How To Grow Morel Mushrooms at Home Outdoors | Mushroom Spawn & Morel Slurry Recipe

How to grow Morel mushrooms from spores at home outdoors? It is the secret to having a Morel patch that no one knows about. Essentially hacking the season.

Morel mushrooms are one of the most popular and fun mushrooms to hunt in the world.  However, growing your own comes with some cool advantages…

If you grow Morels:

1. Outdoors:  You can have your own secret patch that no one else know about.
2. Indoors: You can don’t have to wait months for them to grow in the Spring and you can grow them all year round.

Even if you truly enjoy the hunt of the Morels during the season, being able to grow your own will allow you to be able to enjoy eating many more throughout the year than other people.

Let’s take a look at how to grow Morel mushrooms at home outdoors…

2 Secrets To Growing Morel Mushrooms at Home Outdoors

When it comes to cultivating Morel mushrooms outdoors you will typically be creating a Morel mushroom patch.  However, some people make the spore slurry and just start pouring it wherever they want them to grow.

The best time to plant your Morel mushrooms outdoors is in late summer to early fall to give them time to be strong enough to fruit in the following season.

Beware that it could take up to 2 years to get your first flush (growth of mushrooms) however after that you should have a reliable growth of mushrooms for years to come thereafter.

First we we talk about making a mushroom patch using mushroom spawn and then spore slurry…

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1)  Morel Mushroom Spawn

Let’s see how to use mushroom spawn to grow your mushroom bed outdoors…

Step 1) Identify your mushroom bed location

At this point you will want to find a good place for your Morel mushrooms to grow.

Find a shady area that is well drained and remove all the top soil until the mineral earth is exposed.  The area should be around 4 foot by 4 foot square.

Step 2)  Mix your spawn bed substrate mixture

Mix the following together:

1. 10 gallons of peat moss.
2. 1 gallon of gypsum (calcium sulfate).
3. Up to 5 gallons of ash from wood chips (preferably from hardwood trees like Elm, Ash or Apple trees).
4. Mix in 5 pounds of Morel spawn.

Take the mixture and put it into your mushroom bed location.

Step 3)  Lay your mushroom bed

Now you will fill your mushroom bed area with the substrate to a depth of 4 inches.

Saturate the area with water and ignore until next April.

It’s a good idea to put a couple inch layer of hardwood wood chips on the top of your mushroom bed (preferably wood chips from Elm, Ash or Apple trees) .

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2)  Morel Mushroom Spore Slurry

For the spore slurry method the idea is to mix billions of Morel spores with water into 20 five gallon buckets.  You then pour these buckets in areas that you want your Morel mushrooms to grow.

This method works best by pouring your 20 buckets all in different locations to maximize your chance of them growing.  If you do it right you should have about a 40% success rate.  This means if you pour your buckets in 20 places you should have about 8 places that actually produce Morels.

Morel Slurry Recipe:

In a Blender, put:

1. 1 dry or fresh Morel mushroom (lightly rinsed with filtered water).
2. 1 cup of fresh wood shavings or boiled rye grains.
3. Fill up with filter water.

Give the recipe a quick blend but not too long.  Don’t treat it like a smoothie!  You should have chunks the size of kernels of corn.

In a 5 gallon bucket, put:

1. Add your mix from the blender.
2. Fill up with filtered water.
3. Add 2 tablespoons of non-sulfered molasses.
4. Add 1 tablespoon of salt.
5. Put an air pump in the bottom of the bucket.

Cover the bucket with a towel at around 70 degress Fahrenheit (or between 60 to 80 degrees) and let sit for 24 to 48 hours with the air pump running.

Now take 19 other 5 gallon buckets and spread out your slurry evenly among them and fill the rest of the buckets up with filtered water.

Before you dump your slurry you want to add 1 cup of fresh wood ash (from Elm, Ash or Apple trees) into each bucket.

Spreading your Morel Slurry:

Find an area that is shady and preferably around the roots of trees and dump one of your buckets.  Then cover the area that you dumped with a couple inches of wood chips (from Elm, Ash or Apple trees) and lightly rake them into the soil a little bit.

Water the areas for a week or two to keep them moist and then just wait it out until Morel Season starts.

If you do decide to grow your Morel outdoors then be sure to check out our other article to understand the difference between a Morel and a False Morel (poisonous):

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How To Grow Morel Mushrooms At Home Indoors

Growing Morel mushrooms outdoors give you a great advantage to trying to hunt them in the wild however you are still limited to them growing 4 months out of the year from March until June.

If you decide to grow Morel mushrooms indoors then you can enjoy fresh Morels all year round.  How cool would that be?!

It is a little tricky but it has successfully been done since 1982 which mean you can do it to if you are up to the challenge.

Check out our other article here if you would like to grow Morel mushrooms indoors:

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Conclusion

Growing your own patch of Morel mushrooms outdoors will give you a huge advantage over the other Morel mushroom hunters that will be out once the season starts in March until June.

It can be very challenging to find places where Morels are growing that other people don’t already know about.  But if you have you own patches you have basically overcome this problem.

It’s still a good idea to mimic the natural places that Morels grow in nature but you can secretly put your slurry in places where no one know to look.  Or…You could make it really easy and just plant them in areas right around your house.

Either way, now you know the secret to ‘hacking’ the Morel mushroom hunting season.

Thanks for reading and if you thought it was useful then please share it.  Thanks!

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