Citizen Mycology Skip to content

Click the little arrow above the date/title to view older blog posts!


Mar, 08 2025 - Back to work and giving a talk on mycology soon.

I am back at work in the greenhouses, nice to be in the dirt again. I keep looking out at the garden and wondering when I'll have time to clean it up and get it prepped for this season. Still haven't started my seedlings yet but I've just got so much work to do in the grow room and (happily) wasting time out in the woods taking photos of mushrooms and lichens.

I've been asked by the folks putting on the Seedy Saturday to give a talk on mycology in April so I've got the presentation mostly finished, just need to rehearse. I will also be providing wine cap grainspawn so need to get that started as all I have is liquid culture and that takes quite some time to start. Fruiting chamber needs a big clean today and we also need to start our warm-season mushrooms up. I experiemented with some Pleurotus pulmonarius this winter so hoping that is as heat tolerant as folks say it can be. They grow great in the cold though, nice dark brown caps.

Took a walk in the forest again today. On the drive to the park I saw a massive colony of lichen on a boulder next to the highway so going to stop and take a few photos there tomorrow. Got some good pictures at the park, lots of Cladonia, Lobaria, Ramalina. Saw lots of little ear pick fungus, I'm fairly sure they're Auriscalpium vulgare but I could be wrong.

Mar, 02 2025 - First Mushrooms of the Season!

We took the poot for a walk in the forest today. We expected a lot of the snow to be gone but actually almost all of it was gone (at least in the portion we walked). I was hoping to find a bit of moss and maybe some cladonia so I took the camera. So much moss and so much Lichen. It was great, I spent half the time laying under the ground trying to get 'upskirt' type shots of the pixie cups. Everything was so green and so alive, usually there is a lot of snow pack until at least the end of March or later.

As we were leaving, my partner spotted some orange mushrooms off trail. Too brightly coloured to be Birch Polypore. It was a fresh, decently-sized flush of Phyllotopsis nidulans (at least I am 90% sure of the ID). The only thing that gives me pause is that it did not stink. Actually, it smelled kind of nice, sort of sweet like vanilla. I have heard people report a lack of stench before so I don't know that it invalidates my ID. Regardless, the cluster was stunning. I will add some photos to the gallery later.

Feb. 28, 2025 - Going Back to Work Soon

Spring is still a ways away but I go back to work in the greenhouses in about a week. It'll be nice to see all the greenery again. I have not started my pepper seedlings for this year yet, normally they get started Feb. 1st so hopefully our crop doesnt suffer. We made lots of shelf stable hotsauce last fall, just in case. Lots of new varieties to try this season.

Our reishi blocks are starting to do something but I'm not sure what yet. This is our first year growing them. Looks like the start of antlers but I'll let them go a little longer just to see what happens. I think the blocks were inoculated at the end of November.