... patting myself on the back about this one. Cut down a gum to use to grow mushrooms. 25 inch bar on the saw for scale. Dropped it right where I wanted to. And I finally made a level back cut:
And put in about 1800 plugs in the last 24 hours (headlamp comes in handy!) Pearl Oyster. Dropped an oak and put in 1000 Lion's mane plugs during the week. I'll use up the remaining couple hundred tomorrow.
I had some chitake mushroom plugs in 3-4 foot white oak logs. 4-8 inch dia. for easier handling. Had lots of nice mushrooms but I was the only one in the household that liked them. I would bring paper grocery bags full to work and it they would disappear quick. Tried to edit chitake twice,spelled with a s. Love auto correct.
I'll take a picture of the inoculation once it stops raining. Not much to it really: buy inoculated dowels, drill holes, hammer in the dowels. Then wait until you get mushrooms. It is the kind of gardening that suits me well: a big push and then nothing to do. I like the catfish pond for the same reason. Make a pond, put in some fathead minnows and catfish and thats the end of that. Let them grow and start reproducing. Now there is nothing to do but catch one when I want one.
Beer can aluminum makes a label that will outlast the log. I can recover the stainless roofing nail when the log gives up the ghost.
It's hard to say. Usually about a year. I've had them at 6 months or so. Some species are slower like 2 years. Oysters are fairly aggressive and gum is a relatively soft hardwood so probably on the shorter time. But then again, it has to colonize the whole log before it starts fruiting and it's a big log, at least a foot in diameter (3-6 inches is usual, but I've had good results with bigger logs and they last longer). So long story short: eventually. One of the things I like about mushrooms is they are rather unpredictable, at least the way I grow them. One day, they start coming up and that usually goes for a few days. I eat some fresh and dry the rest. You can force shiitake to bear by soaking them for 24 hours. Commercial growers do that so they can have a steady supply to sell rather than a huge amount all at once. That is why they tend to use smaller logs than I do.
Here's a couple Shiitake mushrooms. Only pic I could find on my new phone. As bert the turtle mentioned, you can force them to grow by soaking the log. Very easy to grow. Keep them in a shaded spot and watch them grow. If you have several logs, soak a few to start them growing and rotate through the rest for a steady supply.
