alt Hacker NewsI’m building a small map application that allows me/friends/family to explore data overlays about morel mushrooms phenology and habitat (ground temp/moisture/terrain/aspect/tree species/etc) in our area. There’s some lightweight forecasting and timing models to help guess at near-term fruiting. I had a big push about a mouth ago to tighten things up, and initial experiences in the field this year have been very promising.
I’ll keep chipping away at it this year, and probably expand beyond morels to other seasonal natural phenomena that my people enjoy like smelt/salmon run, wildflower blooms, etc.
I had a similar idea. I picked 10 lbs of morels last year, first time picking. It was a recent burn area from 8 months prior. I was just back out to the same area and there are no morels, but lots of small orange cap looking mushrooms. chatGPT pro said first year is the best and then it drops off on the second year. I might try a much higher elevation spot in a week or two, but it really sucks. Last year I was finding morels on southeast facing slopes. I'm sure north slopes produced later on as I saw people coming off the hill when I drove by.