The RTE farming and agriculture programme, Ear to the Ground carried an entertaining and informative piece on foraging for mushrooms and an attempt at growing oyster mushrooms and truffles on logs, on Thursday November 6.

The reporter Darragh McCullough foraged in a Co. Limerick forest with John O’Connell. John later showed how he is hoping to be the first Irish cultivator of the truffle, specifically the summer truffle.

He has a 10 hectare tree plantation where he is attempting to create a new revenue stream with Oyster Mushroom growing on forest trimmings. He hoped it would provide additional income while the forest matures. The oyster mushroom colonises the log and continues to do so for 5 years, which the cultivator hopes will provide a good crop.

With the cultivation of the summer truffle, if successful John believes it will be a nice income earner in the more medium term, after 10 years or so. It’s a not a get rich quick scheme that’s for sure.

The programme segment ended with the men cooking up the gatherings of the forest foraging from earlier - with hedgehog mushrooms and chanterelles, the fried up mushrooms were deemed to be delicious.

The programme also interviewed Dr. Maria Cullen from the University of Limerick. She is working on a national inventory of Irish Fungi. Collating all information on native Irish fungi is an important endeavour - seeking to identify and protect the natural biodiversity that exists in the Irish landscape. In the programme the researcher mentioned that around 95% of wild mushrooms are either inedible or poisonous, and that one had to be very careful about what one picked for the dinner table. More information can be found on the web about the Catalogue of Irish fungi at the National Herbarium, NBG.