Iowa State University Extension is hosting a couple of workshops on harvesting wild mushrooms.
Chelsea Harbach oversees the workshops and says they offer a required certification for some mushroom hunters. “If you want to sell wild harvested mushrooms in Iowa, it is required,” she says, “and there’s a specific list of eight different types.”
Harbach says most types of mushrooms have multiple species. She the workshops include a review of the Iowa Food Code and also mushroom identification, with one goal. “Limit potential poisonings, be it from misidentified mushrooms or from mushrooms that were harvested and not stored in a proper way,” Harbach says. Harbach says mishandling mushrooms can be as big a problem as eating mushrooms that are poisonous. “If the mushrooms are stored in a way that is favorable for, you know, bacteria or even other molds that could be on those mushrooms, people could get sick from that too,” she says.
Harbach says they will go through what to look for to properly identify the safe mushrooms to eat from the poisonous ones. They will also talk about being aware of the area where you are finding the mushrooms.
“Obviously, if you’re harvesting mushrooms from areas that could have any kind of industrial waste runoff or, you know, near a golf course with excessive pesticide use,” Harbach says. She says mushrooms are really good bioremediators that soak up anything that’s in the soil. So the mushrooms will take up harmful things and they could make you sick if you eat them.
Harbach says they do get many people who attend the workshops just to learn more about mushrooms who are not seeking a certificate to sell the. She says they saw a bump in mushroom interest in 2023 when the “The Last of Us” series premiered on HBO Max. The series featured fungus that became able to infect humans and turn them into zombies. “I think that series really piqued people’s interest in mushrooms because we saw a tremendous bump in enrollment that year,” she says. The cost for certificate registration is $80 while non-certificate registration $60.
The first workshop is March 28th, and the second is April 1th. Go to the ISU Extension website for more information and to register.
