I just had a big silver maple cut down. It’s easily 3+ feet across, and I had them leave almost 5 feet of trunk.
My plan is to innoculate this stump with mushroom spawn. I had the tree guys cut a couple slits down into the stump, but I wish they had cut down further. (they went down about 6 inches) There are two of these, parallel across the stump.
I have purchased 2.5 lbs of yellow oyster mushroom wood spawn, 100 blue oyster dowels and 100 chicken of the woods dowels. I also have purchased 8 oz of beeswax.
I’ve never done anything like this before. My plan is to plug dowels with the beeswax. I want to mix the purchased spawn some with a bin of sawdust I was able to salvage from the removal. The rest will form a layer down into the cuts and covering the entirety of the cut surface of the tree.
Should the top of the tree be tarped? Should the sawdust be sterilized first?
The front of my house faces south. This is a hot location most of the summer.
I did a bunch of shiitake logs this spring, but that is my only experience with mushroom growing.
However, I remember reading in my research that it’s best not to put competing strains/species in the same log, so you might want to consider only inoculating the stump with one type.
Unsure, but I would think the stump would still be able to draw plenty of moisture up from the ground, so it might be resilient to drying out in its sunny location? I’m sure shade wouldn’t hurt. Might be good to tarp it for a few months until the mycelium can get established into the wood.
You might also consider drilling some holes in the side of the stump and adding plugs there. It’s a big stump, this would speed up the time it takes to colonize. Also, the sapwood will be better than the heartwood.
i did this with a aspen stump. put in your plugs per instructions then cap the whole top with a white garbage bag. dont cover the whole thing as the mycelium needs to breathe. i would only use one type of mushroom or they will compete with each other. cover all holes with wax. about once a a month take the bag off and give the top of the stump a good soak. wont hurt to shade the stump some. mine was already shaded by a spruce so i didnt need to worry about it drying out. i used blue oyster and that stump still sends out flushes 5 yrs. later. i bet yours would go longer due to its shear size. good luck!
I had a holly tree stump that was accidentally inoculated by oyster mushrooms. The stump actually was the platform that my rain barrel sat on. I would get mushrooms that grew out from the underside of the barrel/top of the stump. As long as the bark was intact I would get flushes of mushrooms from the sides of the stump too. Once the bark fell off, mushrooms only grew from the interfaces with the ground and the rain barrel. I got 4-5 years out of the stump until it collapsed under the weight of the rain barrel. Regarding your cutting of the stump, I would keep it to a minimum to preserve the bark.
I did the deed today. I packed the 6 inch deep cuts with sawdust spawn (golden oyster).
I took the remaining spawn and covered it with sawdust from this tree. I also did plugs of chicken of the woods throughout the first foot of the trunk.
When the spawn do reach eachother, we’ll see what happens. Given they are 4+ feet apart i think I’ve got some time.
I regularly collect wild mushrooms, and oysters - Pleurotus ostreatus - are quite common. They often grow along fallen tree trunks. What you find with fungi is that a tree will have a succession of fungi as it rots. There are the initial colonisers when the wood is fresh, then when it’s a bit rotten, other species take over and so on until it is humus. Fresh wood is full of tannins that repel most fungi, that is why people chop up wood or even use sawdust, it gives more surface area for the fungi to attack.
Also fungi are seasonal. In your case you might get oysters fruiting in the autumn, or even in summer in cool wet conditions. Here in England chicken of the woods is a summer species. Frequently watering the tree might help. Lots of logs would probably have been better.
I’m interested to see how your experiment progresses. I would guess your best results will be oysters next spring and fall. You would probably have to pick them early if they are in the sun or they’ll dry out too quickly. I used to think chicken of the woods only works on oak, but I’ve seen it on willow and cherry, so maybe maple will work?
I put the chicken of the woods dowels on the north-side (house facing side). I figured this might be the cooler side of the stump. Also due to my proximity to the lake, my humidity levels tend to be quite high and my temperatures somewhat moderated.
I also bought an especially vigorous blue oyster dowel spawn, and was debating putting that in the south-facing side of the tree towards the ground.
Eitherway it appears I will have a bunch of surplus dowel spawn for at least 2 varieties.
I do have 2 large logs that I cut just over a year ago. Both (IE) mulberry, think they are worth plugging with dowels?
Here in England it grows on oak, beech, sweet chestnut, willow, cherry and even yew and magnolia. There are records on Acer pseudoplanatus i.e. Sycamore. I don’t think we have maple but it’s an Acer.
Field and forest states that oyster should work on (silver) maple.
There is no recommendation for chicken of the woods, but it cost me $10 to try, so why not. Silver maple is not listed as incompatable, there is just no recommendation or list it as questionable.
The one variety that gets listed as recommended (for silver maple) is turkey tail and I have no interest in growing that one. (I had turkey tail on a fallen (ash) tree in my yard previously.
Oyster is listed as “compatable” with silver maple.
