Foraging

Matterhorn said:
Gardening? Foraging? Planted these ramps I got from a native plant nursery in a wet spot in the yard last year and they survived.

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I think it was 3 years ago I transplanted some ramps from a patch I found to my property. I kinda forgot that last year I transplanted more in other areas of our property to see if they would grow better or emerge at different times based off elevation and whether or not it was a south facing slope….

Totally forgot about the transplants last year and just about had a stroke yesterday when I saw ramps growing in places on my property ive never seen them before. At first I thought they might have naturally spread until I remembered- hey dumbass, you did that!

Took a drive on Easter with my daughter to check on an early season morel spot to see if they are up yet. No dice on morels but we took a handful of ramp leaves home for me to cut up and blend with cream cheese to smear on a bagel. God damn, so simple, so tasty.

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Stakem said:
I think it was 3 years ago I transplanted some ramps from a patch I found to my property. I kinda forgot that last year I transplanted more in other areas of our property to see if they would grow better or emerge at different times based off elevation and whether or not it was a south facing slope….

Totally forgot about the transplants last year and just about had a stroke yesterday when I saw ramps growing in places on my property ive never seen them before. At first I thought they might have naturally spread until I remembered- hey dumbass, you did that!

Took a drive on Easter with my daughter to check on an early season morel spot to see if they are up yet. No dice on morels but we took a handful of ramp leaves home for me to cut up and blend with cream cheese to smear on a bagel. God damn, so simple, so tasty.

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Hell yeah! I made ramp cream cheese yesterday too. So fucking good.
 
I checked my early morel spot last week before I went away for a few days on a fishing trip. No dice, nothing was up. Got home yesterday after experiencing some unseasonably hot days and thought id go for a quick walk to check on my later morel spots. Not only were they up but looked to be dried out from the 92 degree day we had on Thursday.

We got a good soaking rain last night but now the low temps the next 3 days are gonna be in the 20’s and 30’s. Im heading out later today with my son to try and harvest as many as we can and then maybe try again later in the week.

I really thought this year was gonna be a great one but its not looking so good now.

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Im too lazy to look up exact dates/timelines but im gonna roughly generalize that it was about 3-4 years ago where I finally found my first morel honey holes. Up until that point, I was walking 6-8 hours on random days searching to find my first morels and when I found them, it was just a single or double and hardly worth the effort.

This year was the hardest I had to work for the smallest payout since having several reliable spots that produce.

I have one spot specifically for black morels- they never flushed this year.

I then have one spot where half free morels and small tulip morels flush- they too never appeared this year.

There is an absolutely ancient apple tree I found a couple years ago where big yellow morels (Americana?) pop up- not this year.

Then there are 3 other places where yellow/greys pop up. The one place I have visited has consistently yielded hundreds of morels- I only got a handful this year. The other places had but only a couple here and there in years past but I figured, why not check this year and was surprised to see more than usual (but still not a lot.)

Gonna do some more searching this weekend and next week but im thinking this year was a bust based off early 90 degree days followed by rain and freezing temps all happening at the wrong time. Even the ramps are looking real rough rather than flurishing.

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I dont want to get too excited here……but I think there is a chance I found another random paw paw patch that not only flowered this year but also might have gotten pollenated. You see the baby fruit developing inside the blossum?

Ive now found 3-4 different paw paw groves in random places while wandering for morels and the last several years they did not bloom. Not sure if the conditions were finally right this year or what the deal is but maybe we will return to pick a couple when in season.

Based on the number of small trees ive seen in these places they have to be fruiting or have fruited at some point for there to be so many trees of varying size/age.

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