There is an app for what3words that can be found on the website. I’ll shift over to PM since this post is about mushrooms. If anyone else wants to know about this stuff we can bring it back. The answer to the question is all w3w app needs is GPS. The photo is of Prospect Heights, IL. >>> now to PM
I’m getting some mushrooms now. I’m going to pick these for dinner, maybe spaghetti. I going out to reconfigure the logs in a minute.
There’s some small ones just starting. All are coming from the plugs.
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Getting some more mushrooms with the rain, and some help with containers of water on the bottoms of some logs. Making spaghetti with chunky mushrooms when they get bigger.
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We don’t get any rain at all out here in PNW for the summer so I usually dunk my logs in water, each end for about 5 seconds so they don’t dry out and shade them in pallets for the summer.
John S
PDX OR
Some more pictures of the same mushrooms two days latter. It rained all night and they grew fast.
I made the extra chunky mushroom spaghetti sauce. Everyone liked it. I’ll have plenty of mushrooms. These logs are just starting and I have about thirty on the logs.
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I used sawdust block spawn and a palm injector from North Spore Mushrooms to inoculate oak logs last summer, check them out now! Bock spawn is more economical, $20 did this batch of logs. I did this once before, but never got a harvest like this…enough to put some up for winter cooking.
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I found it’s not hard to grow my own spawn. I just buy the mushroom in the store cut it up and put it in a mason jar with a coffee filter screwed on with the lid ring. I have done it with regular mason lids too. I take a semi fresh oak log and run my power planer across it into a box. Then boil water and ad the shavings to the water let it simmer for a bit then run it through a sieve and put it in the jar. I mix it up with the mushroom chunks after it cools. You have to get all the water out too by pressing on the shavings while they are in the sieve. I use all sterile equipment too. It takes about a month for the jar to turn white. Your going to have lots of mushrooms. Your logs look healthy.
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Looks good! I’ll add a couple ideas. You can get by with fewer plugs in a log…let’s say 3/5 of what you have and that includes putting a few in the ends, near but not in, the heartwood. (Meaning you could have two more logs going…FYI for next time.) The mycelium travels along the grain much quicker than across the grain, so I use few plugs and kind of spiral them along the log. Sealing the ends can be done but since I put 4-5 plugs in and then wax’m I don’t add extra wax unless it’s a just a splash on the heartwood. Another place I wax is where branches have been cut off. I try to use wood that has few branches but sometimes they’re unavoidable. You are overdoing instead of under-doing which is by far the best way to go at the beginning. Don’t let them get too dry. They look really good.
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Somebody recently linked the following video on the NNGA FB page.
I thought it was pretty interesting. Was telling cousinfloyd that I’ve got 3 20-yr old sawtooth oaks in some old nursery beds that I was gonna cut down and inoculate with Shiitake plugs, in addition to native red & white oak, sweetgum, and sugar maple.
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I couldn’t see the video, Lucky.
There’s a reason that shiitakes are the most popular mushroom on the planet: taste good, very medicinal, easy to cultivate, not super expensive. Hard to argue with those facts.
John S
PDX OR
Great looking burst of mushrooms. Do you like the flavor of these? I have grown Pholiota nameko. They taste ok but they’re very slimy. There used to be another mushroom they called chestnut mushroom. I think it was called Hypholoma sublateritium.
I have to agree with Lucky that oak is a very good type of substrate upon which to grow many mushrooms.
John S
PDX OR
people have given me plugs several times and I’ve never been able to find oak locally in order to use them, and have ended up giving them away again. these all look so great and the spiral-around makes good sense.
It’s not like oak is the only kind of wood you can use as a substrate.I’ve grown mushrooms on maple, sweet gum, and a few other hardwoods. Oak is just one of the best.
John S
PDX OR
I’ve currently got honey locust, old dry oak chunks, and someone offering me willow chunks.
I’m currently soaking the oak pieces to see if they’ll take. I’ll try the honey locust too with a few, why not.
the oak is untreated but it’s been sitting dry (several years) it’s very dry. I’m hoping overnight is long enough to get it soaked through. it’s been roughly cut square with almost no bark, so I’ll probably use a big bag to keep it damp.
experimenting, I guess!
I wouldn’t try to inoculate old wood. The sugars are gone and if they were eaten up, some other fungus got them. I never try to inoculate wood over a month old from when it was cut.
John S
PDX OR
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then these go back in the fridge and don’t get used at all. I’ve been hunting for oak or fresh logs here for months.
I would try Craig’s List.
yes, I’ve tried there, a bunch of gardening groups and market or barter on facebook, every person I know, called local arborists and a tree-felling company too.
I’ve been serious in looking, there just isn’t any here.
I do have one person who offered willow- do you think they would take in that? if so I’ll get those logs from her this weekend- I didn’t think they would grow well in it.
this has been my experience every time I’ve been given plugs, it’s not unique to this year.