Mushroom Foraging for Absolute Beginners: How to Not Get Poisoned

Take your first step in mushroom foraging with a crash course on the edible (and poisonous!) mushrooms of the forests around Berlin.

KEY FACTS

• Distance & duration: 4 km walking, 3 hours from start to closing
• Language: Our community language is English, German mushroom names can also be provided upon request
• Difficulty: Easy – walking on marked paths / roads, flat terrain, relaxed pace.
• Price: 45€ full price / 30€ concession
• Group size: Limited to 15 people (Dandelion bookings not RSVP count!)

Note: You MUST register via Dandelion to join the tour.

WHY SHOULD YOU GO?
Porcini, chanterelle, parasol, chicken of the woods, puffball, oyster… What's more iconic of autumn than brightly-colored mushrooms popping up out of the fallen leaves?

You probably already know that with a little searching, even us city-dwellers can find loads of delicious fungi almost right outside our front doors, thanks to the amazing forests around Berlin. Yet, you're likely also aware that when it comes to mushrooms, it takes knowledge and experience to distinguish the delectable from the deadly.

Join Simka (they/them) for a crash course in mushroom foraging in Grunewald Forest. Here we'll dive deep into mushroom identification and get you started on your path to mushroom foraging. As you learn the basics of how to find, identify, collect, and prepare the wild edible mushrooms that are currently in season, you'll start to understand which mushrooms to stay away from – and how to get confident enough to bring your own harvest home.

With hands-on examples and an interactive approach, we'll cover:

🍄 The 3 best edible mushrooms to start out with as an absolute beginner
🍄 How to look at and identify a mushroom
🍄 Some large & important families to be aware of
🍄 Common poisonous mushrooms and how to avoid them
🍄 Basic mushroom biology
🍄 Fungal growth habits
🍄 What you need to get started foraging
🍄 How to harvest and clean your finds
🍄 Where to look for edible mushrooms
🍄 Sustainable foraging practices
🍄 Cooking and preservation tips and recipes
🍄 How to keep learning
🍄 …and much more.

After the theoretical introduction, you'll have the chance to ask all the questions you've ever had about mushrooms and foraging!

The last hour of the class will be a self-paced practical immersion, where you'll have the chance to use your newfound knowledge to find mushrooms in the forest, then bring them back to your guide to double check and ask any more questions you might have.

This class assumes zero prior knowledge of mushrooms and foraging. If you wouldn't know a porcini if it bit you on the nose, question which mushrooms it's safe to handle, and love the taste of mushrooms but have no idea where to even begin with identifying them in the wild – this class is for you!

SECURE YOUR SPOT & GET YOUR TICKET HERE:
https://dandelion.events/e/m2xbp

You must register & buy your ticket via Dandelion to secure your spot!

These tours tend to sell out, so registering early is advised.

A note on pricing & philosophy from Simka:
It's a deep value of mine that this learning – which radically connects us with ourselves, the land, and one another – should be accessible for everyone, which is why I'm keeping my tours as low-price as I possibly can. This year, I'm using a new system to uphold this financial accessibility while keeping it sustainable for myself.

There are two ticket levels: Full price and Concession. Please choose the concession level only if you aren't able to afford the full price ticket.

If the concession level is also not accessible for you, I really see you and I still want you to come foraging with me! I'll be offering a fully donation-based community tour once a month throughout the season. Please join my Telegram group or send me an email to get updates on future Community tours!

My intention with all of this is to earn a living wage while widening the reach of financial accessibility to more folks than I was able to with my previous sliding-scale model. Thanks for being with me in navigating through the challenges of capitalism with justice, honesty and compassion!