Went out to my back woodlot today and one of my piles has some mushroom growth on the side of the pile that doesn’t get much sun. Is it fine to knock the growth off and burn it? The outer 1” seems a little punky.
That’s typical to have a mushroom farm on oak splits with sapwood. For exactly that reason I highly covet heart wood oak. Here’s some white oak that I’ve had stacked for a year and a half. I’m sure by the time I get around to burning it, there will be large mushrooms on every single split.
Perfect! Never had so much oak stacked up I wasn’t sure. Been mostly burning ash since I bought the house and never had any mushrooms.
If you peel the bark off you will less trouble with rot setting in. Even split the remaining bark will hold a lot of moisture just under it. top covering helps, course mother nature is not always co operative with rain coming straight down. Cross stacking lets more air flow through than just piling splits up, added bonus stacks do not fall over as much from shrinkage as splits dry out. I' ve re-stacked my fair share of conventional stacks over the years from that.
Burn it! I try to stack with bark up, sap wood don’t seem to get as much moisture. I think it makes a difference.
I cut up a log this summer, that legitimately had an inch of punk. Theres enough good wood left, I figured I'd try it. Top covered, it won't rot further. Worst case, the inch of punk will mean less btu's per log/will burn down faster. It was a 13" diameter by maybe 6 or 8' long. Fair amount of edge pieces, good heart wood. If the shrooms are dry, and small ish, ill burn them. If they're big enough for me to knock off, I might attempt it as they get moved in. Sca
Same here, my oak looks EXACTLY like that and some worse with some foreign looking crazy stuff growing on them. A lot of it will be burnt this year!
A buddy of mine who I play guitar with occasionally once told me, "If you can scrape it off with a pick it's disgusting. If you can't, it's mojo!" Looks like your wood's got plenty of mojo. Burn it!
Id burn it as is. Looks like mostly white oak. The sapwood on white and red oak commonly gets fungi growing on it. Some of my older oak stacks look the same. Can you move some to a sunnier location (close to house) and single row stack? Once the sun hits mushrooms they seem to die off. Sometimes ill brush them off with a gloved hand.
