create an environment they like.

Here is a link that might be useful: growing morels

How to get morel mushrooms:
1. Get an old timer, who knows where they are, to drink moonshine with you all afternoon.
2. Once he is tipsy, ask him where his secret place to find morels is. Offer him more moonshine if he'll tell you.
3. Sneak into his secret place and get the morels before he has recovered from his afternoon with you.

That's how we do it in West Virginia, anyway.

Yep. They just don't grow on command like some mushrooms will. If people knew how to cultivate them, they would be available in a box in the produce aisle, instead of having to look for them in the woods or pay $15/lb at the farmer's market. :-]

Morels are maddening. Every spring people come onto our property asking if they can look for morels. I see them walking off with lots of 'em, but can never find a one.

josko -- that's not fair!
Next time follow them wearing cammo.

My friend who owns river bottom property next to a former RR, now bike trail, catches people all the time who walk right past the No Tresspassing signs. He asks them if they saw the signs and they say "Yeah, but it's mushroom season!" He's like, duh, all the more reason to keep out because I want my own damn mushrooms! He's started to actually confiscate bags of them when he catches people. Some people just don't seem to have the concept of private property clearly in their minds.

And then there are the adult(?) bicycle riders in Madison who routinely ignore stop signs and traffic lights, as they make their way through traffic. Signs are for losers...

I know a lot of cyclists who are very frustrated with that kind of cyclist, because motorists get mad at all of them for the actions of a few idiots. Unfortch, neither misbehaving cyclists nor mushroom thieves may be legally composted in most states.

elisa_Z5, you cracked me up with your moonshiner tale. Thanks for the laugh!

--McKenzie