gardening mushrooms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of years ago Aaron and I inoculated a large number of oak logs with mushroom spawn plugs. We used shiitake, maitake, lion’s mane and reishi mycelium. After inoculating mushroom logs, it takes some time for the fungi mycelium to colonize the wood enough to begin producing mushrooms. Late last summer we actually started to get mushrooms from the shiitake logs (which is early, often logs as large as ours take at least two years). Our first big flush was astounding. We had mushrooms covering every counter in the kitchen and spread out on the floor awaiting dehydration. Several large paper bags full of fresh shiitakes were in the fridge. The dehydrator was running for days. We were all set to start selling the surplus to local restaurants and people interested in using them for medicine.

But the logs must have outdone themselves. We also had exceptionally dry, cold weather all fall and winter. Whatever the reason, the rest of the fall and winter we only had a few shiitake mushrooms here and there, enough for fresh eating, but nothing like that first flush. And the maitake, lion’s mane and reishi logs didn’t do much other than produce turkey tails.

We regularly make a medicinal mushroom decoction out of reishi, maitake, turkey tail and a fungus we wild-harvest: artist’s conk. We’ve been purchasing the reishi and maitake dried in bulk from Mountain Rose Herbs and we wanted to begin to grow our own instead. So, undeterred by the turkey tails, we inoculated some more logs with reishi, this time with a much heavier concentration of plug spawn. And we capped the ends of the logs with wax to help protect against competing fungi. We plan on letting them sit the full two years before forcing them for the first time.

This spring we inoculated more logs with maitake and lion’s mane (we’re nothing, if not persistent;) Over a couple of weekends we drilled holes, hammered plugs, and covered them with wax. In the past we’ve done all this outside under the cedar tree. This time we had pouring rain so we worked in the garage. Much less pleasant and definitely worse for photos but it got the job done. A fresh new pile of logs is now incubating. In some weird way they remind me of giant eggs, just waiting to hatch into mushrooms. But in reality it’s a lot more like planting seeds. Make the holes, put in the plugs, cover with wax, and then water regularly…and wait.

Hopefully, in two years we’ll have some fresh new medicinal mushrooms to show you! Seems like so long from now, but it’ll be here before we know it.

 

{linking up with Mental Chew for How Does Your Garden Grow?}