The Best of Spores Afield The newsletter of the Colorado Mycological Society March 1994 Electronic Edition, Part 2 Wayne Harrison, Editor (wharrison@aol.com) FOOLING MOTHER NATURE Spores Afield, July 1992 by Ellen Jacobson What began as a simple way of obtaining a series of photographs for the CMS and NAMA photography contests resulted in an extraordinary batch of Pleurotus. In March, I wandered over to my two oyster stumps and picked about a pound of mushrooms. It occurred to me that I might keep the small ones that were forming from drying out by covering them with chunks of bark. I did this, and it worked and several days later as I was harvesting my newest crop, I found hundreds of pinhead Pleurotus emerging from the top of one of the stumps. "Ahha!", says I, "Let's take a series of pictures for the contests, let's protect the developing fungi with more bark and to assure success, let's pour water on the stumps every day and irrigate the little hummers." The neighbors were suspicious as I trudged along with my plastic jugs, but my method succeeded beyond all expectations. Not only did I get a fine series of pictures, but I also harvested about 20 pounds of Pleurotus from just theses two stumps. I stopped watering when I ran out of room in my freezer and now pick only after a rainy spell. If you have an oyster tree, water it, shade it and stand back. Maybe you can fool mother nature, too. A VISIT TO MOREL MOUNTAIN, MICHIGAN Spores Afield, April 1992 reprinted from the Detroit Free Press (Mason, Michigan) -It's a little hard to believe. In Mason, Michigan, a town of 7,000, one of the world's delicacies is growing inside a yellow-sided building in an industrial park. It's called Morel Mountain, and it's the only place where morels are grown -- other than the woods of springtime. Since March 1989, it has been home to this famous fungus and its smoky, earthy flavors. The morels, growing in an unusual environment, seem to be the most natural part of the operation. The more unlikely discovery inside this barracks of a building is that Morel Mountain is a high-tech, international endeavor that promises hefty long-term profits for its owner, Domino's Pizza Distribution Inc. At $25 a pound, these morels aren't cheap. At the peak of the springtime harvest, wild morels are just $8 to $9 per pound. Dried morels cost $90 to $160 per pound, but one pound of dried equals 8 to 10 pounds rehydrated. Price really isn't an issue, said Perry Mulleavy, general manager of this Domino's subsidiary. Even though indoor cultivation takes away a bit the wild morel's cachet, morels never will become a commodity like white button mushrooms, he said. "The morel is a special niche. It's a high-end gourmet product. In our opinion, we have the Mercedes of the cultivated mushrooms. We want to retain that." Indeed, all mushrooms once were found only in the wild, but the effort to cultivate morels didn't start until 1982. Mulleavy still calls it a pilot project, even though the company is producing 350 pounds every week. Increased yield and more plants are planned. Mulleavy calls the 7,500 square-foot Mason plant too small and hopes to be producing morels at a larger plant by the spring of 1992. Its location is what Mulleavy calls "proprietary." Translation: None of your business. How he explains cultivated morels: "They're grown indoors, in a greenhouse-like environment, where we actively control the growth environment. They're grown in soil." No home growing tips here; details are proprietary. "People have been trying to cultivate morels for 100 years. We were able to put all the necessary pieces of the puzzle together to do just that," Mulleavy said. Morel Mountain sells all it cultivates to hotels, restaurants and gourmet retailers. Ask how much the company could sell if production were up to par, and Mulleavy uses the word "proprietary" again. A check with Balducci's, a New York City gourmet retailer, reveals that a $39-per-pound price hasn't fazed any customers since Morel Mountain morels started being offered. The owners said only chefs notice any difference in taste. "They're not as intense as the wild ones in spring, not quite," said Charlie Balducci. "They're very close and very good." Wild morels have a stronger, more woody smell. Scott Hershey of Hershey's Steak and Seafood, a M ichigan restaurant, said Mason morels are just as good as wild, and he's using been them for almost 10 months in appetizers and soups and to accompany entrees. "I guess the fun is that they're available year-round. The response that you're able to get from your guests when you put fresh morels on a plate in front of them . . . just kind of blows their mind." To order from Morel Mountain, call 1-800-926-6735 weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Standard Time. The Best of Spores Afield The newsletter of the Colorado Mycological Society March 1994 Electronic Edition, Part 3 Wayne Harrison, Editor (wharrison@aol.com) MOREL MOUNTAIN REVISTED Spores Afield, October 1993 reprinted from The Washington Post by Caroline E. Mayer Sex. It's as straightforward as that. That's the secret to Morel Mountain. "It's a simple process and just took a simple mind to figure it out," jokes Gary Mills, director of research of the 3-year-old Michigan company. Perhaps, but Mills and his colleagues at Morel Mountain have succeeded where scores of other scientists and fanatics have failed. The Morel Mountaineers have figure out how to replicate the sex life of one of the more high prized (and highly priced) wild mushrooms so it can be grown year-round in a small, commercial hothouse. Morels. Know-nothings walk right past these spongy-looking coneheads in the woods, often dismissing them as pockmarked toadstools. But mention the word "morel" (or "merkles" as they are sometimes called) to any mushroom maven, and praise is prompt. The mere sighting of one "makes knees tremble, hearts pound and lips shake with a slight but rapid involuntary motion," says John Ratzloff, a Minnesota photographer who became so enamored of morels that he wrote "The Morel Mushroom" (Voyageur Press 1990). And fanciers tremble and shake at Morel Mountain's headquarters, a nondescript rural warehouse 90 minutes west of Detroit. Outside, the only tipoff to what's inside are three small, wooden morel sculptures - and the 15-foot pile of dirt in the back. "That's part Michigan soil, part composted pine bark, but that's all I want to say about it," says general manager Perry Mullen. But inside the prefab metal building, in six 17-by-24-square-foot windowless rooms, culinary gold is relatively easy to find. Each sterile room contains 700 green plastic tubs of dirt on the floor-to-ceiling metal racks. In some of the rooms, all one can see is dirt; morel caps haven't pushed through that special mixture of soil yet. But in other rooms, it's a breathtaking sight: thousands of morels, many 3 to 4 inches high. Some are leaning, some stand at attention, all waiting to be delicately snipped and shipped to stores and restaurants around the country. Next to truffles, no other fungus receives such wide acclaim. The reason is simple - its taste. "The difference between morels and button mushrooms... is like the difference between cheese and chalk,: says Ratzloff. The morel should not be eaten raw, but when cooked it has an intense, earthy flavor. That fact, combined with its ability to adapt to a variety of dishes and sauces, makes it a favorite among chefs and mycologists, who have tried to domesticate morel s for hundreds of years. Even Thomas Jefferson tried. "Mycology textbooks have always said that the person who happened to figure out how to grow morels would be a millionaire," says Mills. "Well, guess what? They lied. 'Cause I am here washing trays," he says, rinsing out plastic green tubs that only hours before were overflowing with morels and dirt. "God's the one who made morels," Mills is quick to acknowledge. "We just figured out how to grow them commercially." You have to understand, MIlls explains, that the whole purpose of any organism is to survive and reproduce, and the morel is no difference. And it's reproduction that Morel Mountain has tried to encourage, week in, week out (although Mills and his colleagues snip off the delectable morel caps before they have a chance to reproduce.). The morels, meanwhile, come from spores Mills has carefully collected and selected and kept in a desiccator locked away in a laboratory several miles away. Each week several petri dishes are inoculated with a handful of these spores, which will grow into an intricate network, much like a spider web. To the untrained eye, this network, called a mycelium, looks like fuzzy mold. The mycelia love to eat, says Mills. So to provide nutrients, Mills adds them to a cooked mixture of oats and dirt. Placed in sterilized plastic packages, this mixture is kept for four weeks where the mycelia can eat their fungal hearts out. But the morel must "shift from the vegetative stage to the sexual stage; to do that, we have to simulate spring," Mills explains. "Spring" takes place in those six windowless rooms, where the mycelia are placed in dirt, sprayed with water and kept at 65 degrees. After four weeks the mycelia break through the earth, and the mushroom caps begin to form. Two weeks later, there's about a half pound of morels on each tray - some 400 pounds in total. Morel Mountain sells a kit to help you grow your own morels. The "Morel Mountain Morel Mushroom Garden" is a bag containing a cubic foot of dirt and sells for $36, plus shipping. For information, write to Morel Mountain Co., P.O. Box 158, Mason, Mich. 48854, or call 1-800-926-6735. 1994 footnote: As of March 1994, the price for the Morel Mushroom Garden is up to $53.28 shipped to points outside Michigan.