I'm still pretty damn noob at IDing so many, but there is about 3-4 mushrooms, Oysters, Morels, Chanterelle (the chicken of the woods) that are VERY easy to ID that are fuckin delicious. It's fun to go hunting with someone more experienced than me. Also I've found some Psilocybe cyanescens in random places before like Golden Gate Park! They are fairly common around the SF bay area and more northern regions. Their name even is a play on san (cyan) Franciscan (escen ) which is cute
anyone else here forage or spot mushrooms? i've been thinking about growing some. they have neat little boxes you just water and they grow or i suppose you can just buy bagged spores too. I've only come across Oysters once but they are fuckin bomb.
I've only ever foraged for morels, but I'm exploring some of the others that are easy to ID. Need to pick up a field guide for my region. I think I've positively IDd some spots where Hen-of-the-woods/maitake grows and I've heard they're pretty easy to forage safely, and low risk for confusion, so I may start picking some of those this year.
A guy I work with cultivates a ton and has been chatting with me about it, and it has me interested. I might look into some outdoor inoculated log growing.
Highly recommend getting a field guide, good call. I got one for northern California and it's a slightly larger than what you'd call pocket sized one with pretty detailed pictures and descriptions and it's honestly invaluable to cross reference online stuff or even when service just isn't working/spotty. They are stupidly easy to grow though, honestly, you could throw them in a damn shoebox and throw it under your bed and hardly touch it and many of them will grow. But of course finding or buying nutrient rich soil will make a difference in terms of flavor and growth.
I went with this website for my shiitake logs and it couldn't be easier. Soak the logs, drill holes where you want them to fruit, put the dowels in the holes, and cover them with beeswax. Then you just have to water them with a hose every week until they fruit about a year later. I'd have a couple dozen species going if there were hardwood forests nearby. Those you just stack passively in a somewhat shady area. My maitake log is buried in my garden and grows up through the soil.