How long does it take mushroom logs to fruit?
I wouldn't give up hope
yet, Deb. If you plugged your logs with shiitakes, they can sometimes
take up to eighteen months to bear, with the longer periods being due to
slower strains or harder trees (like oak).
Plus, different types of shiitakes fruit in different seasons. All of the mushrooms we've harvested so far from the logs plugged this past spring are the Snow Cap
variety, which (as the name suggests) fruit deeper into the winter than
most other types of shiitakes. So, for all I know, our WW70 and Native
Harvest logs might be fully colonized and just waiting on the right
weather cues to fruit. Yours might be too!
That
said, "under a tree" isn't really the best place for mushroom logs. In
my experience, there's too much sun beneath a typical fruit tree to
protect mushroom logs, especially once the leaves fall in winter. The
result can be split bark, dried out wood, and the rapid proliferation of
weed fungi. So, if you've got a shadier, damper place (but one raised a
foot or so off the ground), you might want to move those logs over. We
currently have our logs up against the north side of the trailer, and
it's definitely the best arrangement we've found for them yet.
Now, if we can just get their sprinklers going
next year to keep the logs hydrated during summer droughts, we might
just have happy mushrooms...and husbands. I think shiitakes might be
Mark's favorite crop!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Ah, so maybe there is hope. Good. These were green oak logs. They are on planks under a huge maple, but also on the north side of the barn, so its mostly shady. Fingers crossed. Thanks....