Notes

Growing Porcini Mushrooms at Home
As a gourmet mushroom, porcini mushrooms are in high demand. Getting a basket of fresh ones requires a lot of work to find, identify, and harvest. Even a professional mushroom picker can spend hours in the forest walking through mud and other dirt to collect their treasure. But not everyone has the time, energy or knowledge to go hunting for these wild mushrooms. Growing porcini mushrooms at home is an alternative that can make this unique and delicate gourmet food more accessible.

The fungus that produces these mushrooms is called Boletus edulis, or B. edulis var. grandedulis for the large cap variety of this species. This mushroom is one of the most common of all wild mushrooms in North America, Europe and Asia, although it's less likely to be found in the Southern Hemisphere.

Porcinis are mycorrhizal fungi, meaning they form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of their host tree. This helps the trees absorb nutrients while also allowing the fungus to get sugars it needs to survive. This is why it's so common to see these mushrooms paired with birch and beech trees, as well as conifers such as spruce, pine, and hemlock.

These fungi have a very distinctive appearance that's easy to identify. The caps are usually greasy or tacky in texture and can be anywhere from light brown to reddish-brown, with a slight convex shape. Their pores are white and turn greenish-yellow or brown with age, and they're "stuffed" when young. Their stipe is long and club-shaped with a fine netting pattern. Porcini mushrooms don't bruise or change color when cut, which makes them more easily identified than lookalikes like Satan's bolete, which stain blue and have a much brighter red pore surface and stipe that bruises a very obvious blue.

Growing a crop of these mushrooms involves a bit more labor than some other types of mushroom, but it's still doable for people with the right equipment and knowledge. A successful harvest requires a warm, dark environment where the humidity is around 90 percent.

A great way to create this environment at home is to use a cardboard box. growing porcini mushrooms of the cardboard with sawdust inoculated with porcini spores, and roll it up. Duct tape the ends of the cardboard together to prevent it from unfolding. Place it in a cool, dark area such as the corner of a basement or a closet where it's protected from sunlight and heat.

Keep the cardboard rolls moist until they begin to fruit, which can be as early as June and as late as October depending on the climate where you live. To speed up this process, commercial growers soak the logs in water during summer and winter to force them into fruiting. Eventually, some of these logs can produce as many as two dozen or more porcini per month. Those who have the skills and resources can eventually produce enough of these rare and delicious mushrooms to sell them.
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