Its been a few years since we last inoculated logs, and the last time I wrote about it was even longer still. Since then, lots of lessons learned, so time for an update.
This time around, we were able to get more logs going due to the graciousness of a dear friend. The White Oak, posing both as a loving, and an ‘oh, no we have 35mph north winds coming in’ threatening figure was de limbed of those arms hanging over the north side of the house, in late winter this year. Yes, she has been like family, and now besides gettin’ all up on our roof, she will be providing the base for the Shiitakes to feed us medicine as well. Lord knows we need this to do good work.
We let the limbs sit on the ground for about 6 weeks – just enough time to allow the decaying process to begin as Shittakes will not invade living cells. There is a fine balance between this and keeping good moisture content in the log needed for fruiting long term. Honestly, though we intend some sort of perfect timing, it just ends up happening when the time is right and we try to take into consideration, the celestial elements of water and heat. Hats tipped, we ended up inoculating when the moon was in Sagittarius which insures some sort of bio-deliciousness in my book.
Waiting to decay
Having done this before, and now with our own tools, bees wax from our own Sun Raw Apiary and a garden already made up for the logs, the set up was smoother than ever. It only took a few hours to inoculate 25 logs between the 2 of us.
The logs are approx 4’ long by 5” in diameter with 1” holes drilled in somewhat of a diamond pattern throughout. The sawdust spore is inserted with a special tool and then covered with a layer of bees wax so that it doesn’t dry out. We wax the ends as well and label them before laying them in the yard.
During the initial incubation period, we keep the logs moist with a sprinkler from our water catchment system. (After a few seasons, we only soak them when we have a long dry spell or would like a fruiting.) This mostly happens during spring and fall as it is simply too hot for them to grow in the summer and too cold in the winter. To inspire a flush, the logs soak in a tub of rainwater for 24 hrs. In about 5-7 days, the mushrooms begin to show themselves and we harvest as desired by size and weather outlook. There are times during the year that we resort to using well water as the rain catchment gets a bit too warm for the their liking. When the logs start to flush, we lean them up horizontally for easy access and less bugs. Sometimes we have had to make tents around them to stave off the deer. Not that I mind them having a few, but the critters tend to take all of them.
Incubation with wild ginger 🙂
We eat as much as we want fresh and the rest are dehydrated for later use in soups and stews. I actually prefer the taste of dried to fresh as the process brings out it’s umami flavor. Last year I started tincturing them as well and use it as an immune booster, to get a blast of B vitamins and a dose of iron. This in itself is a great supplement for those of us who choose a vegan diet.
Our sawdust spawn has been provided by Field and Forest, http://www.fieldforest.net/ a Midwest company who provides great information, customer service and a large variety of strains to choose from and experiment with. So far, we have tried, about 6 different varieties and WR46 seems to be the most productive in this area. Even 6 year old rotten, spongy logs with little bark left on them are still producing surprisingly well.
These mushrooms along with the wild ones, are so beautiful, nourishing and plentiful and we feel super lucky to have them as a part of our forest garden.
Mushroom garden
Marla Bird
Scatter Seeds... 