Not an english student/teacher or even native speaker but for me "It takes some time of delicate cutting" makes more sense than "It takes some time delicately cutting the mushrooms to harvest them". That doesn't sound grammatically correct to me or at least has a very odd sentence structure.
It would make more sense to say "It takes Lairen some time and delicate cutting to harvest the mushrooms, but he manages to get several pieces for himself and Zandahrell in the end".