The Garden Giant or Wine Cap Mushroom (Stropharia rugosoannulata) is a species of mushroom is an agaric of the family Strophariaceae. In the trade it is sometimes also called brown cap.

Although the giant dreuschling is found in our region and throughout most of Europe, the species may have been introduced from the New World:

The first attempts to domesticate Stropharia rugosoannulata were made in the GDR in the 1970s. With the help of North Korean specialists, a wild find was refined into the later highly sought-after cultivar “Winnetou”. The name was probably given as a tribute to Karl May and the fact that the genetics probably actually originated in America.

Non-sterile outdoors on straw/ bark mulch/compost or whole straw bales.

Indoors on pasteurized straw or sterile on straw/compost substrates. Other methods and substrates are conceivable and worth exploring. A cover crop is helpful to cultivate the Garden Giant, but not mandatory.

1. Dissolve the malt extract and agar in distilled water.
2.  Sterilize the solution by autoclaving at 121°C for 15-20 minutes.
3. Pour the sterilized media into petri dishes or other containers under sterile conditions.
4. The Yeast is optional, but you can add it to any recipe for nutritions, same for Peptone.

For indoor growing, pasteurized straw or sterilized sawdust is inoculated with cereal seeds.

Spent shiitake or oyster production blocks can be re-sterilized for further reduction by Stropharia rugosoannulata.

50-100% indoors, outdoors much higher

It absorbs toxins from the soil, such as explosive compounds, and neutralizes them. Heavy metals are also absorbed and incorporated into the fungal substance.

Stropharia rugosoannulata is a Holarctic-Sub-Atlantic distributed species that has been recorded in Japan, North America, Argentina, and Europe. In Europe, finds are reported from Italy, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland; northward, the species occurs as far north as Norway and Sweden. In Europe the species has only been found since the 1950s, possibly introduced from North America. In Germany, the Giant Drabble occurs scattered in the north and northwest, otherwise it is rare. The species is spreading in Germany, benefiting among other things from the increasing use of wood chips and bark mulch in gardens and parks.

In deciduous forests and/or among hardwood litter or in soils rich in undecayed woody material, especially common in wood chips used in urban/suburban ornamental plantings.

-

Stropharia rugosoannulata is a wideley cultivated gourmet mushroom, althoug individual incompatibilities as well as poisonings have been reported with giant dreuschlings collected in parks on wood shredders.