MOREL SEASON IS COMING! Wild Garlic, Asparagus & How to Time Your Morel Hunt

It's mushroom time, it's mushroom time, let's go outside and eat. This video is for entertainment purposes only. Wild mushrooms and plants can be harmful or fatal if swallowed. Hi friends, it's early March here in beautiful southern Indiana. Things are just starting to green up. That means morel season is just around the corner. Time to check out thegreatmorel.com and look at that sightings map. See if there's any sightings of morel mushrooms down south. Oh, oh, oh, oh yeah. Whoa, here they come. They're slowly heading north, they should be here in a few weeks. That being the case, I thought we could look at some ways to time your morel hunt and talk about why Asco mycota, like the morel mushroom, are the best mycota. Although it is hard to pick favorites. And then take a look at my most anticipated, most favorite meal of the year. But before we do that, let's look at some wild edible plants, let's go. Outside of the cities and the manicured suburbs, along the sides of rural streets and country roads, you can find big swaths of green this time of year. You might just think this is some kind of grass or other plant or maybe some daffodils, but this is actually one of my favorite wild edible plants, one that is most easy to locate this time of year. And the best part about it is if you locate a patch, you can harvest from that patch all year long. Let's check it out. Here's some over here, a little small patch. You can see they look just kind of like taller, greener grass. But in fact, this is wild garlic. Or actually, feral garlic. This is Allium sativum, otherwise known as hardneck garlic. It can be found all over the world. It has long, flat, pointy, green leaves that are slightly V-shaped. It is a cold-loving species. The leaves will emerge in late fall and early winter here in southern Indiana. They will grow through the winter. In late May or early June, it will produce its curly, twirly flower stalks. Then it will produce a whitish, purplish flower. And in late June or early July, it will go to seed with little purplish, seedy bulblets. And then it will die back and then come back in the late fall. This is a non-native species. It has just become naturalized, escaped out of people's gardens, and being spread into disturbed areas like roadsides, pathways, pastures, and other waste areas. And it is very delicious and nutritious, but don't eat plants by the side of the road. You want to stay at least 50 feet away from the side of the road with a plant and maybe 100 feet with a mushroom, as mushrooms can actually concentrate heavy metals and toxins in the environment, whereas plants will just kind of take them up. If for some reason there was only one plant I could grow in my garden, it would be garlic. Growing garlic for heads of garlic is a little more involved. I'm not going to go into it here. This is not a gardening channel. If you've got a spot of ground or an extra pot laying around, you can just collect the little thin slivers in the center of your garlic heads that you get from the store that are really annoying to peel, and just plant those. And in a few years, you could have tons and tons of garlic. It's just the gift that keeps on giving. It's one of those plants you can plant and not do anything. You don't have to water, and you don't have to fertilize, as these wild ones are good evidence for. A very vigorous grower. You can literally just drop a garlic clove on the ground. As long as it has soil contact, it will likely grow and do very well. Mmm, garlicky. Oh, that's spicy. That's good, though. There's a more common and less desirable wild garlic, Allium vinaly. Those are those little clumps of little hollow-tubed onions that grow up in your yard and other disturbed areas. They're not very good, but you could dice them up and use them as a garnish if you were desperate. They do have a little bit of nice garlic flavor, but they also have a strong grassy flavor, and they're very tough. So, I don't really eat these at all. There is a truly native wild garlic species, meadow garlic or Canada garlic, Allium canadensi. This one has more of a flat leaf, and it has a six-petaled white to purplish flower and a pleasant, sweet, and oniony flavor. This one prefers richer soils. It's more likely to be found in thickets and pastures, and meadows, much better flavor than the Allium vinaly. There is also a toxic lookalike to wild onions and garlic. The death camas. There are many species of death camas found throughout the United States and Canada. The most widely distributed is the mountain death camas. That one is found in more northern, rocky, and mountain regions. Most of the other species of death camas are found in the western United States. There are a couple in the eastern United States. There's the pine barrens death camas. That one is found in New Jersey, the Virginias, and Tennessee. And there's also Natal's death camas that is found in the south-central United States. The death camas will have C to V-shaped leaves. It will have a six-petaled white to yellowish flower that will be on a spike as opposed to being on a ball as it would on a garlic or onion. And the best way to tell them apart is to crush the leaves or the bulb of the death camas, and it will not have a garlicky or oniony, pungent odor. It will just smell grassy, or not at all. And that's how you tell them apart, and that's how you stay safe. When is he going to get to the mushrooms? Before we get to how to time your morel hunt, let's talk about one more plant. Ah! Don't get discouraged. This is going to tie the whole thing together. And that plant is Asparagus officinalis, otherwise known as wild asparagus, even more common throughout the world than the hardneck garlic. Wild asparagus is another non-native species that has escaped from people's gardens and become naturalized. It can be found at old homesteads, along fence lines, roadsides, other waste areas, clearings, fields, places like that. It is a man-sized, tall, green, wispy fern. It will have little yellow bellflowers in the late summer, early fall, and then those will turn into bright red berries. And after it goes to seed, the green tops will dry out and turn brown. Wild asparagus won't look like much at this time of the year. Most of the wispy, leafy bits will be broken off and might be bent over and dried out by the elements, but you can always recognize it any time of the year by these familiar scales at the base of the stem. If you've never had fresh-picked asparagus, it doesn't even really compare to that stuff you buy at the store. It's so juicy and delicious. It's crunchy and creamy and melts in your mouth. That stuff you buy at the store is tough and stringy. You've got to chop the ends off and it doesn't taste anywhere near as good. If I could only plant two plants in my garden, the second one would not be asparagus. It would be tomatoes. But asparagus would be up there, maybe in the top ten. Growing asparagus can be a bit cumbersome. It's such a giant plant, and it will tend to take over eventually. You definitely want to put it on the north side of your garden or in its own dedicated space so it doesn't block the sun out. But I don't want to go into it anymore. This is not a gardening channel. If you're harvesting wild asparagus or garden asparagus, you only want to harvest stalks that are as big as a Sharpie pen or round. That will let the plant grow back, send up new stalks, and sustain itself. An asparagus plant can grow up to 20 years if it is properly maintained. So you do want to make sure to not overly harvest your asparagus stalks. Breaking news! Mushroom Journeys has surpassed 1,000 subscribers. My sincerest gratitude to all who help make this possible. In honor of reaching this milestone, it's the Mushroom Journeys Meme Coin! The Mushroom Journeys Meme Coin! Don't miss out. Get in before it's too late. Mushroom Journeys Meme Coin is a pump and dump scheme that will result in a rug pull, should probably be illegal, and is also fictional. Alright, let's talk about how to time your morel mushroom hunt. Finally! There's a number of ways people do this. The tried and true method is to take the ground temperature 4 to 6 inches down, make sure it has reached 50 degrees Fahrenheit, also check the weather forecast to make sure you've had at least a week of nights above 40 degrees and days above 60 degrees, and also you will need significant rainfall. Greencastonline.com is a good resource for soil temperature. It will give you the surface soil temperature 2 to 4 inches down. That will tell you when it's getting close. All you have to do is type in your zip code. Then you're going to have to do some dirty work, get a spade and a meat thermometer, dig some holes, take the temperature 4 to 6 inches down, make sure it has hit 50 degrees, and that's how you know it's time to start hunting for morel mushrooms. The second method people use is the what's the news method. You can check the great morel sightings map, you can talk to your local foraging friends and look online at chat groups and foraging groups and see what the buzz is. If there's anybody finding any morel mushrooms that's another great way to know when it's time to start your morel hunt. And the third method people use to time their morel mushroom hunt is the what's in view method. This is where we use some plant indicators to tell us if the timing is right. Here in the Midwestern United States we look at the redbud trees. Have they produced their pink blossoms? We look at the mayapple plants. Have they opened up their parasol like leaves? And you can also look at the hosta, a common landscaping plant. Has that emerged from the ground? In my experience those are all precursors. Those things usually happen before I'm finding my first morels, but there is one plant indicator that I have found to be almost perfect. And that is asparagus. Works like a charm. It's perfect every time. When the first asparagus are emerging in my garden that's when I'm finding the first morel mushrooms. When I'm harvesting the first stalks that's when I'm eating my first morel mushrooms. So that's not the most accessible plant indicator, but maybe you know a gardener or frequent a farmer's market or have a patch of wild asparagus somewhere close by and can use that to your benefit. Having said that, let's head inside to the kitchen and cook up one of my most look forward to meals of the year. Here's the stuff. Six ingredients for the basic recipe. Fresh picked asparagus, fresh picked morel, garlic, the fat or oil of your choice, and salt and pepper. If you want to get fancy you can add a shallot and garnish with fresh lemon zest. But that's it. That's all you need. The morel mushroom is a little different from most of the mushrooms we normally eat. Morel mushroom is an ascomycota, whereas most of the mushrooms we typically eat are basidiomycota. Ascomycota are the best mycota in my opinion. Human civilization probably would have never developed without them as baker's yeast and brewer's yeast are ascomycota. Also penicillium, which is responsible for saving over 200 million lives in the past century. And also aspergillus, which gives us soy sauce. And the only other more sought after mushroom in the world than the morel is the truffle, which is also an ascomycota. So ascomycotas are closer to 80% water content, whereas basidiomycota are closer to 90%. We're still going to dry fry this a little bit to steam off some of that rinse water and get a little of the moisture out, but not quite as much as we normally would with other mushrooms. Wow. It really is good.