Ha, that's too funny - paying $20 for something growing naturally in the backyard. I grew a few batches of lions mane in early spring from a kit and we went out for a walk in the woods shortly after and found some lions mane growing naturally. I used to culture and grow my own oyster mushrooms on straw and never even realized they are common in this area until earlier this year.
I guess it's worth a few bucks to know what you are getting though. The only mushrooms I ever pick to eat in nature are a few species of bolete, the rest I wouldn't want to risk misidentifying.
The thing you miss out on most, growing your own, is going into the woods. Also, there's the fact that you have the opportunity to learn from identifying more species than what you set out to find.
Many mushrooms are difficult to find except when they are easy to find. My first year picking mushrooms, I found lots of Morchella and Verpa, but the next ten years were brutal. My second year, I found lots of Hericium (lion's mane), but picked more than I subsequently found over the following decade. There was once a wicked patch of Agaricus bitorquis busting through the soil on the west side of 99st, and 48ave one year. Beautiful, bug free solid, crunchy monsters. Never again. I found Laetiporus sulfurus, which is common elsewhere, but extremely rare here. If it was the first time I went mushroom picking, I would be excited about finding more, but never would. I found two massive specimens of Grifola frondosa, easily 2lbs each in 2001. I visited the same location several times and didn't see it again until this year, but in a different location. Red staining Agaricus are rare in Alberta and I found them (Agaricus haemorroidarius) consistently over several years in a specific part of the Whitemud Creek Ravine, but the area eventually overgrew with invasive plants from the homes above the ravine, and they are no more.
Pleurotus (oyster) are easy and consistent in late spring on dead poplar, but they consistently come avec les maggots. I would rather eat homegrown.
This year, i found a poisonous agaricus I had never found before. I saw it, and instantly misidentified it as the edible Agaricus sylvicola which I have picked and eaten many times. But I went through my systematic ID habits and realized it wasn't what I had originally thought. The aroma was wrong, there were no spruce nearby - spruce aren't necessary according to the books, but it's where i have
always found them - and the staining reaction was different: yellow bruising on cap surface, check, yellow staining on stem surface, check,
no yellow staining in the very base of the inner flesh of the stalk, wrong! It did stain. The wrong aroma, habitat, and staining reaction likely makes it Agaricus xanthodermis. So, mushrooms is like gun safety, or airplane checklists. Don't be complacent.
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