Cuprins
The ring mushroom belongs to the category of little-known, but recently it has been more and more in demand among mushroom pickers. Contributes to the popularization of ringworms and an effective technology for their cultivation. Moreover, the sooner you start collecting ringlets, the tastier and more aromatic the dishes prepared from them will be. Young mushrooms are best boiled, and overgrown mushrooms are best fried.
Photo and description of the ring
Currently, two varieties of edible ringlets are cultivated. These are massive agaric mushrooms. Varieties of the ringworm differ in mass. Larger Gartenriese, smaller Winnetou.
Koltsevik (Stropharia rugoso-annulata) naturally grows on wood chips, on soil mixed with sawdust, or on straw covered with soil. It can also grow on champignon compost, but for better fruiting, the compost must be mixed with sawdust, straw or wood chips in a 1: 1 ratio.
The fruit bodies are large, with a cap diameter of 50 to 300 mm and a weight of 50 to 200 g. At the time of its emergence from the forest floor or from a bed in the garden, the ringworm with an almost round brown cap and a thick white leg resembles a porcini mushroom. However, unlike the porcini fungus, the ringworm belongs to the agaric mushrooms. Subsequently, the cap acquires a lighter, brick color, its edges are bent down. The plates are first white, then light purple and finally bright purple.
As you can see in the photo, the ringer has a thick, even leg, thickening towards the base:
The edge of the cap is curved and has a thick membranous cover, which is torn when the mushroom ripens and remains in the form of a ring on the stem. The remains of the bedspread often remain on the hat in the form of small scales.
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So, you have read the description of the ringworm mushroom, but what does it taste like? This mushroom is very fragrant. Especially good are the round hats of the young ringworm, collected immediately after they appear from the garden. In the morning, slightly moistened and quite dense, they really look like a cap of a small porcini mushroom or boletus. The taste is also reminiscent of noble mushrooms, but there are some features. The taste of boiled mushroom caps, but has a slight aftertaste of boiled potatoes. However, they are quite suitable for appetizers, as well as for soups. For harvesting for the winter, young ring mushrooms can be frozen or dried. Round hats do not stick together when frozen, they can be stored frozen in bulk, they do not crumble. Before drying, it is better to cut the hat into 2-4 plates, then they look prettier in the soup.
It is recommended not to bring growing mushrooms to the phase of biological maturity, when the caps become flat and the plates turn purple. Overgrown ringlets are less tasty. But if you didn’t have time to collect the mushrooms on time, then use them fried with onions and potatoes.
The technology of growing ringworm in the beds
The area for growing ringworm mushroom should be sufficiently illuminated in spring and autumn, and in summer, on the contrary, should be protected from direct sunlight. You can plant mushrooms together with pumpkins, which create a favorable microclimate with their leaves: they provide moisture and the necessary shading.
Excellent results are obtained on fresh hardwood chips. Fresh wood chips have enough moisture and do not require any additional processing. Softwood and oak chips, pine and spruce needles can only be used as an additive (no more than 50% of the total weight). Chips from branches are rammed in the form of a bed 30-40 cm thick, 140 cm wide and watered. If the wood chips are dry, the bed is watered for several days in the morning and evening. Substrate mycelium is added to the chips at the rate of 1 kg per 1 m2 of beds. Mycelium is added dropwise to a depth of 5 cm in portions the size of a walnut. Sometimes a well-grown substrate is used as a mycelium. A layer of ordinary garden soil (covering soil) is poured over the beds. In dry times, the casing soil is moistened daily.
When growing a ringworm, wheat straw can be used as a substrate. It is soaked for a day in a container under pressure. Then they are placed in shaded places in the form of low ridges 20-30 cm thick and 100-140 cm wide. 1-2 kg of dry straw is required per 25 m30 of ridges. Then the substrate mycelium is added to the straw also at the rate of 1 kg/m2.
In warm weather (May-June), the substrate fouls and long strands (rhizomorphs) appear in 2-3 weeks.
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After 8-9 weeks, colonies of ringworm mycelium become visible on the surface, and after 12 weeks a continuous layer is formed from the substrate intertwined with mycelium. After lowering night air temperatures, abundant fruiting begins. Ringworm is considered a summer mushroom. The ideal temperature in the middle of the bed is 20-25 ° C. The mycelium of the ringworm develops rapidly and after a few weeks rhizomorphs are formed, which contribute to the development of the entire substrate. Complete colonization of the substrate takes 4-6 weeks. The rudiments of fruiting bodies are formed after 2-4 weeks on straw and after 4-8 weeks on wood chips.
Fruiting bodies appear in groups. Mushrooms form in the zone of contact between straw and soil. Ringworm rhizomorphs, when grown in a garden bed, can stretch far beyond its limits (for tens of meters) and form fruiting bodies there. However, the fruiting waves are not as uniform as those of champignon. Usually collect 3-4 waves. Each new wave appears 2 weeks after the previous one. Collect mushrooms with an untorn or recently torn coverlet. This lengthens the shelf life of mushrooms. Watering the beds is needed to obtain high-quality mushrooms. The fruiting bodies of the ringworm are rather fragile and do not tolerate shifting from one container to another. On wood chips with cover soil, the yield reaches 15% of the mass of the substrate, on straw the yield is less.
Substrate mycelium for growing ringworms
Until the middle of the last century, substrate mycelium was used for vegetative propagation of fungi. In mushroom growing, the process of vegetative “seeding” of mushrooms with the help of mycelium is called inoculation. Thus, champignon compost was inoculated with pieces of compost already mastered by champignon mycelium. Such a compost “seed” mycelium is one example of a substrate mycelium. Compost mycelium was used not only for growing champignons, but also for other humus and sometimes litter mushrooms. So “sowed” all kinds of champignons, mushrooms, umbrellas and even the ring.
For the propagation of summer honey agaric, oyster mushrooms and other tree fungi, substrate mycelium was used based on sawdust, mastered by the desired mycelium (sawdust mycelium). For growing mushrooms on stumps and on pieces of wood, wooden cylindrical dowels infected with tree fungus were commercially available. Such dowels can also be called substrate mycelium. They are still produced abroad.
Substrate mycelium contains almost no excess food for fungi – only mycelium for their vegetative propagation. Therefore, it can be stored for a long time without loss of quality and it can be applied to a non-sterile substrate.
As the technology of cultivation of mushrooms improved, firms producing mycelium switched to grain as a carrier of mycelium. Mycelium made on wheat, barley or millet is called grain. Grain mycelium is produced only on sterilized grain. Therefore, with the use of grain mycelium, it is possible to establish a sterile technology for the production of mushrooms, which ensures the maximum yield on a sterilized substrate. But in real production, a pasteurized substrate is sown with grain mycelium. The advantage of grain mycelium over substrate mycelium is its economical consumption and ease of use. With sterile technology, you can introduce a few grains of millet with mycelium of the fungus into a kilogram bag with a substrate and the mushrooms will grow and give a decent harvest. In reality, grain mycelium is added to the substrate from 1 to 5% by weight of the finished substrate. This increases the nutritional value of the substrate due to the grain of the mycelium and allows you to quickly overgrow the substrate.
But how to use grain mycelium for “sowing” a fungus, such as ringworm, in a non-sterile garden bed? As it turns out, it’s not as easy as it seems. With such sowing, the molds attack the sterile grain of the mycelium, the grain is instantly covered with green mold spores, and the mycelium of the ringworm dies. To get a good result, you must first “sow” sterile grain mycelium in a bag with a sterile wood chip substrate, wait until the ringworm mycelium develops there, and only then use it as a substrate mycelium for sowing beds.
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Chopper for growing ringworms
A large crop of tree mushrooms can only be obtained on beds or on loose substrate in plastic bags, but not on pieces of wood. The substrate must be moist, nutritious and loose so that it has enough oxygen necessary for the growth of fungi. All these requirements are met by a substrate of freshly ground branches.
Wood chips can replace straw when cultivating oyster mushrooms, shiitake and other tree mushrooms. But the main thing for which you need to buy a grinder is to make a substrate for beds with a ring. Freshly ground branches with leaves, and preferably without leaves, are a ready-made substrate with a moisture content of about 50%, which does not need to be pre-moistened. The branches of trees and shrubs contain enough nutrients necessary for the development of fungal mycelium.
Any garden shredder with knives is needed. Along with the chopper, I recommend buying spare replacement knives. They need to process only fresh branches. Then you get chips of the right size, and the grinder itself will last a long time. Models with gears can also be used, but they do not produce enough air permeable substrate. Young birches up to 4 cm thick are well ground in a garden shredder. Near birch copses in abandoned fields, areas with a dense forest of young birches are formed by self-sowing. Such self-sowing does not occur in the forest, but on agricultural land, where it spoils the fields. In addition, if you do not cut off all the birches in a row, but thin out self-seeding, this will improve the growth of boletus and porcini mushrooms in it.
In a brittle, or white, willow growing along roads and rivers, branches can grow up to 5 cm thick in one season! And even they grind well. If you root several dozen of these willows in the estate, then after 5 years you will have an inexhaustible source of substrate for mushrooms. All deciduous trees and shrubs that form long and straight branches are suitable: bred willow, hazel, aspen, etc. Chips from oak branches are suitable for growing shiitake, but not ringworm and oyster mushrooms, because. their enzymes do not decompose tannin.
The branches of pines and spruces are also well ground, but they strongly stick around the chopper knives and its inner body with resin. Chips from coniferous branches are only suitable for growing purple row (Lepista nuda).
Dry branches of trees and shrubs are not suitable for grinding, as they are often affected by mold. And, besides, when grinding dry, especially soil-contaminated branches, knives quickly become dull.
If you need to store the substrate for future use, then for storage it must be dried under a canopy, and moistened before use. To obtain a substrate with a moisture content of 50%, the dried wood chips must be poured with water for 30 minutes, then the water should be drained and the resulting wood chips should be dried in the garden during the day.
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Watering a plantation with a ring
For good fruiting, a mushroom plantation needs regular watering. Organizing it is quite easy.
There is a small spring in the garden, so it was not necessary to make a well or a well. Water from the spring flows down the site in the form of a small stream and is collected in a pond measuring 4 x 10 m. From there, an asbestos-cement pipe 8 m long is laid, from which water flows into a sump, where clay particles settle. Then, clean streams of water fill up a concrete tank with a diameter of 2,5 m and a depth of 2 m, where a drainage pump with a power of 1100 W is installed, providing a head of 0,6 atm at a capacity of 10 m3 / h. For additional purification of water from clay particles, the pump is placed in a plastic can, on which a 200 µm thick agril bag is put on. Agril is a cheap covering material for garden beds.
The pump delivers water to a pipe with a diameter of 32 mm. Then, with the help of special fittings, water is distributed through pipes with a diameter of 20 mm. It is recommended to use pipes and fittings made of low-density polyethylene (HDPE) – this is the most reliable and cheapest system of pipes and fittings.
Irrigation pipes were laid at a height of 2,2 m above the ground using vertical racks made of reinforcement with a diameter of 12 mm. This allows you to mow the lawn and take care of the mushroom plantation without interference. Spraying of water occurs from the upwardly directed watering cans. Watering cans are plastic dispensers for bottles with 0,05 mm holes. They were sold in hardware stores for 15 rubles. a piece. To pair them with HDPE fittings, you need to cut a 1/2 internal thread on them. A piece of synthetic winterizer is placed inside each watering can, which additionally purifies the water.
Turning on the pump produces a household timer. For irrigation of the entire mushroom plantation (15 acres) 2 times a day for 20 minutes, a total of approximately 4 m3 of water is consumed when water flows from a spring from 8 m3 / day to 16 m3 / day (depending on the time of year). Thus, there is still water for other needs. Some watering cans sometimes become clogged with clay, despite the sludge and filtration system. To clean them, a special water outlet was made near the pump into a pipe segment with fittings for 5 water cans. In the absence of water flow, the pump develops a pressure of more than 1 atm. This is enough to clean the watering cans by screwing them onto a piece of pipe and shutting off the water supply valve to the irrigation system. Simultaneously with the irrigation of the entire plantation of mushrooms, compost heaps, raspberries, cherries and apple trees are watered.
Five cans are spraying water over a plantation with a ring. The total size of the bed is 3 x 10 m. Irrigation water falls on some of its sections, while others remain without irrigation. As my experience shows, the ring grower prefers to bear fruit in those areas where irrigation water does not directly enter. An analysis of the moisture content of the substrate in the fruit-bearing bed proved that it is not necessary to water the entire surface of the bed. The ringworm mushroom box distributes moisture from watering in some parts of the garden over the entire surface. This proves the undoubted benefits of having a mycelium in the garden.