Summer cep mycelium is a unique product that allows you to grow an excellent, rare Boletus species on your own. The offered package contains ground biological summer cep spawn on grain. Place it in a permeable soil, cover with mulch and take care of moderate humidity of the soil in order to welcome delicious, aromatic mushrooms in your garden within one or two years.

The impressive summer cep (Boletus reticulatus) in older publications is considered a subspecies of the penny bun, or porcini. It has similar tender and delicious flavour, but differs in appearance from its well known relative. Young mushrooms consist of thick, barrel-shaped stems and round, convex, greyish-fawn caps. Older specimens that grow 15 - 25 cm tall develop large, flat beige caps with a diameter of 8 - 30 cm. Smooth or slightly wrinkled cap skin cracks in the drought periods. The tubes under the cap are white in young mushrooms and turn yellow-green with age. The cylindrical, brown stem is covered with a characteristic white netting. Soft, firm, compact and delicious flesh of the summer cep delights with appetizing, fungal aroma and exceptional, slightly nutty taste. It can form base of delicious soups, sauces and casseroles. You may also dry the fruit bodies or serve them stewed with pasta, potatoes and meat.

The mushroom offered here is seldom found in the wild. Single specimens or small clusters of summer ceps can be found with a little luck in broad-leaved forests, under oaks and beeches mainly. Therefore, in order to enjoy rich crops, we recommend to spread the spawn in vicinity of a young beech or oak, because summer cep lives in mycorrhizal relationship with these trees. You only need to dig a few 15-cm-deep holes no further than 5 m from the tree trunks. Fill each hole with garden soil mixed with deacidified peat, cover with 1/3 of the spawn and the rest of the soil. Tamp down and sprinkle abundantly with water. Finally, cover the sites with mulch - leaves, branches and needles. You may also water the culture with sugar solution (10 g per 10 l of water) to provide the ceps with the optimal growing conditions. The only care measures after that would be watering the sites in longer drought periods. You may start the culture from April to October for the crops to appear from May to October in the second year of cultivation. You will be able to harvest excellent, large mushrooms in your own garden for the next 3 - 4 years.

The package contains ground spawn on grain. Detailed growing instructions have been included in the package information. The producer estimates the probability of successful summer cep development for 85 - 87%. The emergence of mushrooms depends on the environmental conditions and proper site preparation. As mentioned above, summer cep grows only in vicinity of broad-leaved tree roots, particularly close to beeches and oaks.