a rip. I have found that the pathways in my raised bed garden are a breeding ground for various mushroom types so why not add another?

Riona Abhainn wrote:A couple of questions since you're good at this:
What's up with the lime?  Why/how does it help the mushrooms grow?  Is it necessary to add to other types of mushroom growing like oysters, etc.?  Come September I'm going to try to start growing mushrooms, as I'll have a yard with plenty of shade.

Morels seem to like calcium and usually prefer a pH that is near neutral. Most morel growing strategies involve adding calcium carbonate (ag lime) or wood ashes to the growing medium or substrate to bring the pH up. Oyster mushroom growers will also sometimes will add lime to their growing substrate as well, although it's probably not as necessary for success. Other mushrooms that like lime/calcium include truffles and the almond agaricus. If you want to grow mushrooms, my advice would be to check out the instructional videos by Field & Forest and Freshcap Mushrooms- these guys have the best videos for beginners. There is also a lot of info on this website about growing winecaps/king stropharia.  And if you like books, I recommend Tradd Cotter's: Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation. Good luck and keep us posted.

Timothy Norton wrote:I dream of a little morel patch. I have heard of finding them in the oak-heavy forests of New York but have had no luck.

The idea of adding landscape morels to my plot is interesting. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on some hardwood chip as well as some oak predominant leaf litter and give it a rip. I have found that the pathways in my raised bed garden are a breeding ground for various mushroom types so why not add another?

Although some morel growers advocate using hardwood chips for the substrate, I've had better luck with just cardboard and lime. My layered "lasagna" beds with hardwood chips  did not fruit. But who knows, maybe you will have better luck  with hardwood chips. I also started some new beds last spring that had Douglas-fir bark mulch, lime and cardboard- but none of the morel beds in my garden have fruited yet this year.

However, I did find about 15 landscape morels today- the first morels of the year. They were in the landscaped area right next to a parking lot. The substrate was limestone gravel "soil" with a thin layer of Douglas-fir bark mulch on top. A concrete curb surrounded the beds on one or more sides. A dripline irrigation hose was nearby to supply water to the nearby shrubs and trees. This was real similar to the habitat where I found them last year, only about 2 miles away. I tried to upload a photo earlier, but I had technical problems- I'm a real dork when it comes to posting photos here! I'll keep trying....

Here are some photos from the first batch of morels I found today. As you can see, the substrate is mostly limestone gravel and bark. Hope this works!!

A note of caution here... the landscaped areas near parking lots where landscape morels are found are often sprayed with chemical herbicides that are dangerous to spray and even more dangerous to ingest.  These chemical weedkillers cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other forms of cancer and should have been banned 60 years ago.  So I rarely eat morels found in these urban habitats, unless there are lots of healthy-looking weeds growing abundantly nearby. But if I see any signs of spraying, I use the morels and the substrate beneath them  for propagation purposes only, just to be safe.

Looks like Field & Forest might be selling landscape morel (Morchella importuna) spawn this fall, this excerpt from their catalog has some interesting cultivation strategies:

https://www.fieldforest.net/product/landscape-morel-morchella-importuna-sawdust-spawn/morel-mushroom-spawn

It is interesting that they like calcium. The only spot I have found a morel growing was in our old fruitroom. We had just demolished the concrete floor. Several weeks later a morel popped up. I haven't observed one there since then. I guess the fungus must have been there before the building was built and it had just enough energy to make a mushroom once the restraint was taken away.

Morels definitely like calcium and landscape morels have a unusual preference for growing next to concrete curbs or enclosures. On mushroomobserver.org, many photos of Morchella importuna show them right next to a concrete curb or block, something I also observed in the parking lot habitat yesterday and last year. I'm now actually considering buying some quikrete concrete mix and making a enclosure for the landscape morels in the back of my food forest so I can recreate this habitat in the safety of my organic garden. Stay tuned...

When I cut them in half to soak the dirt and bugs out of them, I take the water and sprinkle it around where I found them. Seems to help for a bigger crop next time.

One year I covered the orchard soil with cardboard to suppress the grass then covered that with maple leaves.  The next spring there were morels all along the edges of each sheet of cardboard. about 3 gallons all together.
My understanding is that mushrooms fruit when the mycelium reach a dry edge of the substrate it is growing in.   I pointed this out before in a post where he had diligently prepared a morel bed and no morels came up in the bed but did come up in the lawnat the edge of the bed.
Therefor to get more fruiting create more edges.

My brother in law collected morels in Ohio. He placed a couple of them in a jar of water, and then shook them up periodically to release the spores into the water. A month later, he brought them to our RV Park in northern Michigan. He shook the water out along the mulch we use for landscaping at the park. The next year we had a few morels where we never had them before. The next year, we had many more, and started doing the same technique he did. They continue to propagate. The soil is sand, and rich with American Oaks with a few pines mixed in. The PH tends to be on the acidic side due to tannins and pine tar. The morels we see are much more robust than many of the ones I’ve seen posted on this thread.

I’m no expert, and don’t like to eat mushrooms. I just thought I would share my observations over the past 5 years.

Hi Thomas,

Welcome to Permies.

I've never tried to grow morels, but wanted to note that I once found some one Spring growing under a Maple in my front yard in Upstate NY. it was before www. days and I didn't have internet anyways. Learned through a friend that I'd need to soak them to get the critters out - and yes, I seem to remember some bugs floating out. I looked every year after that and never found any more. I no longer have a yard, so your post is very inspiring to my fond memories.

Terrell Deppe wrote:My brother in law collected morels in Ohio. He placed a couple of them in a jar of water, and then shook them up periodically to release the spores into the water. A month later, he brought them to our RV Park in northern Michigan. He shook the water out along the mulch we use for landscaping at the park. The next year we had a few morels where we never had them before. The next year, we had many more, and started doing the same technique he did. They continue to propagate. The soil is sand, and rich with American Oaks with a few pines mixed in. The PH tends to be on the acidic side due to tannins and pine tar. The morels we see are much more robust than many of the ones I’ve seen posted on this thread.

I’m no expert, and don’t like to eat mushrooms. I just thought I would share my observations over the past 5 years.

It's interesting that with morel cultivation, sometimes the simplest techniques bear fruit, while sometimes the most elaborate and sterile laboratory work can be a total (and expensive) failure. Morels like to confound people (especially me!)

One variation of your technique that is popular in the Pacific Northwest is to make a bonfire and then after it cools, dump burnsite black morel spore emulsion on the firepit. To make spore emulsion, simply dump old, buggy morels from an old forest fire  burnsite in a bucket, then add water and some molasses and some ashes. Stir it up, wait a day a two, then dump the bucket on your bonfire site. I've had success with this technique before, but only after numerous tries over a period of years.

Below are some photos of some black morels I found in a burnsite a few days ago.

Here's a link to a handy map from the The Great Morel website that shows where the morels are fruiting in the US now:

https://www.thegreatmorel.com/morel-sightings/

There's also some great photos and info on that website, too.