By Tracee and Matt
We ordered a mushroom growing kit from Field and Forest Products which included contains 500 plugs of certified organic Shiitake spawn, an 8.5mm hex shaft drill bit with stop collar, a 6 oz. tub of plug wax, 10 aluminum tags, instructions and recipes. The shiitake mycelium came on wood dowels inoculated with each particular strain. Some strains are more cold tolerant and some have different seasonal flushes.
Certain logs are favorable to certain mushroom growth; we used Boxelder because they are one of the recommended wood varieties for shiitake mushrooms and because we had so many from clearing parts of our property. The logs need to be three feet long with diameters of 3 to 6 inches to 1) help the log stay hydrated, 2) easy to move the logs, and 3) not so large that inoculation is difficult. We drilled holes using the supplied drill bit which has a stop on it so it stops at the correct depth. The holes are 6 inches apart with staggered rows so that the holes form a diamond pattern.
Next, the inoculated wood dowels are hammered into the holes; the mycelium make the dowels slippery so hammering in the dowel is easy.
Then the hole and dowel is covered with a bit of plyable wax to keep out other organisms.
We attached a label to each log so we can track growth.
We stacked our logs out in the woods where there is dappled shade. We made a total of three mushroom towers (May 2017, August 2017 and October 2017). For all three, we expect to get some mushrooms in the spring of 2018!
