We apperently don’t have a generic mushroom thread, so I am making one for this year.
I got a winecap growing kit around christmas this year and I was able to harvest my first shroom! Very excited. It wasn’t in the grow bag I put the spawn in though, it was on the ground maybe a foot from it. I already knew the mycelium had spread out of the bag, but I almost missed it.
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Are you sure that’s Winecap? I would expect a darker cap, darker gills, a whiter stem, and especially a more pronounced veil. There seems to be no veil at all on the specimen to the right.
I’m not expert but I have grown WInecap and harvested them wild.
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The discoloration is from the Sun hitting it. The gills are that wine-stain like blue-grey color and leave the correct spore spot. The edges of the cap are a little ragged, that type of wear and tear is probably what happened to the veil on the one side. The two are connected to each other, so I wouldn’t take the missing veil too seriously.
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my mycelium from last year’s winecap is through all the bed, but I haven’t had any hardwood to feed it- hoping it comes through soon again so I don’t need to order any more spawn this year.
I may put down straw on top to feed it.
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2 flushes fron the backyard, 1 flush from the front. I put the spawn in the ground in between Christmas and New Years, looks like they took just about 3 months before making fruiting bodies. All winecaps. The first one I had a couple days ago almost tasted like roasted nuts, which is awesome because I am allergic to tree nuts and don’t normally get that taste.
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Dogwoods are starting to bloom here… a sure sign it is time to start hunting morels.
We got a big rain last night… I will check some of my hot spots in a day or two.
TNHunter
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I inoculated some logs with shiitake spawn last week. The last time I started shiitakes was in 2018. I still have one log left from that inoculation, which I hope will produce again this spring. It’s basically impossible to find someone willing to sell fresh hardwood logs to the public here, but the city cut a lot of healthy trees back from the roads this year, so I managed to collect a dozen nice logs that way. That’s how I got the last ones too. They always chip the ones in residential areas and leave rest in the ditches to rot. You have to get them before the people scavenging firewood though, so I have a mix of wood. Yellow and white birch, maple, oak, alder, black cherry, and one aspen log, which I’m not very confident in.
I wish i could find morels here. The earliest spring mushrooms I’ve seen are false morels, which come in early May. I’m not enough of a risk taker to try eating them.
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March 16th of last year:
So I’ve been keeping an eye on that same area. I placed half of a remesh tomato cage over that area in order to protect it and then gave it a light sprinkling of fresh wood chips over the winter. I haven’t seen anything yet but we are just now getting some rain so maybe over the next couple of days I’ll see a resurgence. Chanterelle won’t appear for a bit though.
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I inoculated white oak logs with shiitake a year ago. They seem ready to pop. Meanwhile I have some logs left over from the last inoculation a few years ago. This has been by far my most cost / work efficient approach to growing mushrooms.
Meanwhile I harvested some sugar maple logs a couple weeks ago. I’m expecting to inoculate those with Lion’s Mane within the next week.
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I did a short hunt for morels… my fav hot spot… found none.
I found one little sprig of sweet william up and a few very small trillium… and those are normally out a little more when morels are up.
Another week or so here and should start finding them.
Dogwoods are starting to bloom a few days ahead of the norm here.
TNHunter
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Nice! Those look thoroughly innoculated, too.
Have you tried shiitake on all those species before? I am curious how much difference in productivity is to be expected based on tree species.
Last year was my first year starting shiitake logs. I did 7 different strains on 7 different species. White oak, red oak, black cherry, hickory, wild cherry, red maple, box elder. Will be interesting to see what works.
So far, only West Wind and Native Harvest strains are just beginning to produce mushrooms, and only on white oak. Nothing on the rest yet.
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Field & Forest has a table of mushroom variety x tree species. For shiitake, the best results are oak and sugar maple. Good results are reported for Alder, American Beech, Blue Beech / Hornbeam, Ironwood, Sweetgum, and Persimmon.
I’ve tried white oak, red maple, and beech. By far the best results were on white oak.
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If anyone is in Washington state and needs fresh logs for mushroom growing or projects, let me know.
I’m hoping to make a few logs of lions mane once i get everything cleared out.
There’s aspen, maple, some type of fir trees, and a few random ones
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Thank you. I have studied their chart before, but was hoping for personal experiences, like yours. Did you have any particular issues with the Red maple that made it perform poorly for you? I’ve read it can be prone to contamination by wild fungi. Ive also read that red maple may colonize better after a longer rest time between felling amd innoculation. I’m hoping to make red maple work, as I have a near endless supply, but don’t want to cut my white oaks down!
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This is only my second time inoculating logs, and the first was a long time ago but I learned a few things both times.
If I remember correctly, in 2018 the only logs I could find were a few ~3-5” white birch, a couple of what I think were American elm (~8”), and some little trash bits of maple (~1-2”) that someone was throwing away on garbage day. I had an awful drill and it was a real slog to inoculate anything, so they were all poorly spaced (maybe 6-8 inches apart). I think the birch started producing about 18 months after inoculation and the elm around year 3. The maple never did anything, but I’m almost certain it’s because it dried out.
I did a lot wrong the first time—the wax was too cold, so it came off a few months later. The sanitation was generally poor. I never watered the logs and ended up partially burying some and using them as raised bed edging (those never produced). The others I kept for years under the deck, where it was too dry. I didn’t use nice fresh disease free wood, cut to ideal lengths and kept off the ground—and yet, I still got a few pounds of excellent mushrooms over the years from just a few logs.
Last year I got a nice, but smaller harvest off the elm and I think it may have been the last. I think the white birch produced for 2 and a half years.
Here’s what the suspected elm looked like last April:
I’ve seen varying reports of what works (cherry is sometimes considered bad and sometimes okay, elm is not typically recommended, but, if I got my log ID right, it worked for me). Also, some of the advice I’ve seen recently has changed since a few years ago. It used to be said that you should rest your logs for a few weeks, but now I’ve mostly read that they should be cut as close to inoculation as possible. A lot of the attitudes to what works also seem to have gotten a bit more laissez faire as far as shiitake goes.
I can’t identify cut tree species that well, but I think this time I’ve got bigtooth aspen, which I only did two rows on because I wasn’t very confident in it, but I’m using it more as support the rest of the logs anyway. I know I have white birch and yellow birch, red oak, black cherry, and either one or two species of maple, but I don’t know which ones. One each of the large maple and yellow birch logs was cut last fall and developed a little mould, and a couple of the small yellow birch had some very minor heart rot. It’s definitely a mixed bag and I won’t really be able to come to any definitive conclusions, but we’ll see what happens! I did everything better this time though, so I’m betting on at least 25lbs of mushrooms over the next few years.
Last time I think I got a cold fruiting strain. It was from Wylie Mycologicals and the whole experience was fantastic. I don’t think they’re operating anymore, so this time I got a cold fruiting strain from grow mushrooms Canada in the hopes that it would be similar.
Anyway, to sum up, yeah I dunno, but I say go for it with whatever you’ve got easiest access to—unless it’s a softwood, the harvest is probably going to be worth the effort. I do kind of wish I’d shelled out for the inoculation tool though.
Sorry, you didn’t ask for my life’s story, but there it is. In mushrooms.
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You clearly have more experience, more detailed insight, and probably more patience than me. I didn’t see anything specific about red maple that caused it to fail. Like you, I’d love more insight on how to use it successfully because I have a ton of red maple nearby. My take-away was simpler – white oak worked, red maple didn’t. When I looked again at the F&F chart, I decided to grow shiitake only on oak. I have lots of white oak nearby, both big branches that need pruning (shading a garden) and small trees that need thinning. My sugar maple harvest was also a big branch in a bad location (hanging low over the driveway).
FWIW, I’ve seen wild fungi and algae on the oak, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The shiitake just powers through.
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I was a bit surprised when the bits of maple I tried last time failed, but I put it down to desiccation and small size.
I’ve wondered, though, about the logistics of ideal timing for maple. The first time I inoculated, I was sternly advised that it should be done in April with logs cut in late February. But in late February the sap is usually running in maples, with bud-swell occurring in mid to late March. By contrast, if birch and oak are cut and inoculated in early to mid March, then the sap hasn’t begun to move, but there’s no more risk of extreme cold. Of course, that doesn’t account for any difference between sugar maple and red maple.
When did you cut / inoculate your red maple?
Edited to add: I just googled and read that red maples produce best if cut during sap flow, so what do I know?
Using Red Maple for Mushroom Cultivation Blog
As far as I know this isn’t recommended in other species, which I find very confusing.
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Thanks for the story above! Nice to hear that you still got mushrooms the first time around, despite not having optimal logs/conditions. Did your cold weather strain only give you mushrooms in the spring and fall, or did you also get them in the summer? Have you tried force fruiting your logs?
There are so many choices with species selection, timing, strain selection, rest times, incubation methods, etc. It’s overwhelming. I suppose just find one method that works and go with it. I happened to do red maple last fall, cut in November, and also cut some about 2 or 3 weeks ago that needs inoculating. Maybe I’ll find out in 2027 which one was better… 
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I’d stick to oak with Shiitake. I tried a bunch of trees like cherry, maple, oak, ect. So far Oak is the only thing that has worked. Plus that’s what all the mushroom farms use.
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Mine fruited without any intervention in late April-mid May, then again in mid September-mid October. Which roughly corresponds to when our daily average temperatures are around 10C/50F. That timing is a major point in its favour for me because most of the food I grow comes in the summer, so it’s nice to have some season extension.
I’ve read that cold fruiting strains don’t respond as well as warm strains to being forced, and I never tried, but we had pretty much constant heavy rain in July 2023, which I think would have triggered a flush of mushrooms if they had been able to fruit at that temperature.
We get around 60 inches of rain per year here, so I’ve never payed much attention to watering.
I have read that logs can start fruiting after 6-12 months if you inoculate them heavily, so maybe you won’t have to wait that long.
I’m envious of your access to live red maple and oak! Do you get any wild mushrooms off them? The woods where I hunt for black trumpets are a mix of red maple, red oak and yellow birch. I think if I had oaks I’d be trying to inoculate them with maitake and chicken of the woods.
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