Ode to the King
Today we broke the seal on the 2017 season for King Boletes with a successful forage in the Vail Valley. After nearly two weeks of regular precipitation in the high altitudes surrounding Vail, the porcinis were really beginning to push up between 10,500ft and 11,000ft. We harvested about 24 and left lots of small buttons in the ground. We did not see any big boletes.
Make no mistake about it – this was tough mushrooming. These first porcinis (boletus edulis) were little buggers mostly bigger than a golf ball and smaller than a baseball. They are hard to spot and tend to hide under trees, brush and grass. The secret here was to visit spots we knew produced porcinis in the past and look real hard in those specific area… they were producing!
If you don’t have an exact spot, or 3, to visit and look, it is probably worth waiting a bit longer for the porcinis to get bigger and more abundant and therefore easier to see. Just walking around and looking for porcinis in random areas is going to be tough until they get bigger and easier to see.
The mountains of Western Colorado are enjoying regular afternoon monsoons and hot weather. That is a great combination and promising for a good mushroom season come August and September. Let’s hope this weather pattern holds!
