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vtown05
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How to grow Chanterelle mushrooms???

I found some great Chanterelle mushrooms today growing in the woods and I'm looking forward to making some good recipes with them. I was trying to find some good information on growing them myself, indoors or outdoors. I read that they are very hard to grow in a garden. Does anyone have any good information, specific to growing chanterelles, on how to grow them? I'd like to give it a try.
Last edited by vtown05 on Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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As far as I know, Chanterelles are wild and can't be domesticated.

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Gnome
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vtown05,

The Webmaster is correct, so far this species has resisted laboratory culture. This does not mean all is lost though. If you are patient one approach is to plant seedlings of the appropriate tree species adjacent to producing trees and several years later dig and replant the trees in a similar setting. Obviously this is a slow process and will not yield a crop for years, if at all. You could also attempt to spread the spores to more trees near the ones currently producing. In other words mimic nature.

Norm

tedln
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vtown,

When we lived in the Piney woods of East Texas, I had about six thousand acres of forest to roam on my ATV. In the early summer, I would typically fill a five gallon bucket with Chanterelles in about an hour. I always wanted to find a way to propagate the Chanterelles, but wasn't successful. I typically would try to duplicate the conditions where I found the mushrooms and then seed it with spores. It simply never worked. I gave up and just let nature do it's thing and enjoyed what nature provided.

Ted

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vtown05
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Yeah thats pretty much what I've been reading everywhere on the web. I still may go ahead and try to grown them by mimicking the natural habitat. I'll probably fail at it but you never know. It couldn't hurt to try... and who knows, maybe I'll figure it out and if I do I'll be sure to share my experiences with everyone.

tedln
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Since I wasn't successful in propagating the Chanterelles in a site of my choice, I started thinking about improving production in areas where they were already growing. I decided to investigate why they grew in some areas, but not in other identical areas. I learned that mushrooms in nature only show the smallest part of the plant above ground for reproductive purposes in limited conditions at limited times of the year. The main plant remains and grows similar to a normal root system underground. The largest single organism on earth is a single underground fungal system which measures over twenty miles in diameter. Apparently it requires years of growth below ground before the chanterelle will exhibit it's reproductive mushroom above ground.

I learned the mushrooms (or bacteria in a symbiotic relationship) convert decomposing organic materials like cellulose into basic sugars which are consumed by the root structure of the fungus supporting the mushrooms. I wanted to see if adding simple sugars almost as a fertilizer to areas where they were growing would cause them to bloom larger or more frequently. Like the mushroom itself, this may take years to measure success or failure.

I did sugar some areas, but within a year, a timber company clear cut the areas I had treated. The clear cutting totally changed the environment and I have no idea if it would have worked.

I believe the single key to propagating consumable chanterelle mushrooms is time. Time is required for the fungus to grow and mature below ground in conjunction with the proper raw food materials, other symbiotic organisms, and environmental conditions.


Ted

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vtown05
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I read somewhere recently that somebody had found a way to grow chanterelle mushrooms by planting them with pine seedlings. If I remember correctly there was an article about it in the January 23, 1997 issue of Nature. If anyone knows where to get a copy of that article please let me know because I'd love to read it.

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Kisal
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It's available for a rather hefty fee ($32) from Nature magazine's online site.

You may be able to borrow the magazine from your nearest public library. The article, "Successful Cultivation of the Golden Chanterelle", can be found in Nature, vol. 385, p. 303, Jan. 23, 1997.

If your local public library doesn't have that copy of the magazine, just ask them to borrow it for you from another library. :)

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vtown05
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Kisal wrote:It's available for a rather hefty fee ($32) from Nature magazine's online site.

You may be able to borrow the magazine from your nearest public library. The article, "Successful Cultivation of the Golden Chanterelle", can be found in Nature, vol. 385, p. 303, Jan. 23, 1997.

If your local public library doesn't have that copy of the magazine, just ask them to borrow it for you from another library. :)
The library! That's a great idea! Why didn't I think of that? Thanks for the tip. I'll let you know what I found out.

I found the website for it just a short while ago. That seems like a pretty cool journal with lots of good information in it. For $199 a year you can get a subscription to their weekly journal and access to all their previous issues online. If I wasn't poor I'd subscribe.

botanize
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There's a free report from the US Forest Service available online: Ecology and Management of Commercially Harvested Chanterelle Mushrooms.

It can be accessed at: https://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/5298

The Natural
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I find these babies alot around the creeks and rivers, like everyone here was saying mostly piney areas. If you cant replicate it indoors try it like the japanese do the outdoor shitaki just make a nice acidic piney forest ped for them.

Just ideas :D ive never grew a mushroom in my life.

The Natural
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I did a little searching and this one guy is saying they come back year after year from the way they are harvested. Maybe excavating a small section of piney area where they are growing then duplicating a piney forest bed**(said ped in previous post) with pine timbers criss crossing for shade too keep it moist.

Hell you just sparked my imagination with this, glad I was scanning old post.
Btw have you have any luck?? These babies are going for like 15-16$ a pound if you sell them in baton rouge, I may try something myself.

here is the site I was blabbing about, but you know alot of info. you find on the net is like 50/50 useful/garbage.
https://www.mssf.org/cookbook/chanterelle.html

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Yumm! I love wild mushrooms. I have never tried growing any because I can not provide the optimum growing conditions. Like the rest of you I have heard how unresponsive chanterelles are to cultivation. A couple of weeks ago G was hunting in north east Louisiana and harvested a 15 lb lion's mane his first day out. By the time he got home and I verified that it was a lion's mane with a specialist from the university (I will never eat a wild mushroom without verifcation) it had been harvested for too long and had gotten mushy so I did not risk cooking it. G is in the woods again this week. He has other lion's manes marked on his GPS. When I talk to him tonight I have to remind him to harvest another but not until Monday morning. He will be coming home Monday afternoon so it will be nice and fresh.

Oh - oh -oh just thought of something - my niece's fiancee is a chef at Brennans' in Houston. I have to ask him about ways to cook the lion's mane. He is such a talented young man I know he will come up with something awesome.

khilbourn
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Monkey
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Has anyone yet been able to grow chanterelles? My husband and I have just came into some land in eastern washington. I would love to start a mushroom farm. And of course with the prices of chanterelles......

spyderkr47
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I recently bought what I thought was golden chantarelle mushrooms, thought I was getting a kit, what I got was a little pack of seeds and other little things( not sure what they are, but now I am hearing everybody say you can't grow golden chantarelle mushrooms, now curious what I have, maybe will put them in ground and take care of it and see what happens, a liitle bummed out now.



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