Propagating shiitake mushrooms for free: Full-size logs
We didn't order any
spawn, so how do we plan to get fungi into our new
mushroom logs? The
idea is to riff off our
recent mini-log success and see if we can get
mycelium to run from existing logs into fresh new wood.
After bringing three
sycamore logs home to our mushroom station, I soaked corrugated
cardboard in warm water and layered the wet paper product on top of the
fresh logs. Corrugated cardboard is a perfect environment for spawn, so
it should tempt the existing fungi out of their old logs and into the
new.
Speaking of old logs, we
stacked three of those on top of the cardboard layer. I was careful to
choose all logs of the same variety since I want to get a triple dose
of inoculation rather than having different types of shiitakes fighting
it out for the fresh wood.
As a side note, I fully
expect the three old logs to stop fruiting as soon as they notice the
fresh substrate beneath them. In general, fungi are either colonizing
new ground as fast as they can or popping out mushrooms to spread their
spores, never doing both at the same time. So if you only have a few
logs, you might not want to try this at home --- your fruiting logs
will be out of commission for as long as they're spreading spawn down
below.
Of course, this is all
hypothetical at the moment. Time to settle in to wait and see what
happens!
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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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