With arrival of heat the mushroom season begins. Campaign for mushrooms – one of the main summer and autumn pleasures. However collecting mushrooms is the whole technology which the beginning mushroom pickers need to seize.
It is required to you
- Wattled basket (birch bark or willow), knife, comfortable footwear, atlas or reference book of edible and inedible fungi.
Instruction
1. Rule first - never, by no means try crude mushrooms even if they seem to you well familiar and edible! Rule second - study signs of edible and inedible fungi. Do not pick those mushrooms which you at least doubt a little, the price of mistake can be too high. Rule third - kind of you wanted to gather basketful, avoid the old and overripe mushrooms as in them large amount of toxins collects, especially if you pick mushrooms in residential suburb. Try not to pick mushrooms along highways. Choose only young mushrooms for collecting. Besides young mushrooms stronger, they do not crumble and do not break in basket.
2. Go to the forest at dawn as since early morning mushrooms the strongest and fragrant. To pick the largest number of mushrooms and not to be tired, try to move on the wood slowly, attentively examining all possible mushroom places. Begin search not with wood depth, and with clearings and edges, so you will find much more mushrooms.
3. If you pick mushrooms at the edge, it is more convenient to move on spiral: or from the center of glade to the outskirts, or, on the contrary, narrowing circles, from edge to the center. If you begin collecting mushrooms with forest thicket, comb the area the zigzag or route reminding toothed comb.
4. If you have found mushroom, do not hurry, having cut off it, to leave on search of the new mushroom place. Most likely, other mushrooms as threads of mycelium expand widely in the parties hide nearby. Put the sign about the found first mushroom, for example, in the form of stick and carefully examine all area around, moving on spiral.
5. Cutting off mushroom, do not damage its mycelium. Carefully cut it with knife, it is necessary to leave the lower end of leg of mushroom in the earth. Then fill up this place with small amount of the earth and stamp. Clean mushroom from leaves, the stuck earth and needles. Stack mushrooms in bast basket layer by layer. Placing mushroom in basket, try not to damage it. Remember that the most fragile are lamellar mushrooms, for example russulas.
6. Picking mushrooms, put them in birch bark or willow bast basket. So mushrooms will "breathe", will less be rumpled and will better remain. Do not use plastic bags, bags, backpacks and buckets for collecting – in them mushrooms will begin to crumble and "will choke".
7. If you cut off worm-eaten mushroom, do not throw out it. Leave it on knot of tree or on hemp, forest animals will surely regale on it.
8. Remember that mushrooms – quite perishable product therefore if you are not going to dry them, it is better to prepare the reaped crop in day of collecting.