Content
- Find mushrooms - tips and tricks for eager collectors
- Where can you find porcini mushrooms? - This question is not easy to answer
- It depends on the weather
- The right season for collecting porcini mushrooms
- The ideal location for a rich boletus harvest
- Mushrooms live in symbiosis with certain tree species
- Pointer plants show you the way
- Tips
Boletus mushrooms like it moist
Find mushrooms - tips and tricks for eager collectors
The "king of the forest mushrooms", so the mushroom is called also gladly. There are no "mushroom mushrooms" at all, because experts distinguish between a total of seven different types of cep, which grow at different seasons and also prefer different habitats. For this reason, the porcini mushroom season starts in summer with the summer mushroom and lasts until October, until the first frost.
Where can you find porcini mushrooms? - This question is not easy to answer
That passionate mushroom pickers do not reveal their favorite sites to everyone, should be a truism. In fact, even experienced mushroom experts regularly go on raids and keep looking for new sites. Those who want to find and find mushrooms need a lot of patience, perseverance and expertise in the habitats and conditions, such as mushrooms, which thrive best. Only those who know which locations make porcini mushrooms feel good can search for the right places - and find what they are looking for. In addition to the site conditions, it depends on the weather, whether you find the mushrooms you want or not.
It depends on the weather
Basically, the rule is: mushrooms love it wet. A good or bad fungal year can often be predicted in the spring. When the snowdrops are blooming and the birds start to sing in the morning, it should rain properly. Young boletus develop early in the year as a pin-sized bob under the ground and then need a lot of moisture. If there is no rain in spring, the mushrooms are missing in autumn. On the other hand, if the spring was blessed with sufficient precipitation, you can often count on a good harvest as early as June. Especially worthwhile is the search for a nightly thunderstorm rain: The forest is then so heated up by the sun that the rain creates a true greenhouse climate.
The right season for collecting porcini mushrooms
The first porcini mushroom of the year is the summer boletus (Boletus reticulatus), which often grows from May / June and then into September, weather permitting. In milder weather, it also occurs in late autumn. In contrast, the spruce and porcini mushroom (Boletus edulis) - as well as the black cep (B. aereus) and the rarer pine-boletus (B. pinophilus) - can be collected between July and November. Boletus mushrooms grow only until the first frost, then the season is over and you have to relocate to winter mushrooms.
The ideal location for a rich boletus harvest
Particularly promising sites for porcini are beech forests with a lot of dead wood on the forest floor, as little grass and gaps in the canopy, where warming sun rays can reach the forest floor. Boletus mushrooms love such warm, clear places, which often even lead along forest roads. Generally, you will recognize a good porcini forest by the fact that there are different old trees and lots of dead wood on the forest floor. But even in spruce forests, you have a good chance to collect many porcini mushrooms. The spruce is omnipresent in the low mountain ranges, especially in southern Germany there are large stocks. In northern Germany, on the other hand, pine forests prevail, and with a bit of luck, you may find the pine-boletus.
Mushrooms live in symbiosis with certain tree species
But why do porcini grow especially under beech, oak, spruce or pine trees? Quite simply, the porcini lives with these tree species in a community in which both partners feed each other. This system is called the specialist "mycorrhiza". Mushrooms grow with their spiderwebfine mushroom threads hidden in the ground or in the woods. Unlike plants, however, they do not require sunlight to grow, but instead get the nutrients they need directly from the tree, which in turn supplies them with nitrogen and other substances. In the course of evolution, many fungi have adapted to certain tree species, which is why they now find porcini mushrooms, especially near certain tree species.
Pointer plants show you the way
But pay attention not only to the trees, because the presence of certain "pointer plants" indicates the possible presence of porcini mushrooms. The tasty porcini mushrooms often grow right next to the poisonous toadstools - if you find toadstools in the forest, it is usually not far to the mushroom. This is because both species of fungi live in symbiosis with the same tree species and also form fruiting bodies at the same time. If, on the other hand, you see many stinging nettles and / or balsam, you can safely turn around: both plants point to a nitrogen-rich soil in which porcini mushrooms are not at all happy.
Tips
If you want to successfully collect mushrooms, you have to get up early: Passionate mushroom pickers go into the forest at sunrise, so that only the remainders are left for those who arrive later - if you find anything at all. In addition, you have to look very carefully, because especially with young porcini mushrooms only the inconspicuous brown hat looks out of the ground. The fleshy, thick stalk is often still deep in the substrate.