What's the secret to growing Morels in your garden?

You're going to think I've gone berserk.

In 2018, I started finding morels in my yard. I’ve found them every year since, except for this year (I’ll get to that later). I’ve been hunting these elusive mushrooms on field trips for a long time - never found any. They aren’t easy to find in our area. Which is why I was stunned to find them on my own property - where I didn’t have to drive anywhere.

The first area I noticed them was actually in 2019 in a spot in my yard that had soil trucked in from another place. I also had some 4” pots of sedums. There were morels growing both in the ground, and inside these 4” pots, which I had also topped off with some of the same soil that had been trucked in.

This photo came out of my 2018 garden. The morels in this area did not come back the following year.

These came from the 2019 garden, in an area where I had expanded my orchard the previous year.

These were from a 2020 garden, more orchard area I had expanded the year prior.

And the following years I did not take photos, but certainly did gobble them up when I found them.

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All of these areas had only one thing in common, which took me quite a while to figure out. They were all areas I had worked in the year prior, but they had different soils and mulches added. Then it dawned on me:

They all had cardboard laid down at the base of the soil the year prior. Some of them had soil going over the top, some of them had woodchips. Some were just bare (which gets pretty ugly BTW). In the case of the 4” start, it was sitting on top of a patch of soil that had cardboard laid underneath.

Not all areas where cardboard is laid sprouts morels. It seems to works best when the cardboard is pressed down in some way (like wood chips or soil over the top). One year I had an overturned pot placed on some cardboard. Inside it, a morel was growing.

Note that, each area fruited for only that one year, because cardboard was only laid the one time. Had I put more on each area, it’s super likely that more would have come the following season.

Last year, we started letting our chickens free range in the yard. Boy they love to shred cardboard. It ends up all over the place and looks like a garbage dump. And BTW if you don’t get off all those little pieces of plastic stuck all over your cardboard they persist as the cardboard decomposes. Again, it starts looking like a garbage dump.

I’ve got some areas now where the chickens don’t go, so will be adding more cardboard. But I’ll for sure be pulling off all the plastic. I’m super tired of pulling up little bits of it all over the place.

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Many gardeners report finding morels in their area using wood chips. I’ve used many sources of wood chips, and never had them come up for me in that way. I was really hoping all my ground up blackberry vines might get them to sprout, but so far, nada. That would have been super cool though!

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Gardeners in our area have been reporting finding morel mushrooms in their yard forever. Sometimes they identify wood chips, other times they have an old burn pile, sometimes they are reported to come up in old apple orchards, flood plains, near cottonwoods, and more.

Often, they have no idea why they came up. I started asking the gardeners if they by chance laid down cardboard the season prior. About 75% of the time, they said yes and in fact the mushrooms were within inches of the cardboard. Other times they said some other type of mulch was used.

But don’t take my word for it. There are many groups on Facebook about mushrooms in the area.
PNW Mushroom Foraging and Identification
Willamette Valley Mushroom Society
Oregon Mushroom
Pacific Northwest Mushroom Club
Pacific Northwest Mushroom Gallery and Identification

Search for “cardboard” and you’ll see the topic has been brought up extensively.

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My best guess as to what is going on is that the mycelium already exists in the soil, and when you give it the nutrition it needs to fruit, it will do so. This is why “burn morels” pop up after a large burn - that particular strain of morels will pop up when the ground is burned.

I’ve learned from growing mushrooms on logs that you have to cut the logs very fresh, otherwise they may get contaminated with other fungal mycelium inhibiting growth of the intended species. Cardboard has no fungal contamination, and as it makes contact with the soil and gets moist, the mycelium reaches out and colonizes.

For more on how far mycelium can reach without being seen above ground, check out this article on OPB, where you’ll learn about the world’s largest living organism, living right here in Oregon.

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If you do find morels, make sure you identify them correctly. Having a copy of All That the Rain Promises and More on hand, and joining the above mushroom groups can help you. Make sure you cook them well (bad things happen when you eat them raw or lightly cooked). Also if you’ve never had them before, make sure to only take a small taste at first, to make sure you aren’t sensitive to that particular species.

These tips go for ALL wild mushrooms. Well, actually, all mushrooms in general.

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What have you observed in your garden?

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