The leaves are quietly flying around, there are small warm rains, the moist earth gently springs underfoot. The autumn forest is filled with people who carefully look at their feet: lovers of the "silent hunt" went to their favorite craft. How much joy there is when a wet slippery hat flashes under the fallen leaves! With what pride mushroom pickers bring home a basket full of strong fragrant forest gifts!
Avid hunters
Where to pick mushrooms in St. Petersburg? This problem, of course, is amusing. It would be logical to assume that they should be collected where they grow: in city parks and small groves, forest plantations. On these islands of nature you can really see mushroom pickers roaming with a basket or bucket.
Most often these are elderly people, who probably find it difficult to get to distant forests, and just walk around the park is boring. Another thing is what to do with the harvest.
Mushrooms in the big city
To the question of where to pick mushrooms in St. Petersburg so that later they could be eaten, there is only one harsh answer: nowhere. Numerous studies indicate that insidious breasts and champignons are very fond of sorbing harmful substances, especially salts of heavy metals.
Some Russula growing in a contaminated place is capable of drawing so many dangerous substances out of the ground and air that it becomes almost a grebe. St. Petersburg is a large industrial city, and this automatically turns it into a place where you cannot pick mushrooms.
Who is more harmful in the world?
Each type of mushroom has a tendency to accumulate “favorite” harmful substances. Birch bark, for example, love cadmium, russula prefer zinc or copper, champignons (which, by the way, most often come across in city parks) “store" mercury. It is important to remember that a mushroom is only a small part of the mycelium, which can occupy hundreds of square meters and absorb everything within reach like a sponge. That is why the concentration of some muck in it can be several times greater than in the soil next to it.
The same is with radionuclides. From this point of view, the most dangerous are the oily, boletus and boletus, as their roots are located on the surface itself.
In addition to answering the question “where to pick mushrooms in St. Petersburg”, it would be nice to decide on the question of why to do this. From the point of view of a nutritionist, this is a “so-so” food. There are no particularly useful substances in mushrooms; they contain much less protein than legumes (not to mention meat and fish). For the sake of fiber, it is also more beneficial to eat vegetables - the chitin fibers contained in the mushrooms are very coarse, they are not only not suitable for everyone, they also interfere with the absorption of nutrients. In this regard, it is not recommended to use them neither children, nor the elderly, nor people with gastrointestinal problems. But it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth contacting such an unhelpful product, and even risking poisoning by confusing the relatively harmless mercury mushroom with a pale grebe.
Are mushrooms evil?
Some lovers of scaring the public insist that to collect, and even more so there are wild mushrooms - the lot of mentally abnormal people. The discussion on the topic “where to pick mushrooms in St. Petersburg” can bring such impressionable comrades to a heart attack. Different programs on TV and radio urge not to eat them at all - never and not at all. The ideological opponents of these alarmists picking mushrooms in St. Petersburg insist that they do this all their lives - and nothing, they are still alive and they feel great. True, as usual, somewhere in the middle.
Obviously, in the city, near major freeways, along landfills and other places, mushrooms should not be collected. It is undesirable to go after them in a dry time: the less fungi, the higher the concentration of harmful substances in them. They are not advised to collect them under high voltage power lines: they create a powerful
magnetic field that can even affect the
composition of human
blood . It is unlikely that such an effect is beneficial.
Do not take into the basket and old overgrown mushrooms. Knowledgeable people say that in these finds not only harmful substances from the environment accumulate , but also products of their own metabolism. Such a mushroom is not only not very tasty, but they can also be poisoned.
Get away from civilization!
Using common sense, it is easy to conclude: the cleaner the substrate on which the fungus grows, the less likely it is to swallow a dose of some lead, cadmium, or mercury with it. For a "quiet hunt" you should find a place further away, cleaner and calmer. It is better to pick mushrooms under Peter, and not in it.
It is enough to travel out of town, choose a suitable oak tree and examine it for suspicious elements - prematurely dead grass, dried up trees, extraneous odors, dead animals. If the forest is fresh and green, birds chirp differently, bugs crawl cheerfully, butterflies flutter joyfully, and trees with mighty crowns stretch to the tender autumn sun - this is what you need.
For most citizens, a mushroom picking trip is not just getting food, but, first of all, rest, communication with nature. You walk through the woods - the air is clean, cool, the leaves rustle under your feet, the squirrels crack over your head ... Beauty! And without any gathering it would be completely possible to do - but, unfortunately (or fortunately), people absolutely do not know how to aimlessly wander among trees. They need a good reason, which means that you need to take the basket at the ready and go not just for a walk, but for mushrooms.
Where are they, free chanterelles?
There are a lot of hunters for mushrooms in St. Petersburg. In the season, the surrounding forests are teeming with people with baskets, buckets and bags. The mushroom place closest to the city is Novoye Devyatkino, which can be reached in 20 minutes (from the metro). In the forests there, even whites come across. But, unfortunately, the mycelium there is already much smaller than mushroom pickers. At every step, an unlucky owner of an empty bucket comes across enviously squinting at a lonely russula lying in the middle of a huge basket of a successful rival. To find something with such a crowd is very problematic.
Have to work hard
If you do not want to return home with an empty basket, you will have to go somewhere far away from the city (and from competitors). Around Peter there are many places where you can pick mushrooms. The fans of the “quiet hunt” are in demand in the village of Sosnovo, you can get there by train. If you don’t look for easy ways and take a bus to Sosnovo, you can get to Snegirevka.
The coniferous forests here are full of mushrooms, suitable for salting: these are chanterelles, loads. In a successful year, and aspen boletus with white. The forests near the village of Losevo are famous for the abundance of chanterelles, and for whites it is better to go to Stekolnoye (Tosnensky district). True, in order to get to Losevo, one will have to get one's own transport: traveling by train to Tosno, and then getting to the forest by bus is a pleasure below average. Petersburgers go for mushrooms and to Dibuny - in the woods around the station grow mushrooms, boletus, Russula and chanterelles.
Lazy people note
If you are not a fan of feeding mosquitoes, then your path lies in the nearest market. No need to wake up, no light or dawn, shake in the train, spend hours wandering through the forest, God knows where. In St. Petersburg, you can also pick mushrooms for money. This, of course, is very prosaic, but what to do if you want soup, but communication with nature is not. In the harvest years, a wide variety of mushrooms are sold in the markets. If you have a stable psyche and not be tormented by suspicions that they were collected at some kind of radioactive landfill, it is quite possible to get what you want without exerting extra effort.
For impressionable people who do not want to eat lead with copper together with the cooked dish, the conclusion is obvious: it is best to go to the supermarket for mushrooms in St. Petersburg. The choice there, of course, is not brilliant, except for mushrooms, it is unlikely that there is anything, but it is safer for health. Products presented at grocery stores are subject to a hazard test.
In the end, where to pick mushrooms in St. Petersburg is the personal choice of every Petersburger. In a roadside ditch, in a market, in a supermarket, outside the city limits - everyone is free to do as he pleases. The only comment: in the decision-making process, it is important to remember that caring for the health of one's own and those close to ones is not unnecessary.