King Stropharia Mushroom

Here is what you like to see when you are harvesting wild rice, nothing but untouched rice for as far as you can see! The rice here is a little thin but it is falling in the canoe at a steady pace .We went out every day last week. Yesterday we decided the gardens could not take any more neglect so had to stay home and get some other work done. Our sweet corn is finally ready so we did up about 200 ears. Ann put as much as she could in the dehydrator and the balance in the freezer. Our son,Dane, has been busy while we were out ricing.

He has been riuppling the flax so I had quite a pile of seed to thresh out. I just pour a couple gallons of seed pods in a bucket and mash away at them until I've smashed most of the pods open. I then screen out the seed and all the small bits of pod. The bigger pieces of pod and unbroken ones go back for another round of mashing and the seed/fine stuff mix gets winnowed with a fan to separate out the seed.
 This other pic is Ann hamming for the camera. The blue tarp keeps our rice from the bottom of the canoe where it might get sand or dirt in it.

 These are pictures of our surprise yesterday. This spring I inoculated a big pile of wood chip mulch with mushroom spore . I bought the spore from a company called Fungi Perfecti out of Olympia,WA. I had sort of forgotten about it as I didn't expect anything before next spring especially considering how dry it has been. Luckily I happened to pass close by there and noticed this lovely sight. This is the King Stropharia mushroom which is one of three mushrooms I inoculated with. Stropharia rugoso-annulata, is a large mushroom with purple black spores.

The cap is burgundy to tan and it can be found wild in many places although I have never seen it. Just for reference that basket they are in is 14 inches across. There were quite a few larger than these but they were too old. I also should get Shaggy Mane and a Oyster mushroom in this patch at some point. This is my first try at growing mushrooms so I am quite excited by this . I also have several different types inoculated on logs but nothing there yet. Those I will have to initiate to get themto start fruiting.

I have to wait until they have completely colonized the logs to do that so that will be a post some other day. Today we are back to the wild rice so I'll post again later in the week.