Here's a bundle of oyster mushrooms I found walking in the woods the day before Thanksgiving.

Large shelves extended up a snag on a walking path on the Eno River. All told, they're were probably 40-50 lbs of mushrooms in plain view, free for taking, a gourmet item for sale for $15/lb at the Whole Foods a few miles down the road. Here in America, such food is free for the taking, without many worries about anyone else grabbing your haul. The patch was untouched the next day. I wonder how long about $500 worth of free delicious food would last in, say, eastern Europe or China?

I've found oyster mushroom spawn to be quite easy to propagate, but a full-blown fruiting has so far eluded me. By taking the stem butts of wild oysters I've found, I place them in some torn and saturated corrugated cardboard. The mycelium seems to love the ridges and the wood-based glue that holds the pieces together. I've managed to go one step beyond this and propagate the speading threads onto both wood chips and spiral dowels, with the hopes of innoculating larger pieces of wood. I've then taken sections of newly cut wood and cut these into sections about 12" in length, then placed the oyster mycelium in between the sections, stacking them one on top of the other. It makes a nice piece of lawn art, but so far no oysters. I've tried wrapping the bundles with burlap to retain moisture and a little extra warmth, for growing in wintertime. When removing the sections, I notice mycellial growth, but no full colonization. Such are the trials and tribulations of the backyards mycophile! Fortunately, the shiitake logs we innoculated have produced wonderfully. The wood is almost ready for the compost pile at this point, so we'll need to make some fresh ones come February.