How to Grow Morel Mushrooms

Preparing the Growing Location

• Before you plant your morel mushrooms, you need to prepare a location for them to grow. Select a shady spot that is usually undisturbed. Most morel growing kits have enough spores to propagate a 4-foot square, but you can dedicate as much space as you'd like. You need to prepare a sandy soil mixture made with peat moss, gypsum and ashes from burnt wood. Once you have filled your growing location with the soil mixture, you're ready to grow your morels. You should prepare and use your morel bed between summer and fall.

Using a Grow Kit

• Purchasing a kit -- or several, depending on how big you want your morel garden to be -- is the most reliable way to grow these mushrooms. You can buy kits from websites that specialize in mushroom cultivation. The kits typically include a mushroom spawn mixture and instructions on how to plant them. Follow the instructions in the kit and blend the spawn mixture with your prepared soil in the bed between summer and fall. Because morels grow near ash trees (Fraxinus spp.), hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 to 9, and elm trees (Ulmus spp.), hardy in zones 5 to 10, spread wood chips from one of these varieties over the top of the bed. All you have to do after mixing in the growth kit is tend to it per the instructions -- and wait for around two or three years. The morels should pop up during the spring.

Making Your Own Morel Slurry

• If you'd like to make a spore slurry instead of buying a morel growing kit, you'll need to start with a few wild morels. It's safest to buy these from an experienced mushroom hunter so you're sure of the identity of the specimen you're growing. For every three or four wild morels, you'll need a gallon of water mixed with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of molasses to soak them in. The salt helps prevent bacteria from destroying your morels, and the molasses feeds the spores. After soaking the mushrooms in the water for two days and removing them, you're left with a water slurry containing millions of morel spores. Pour the spore slurry over a prepared growing bed; cover it with elm or ash wood chips, and keep the area moist. During the spring in a few years, you should see morels pop up in your yard.

Alternate Method: Inoculating a Tree

• If you have access to a young elm tree, ash tree or apple tree (Malus spp.), hardy in USDA zones 4 to 9, you can pour homemade spawn on the roots of the tree to inoculate its roots. Care for the tree as you would any other young tree of its species; in a few years, you could see morels growing around the tree's root structure. You can also buy a baby tree and a morel growth kit and plant them together, or purchase a pre-inoculated tree to plant in your yard. Pre-inoculated trees are typically only available for purchase from specialty websites.