Mushroom Gardening?

[applestar]

Yesterday --



...it was 30°F this morning and they hadn't grown much. Now it's pouring outside. Hopefully these will be able to grow to be a lovely harvest.

[rainbowgardener]

Beautiful! Something I still haven't tried yet. Every time I see your posts about it, I think "I should try that."

[applestar]

Thanks @rainbowgardener -- it's alot of *yummy* fun.

...With your (new) location, I would check this place out --

How Mushroom Mountain Got Started | Mushroom Mountain
http://mushroommountain.com/about

I'm not sure if the strains they grow would be suited to my climate since I need them to survive the winters here, but it's been on my list of likely sources. And like most of the ones that I like, they encourage organic concept, myco remediation, and offer workshops to boot.

[applestar]

It rained -- a lot -- in the last couple of days. These look waterlogged but hopefully will be OK.



There was a very opened cap growing under one of the logs, and I knocked off a button while trying to extract it.

[applestar]

The shiitake still looked a bit soggy this morning, but by lunchtime, they were starting to open up, so I harvested some



I separated the logs and lifted one up crosswise afterwards so they will gave room to stretch out more

[applestar]

Do you believe in luck, karma, fate... ? I decided to give today's shiitake harvest to my mom and ran them over to her house -- and noticed along the way that there was a house where someone had started to take down a tree and had some nice looking logs and trunk rounds out on the curb. After delivering the freshly harvested shiitake -- my mom was delighted -- I slowed down at the house on the way home and saw that a man had come out and was working on moving more logs and rounds out to the curb. I rolled down the window and asked him if he was getting rid of them and what kind of tree it was, and he said MAPLE, and they were freshly cut. Oooh.

When I asked if I could have some, he readily agreed, and when I turned around and got out by his pile of wood, pulled on a pair of gardening gloves and, taking a deep breath, prepared to load them in my SUV... he very generously got them all loaded for me, even checking them over and rejecting ones that he said were not very good.

When I got home and shifted them, I realized --- these are VERY HEAVY. I silently thanked the guy once again. I'm going to need some help unloading these and moving them to the back yard. I think I'll wait until day after tomorrow (It's supposed to POUR tomorrow).

[applestar]

Yep more shiitake today. I went out in the morning before the storm system reached us and harvested this much. Also moved the logs around -- hopefully this way they can grow without getting squeezed and smushed, and as long as it doesn't freeze, it's better for them to get some air flow while we are having wet weather.


...I was intrigued to see a cluster of shiitake growing on one of the support logs (not intentionally inoculated -- can't remember if this is even an oak ...it might be a plum branch....)

[applestar]

I was bummed to see these -- some kind of shelf fungi -- growing on two of my shiitake logs.

I don't know if the shiitake on those logs were spent, or if they were tired from all those flushes and, in their moment of vulnerability, were invaded.

[Gary350]

This is very interesting. I tried to grow mushrooms 35 years ago with a mushroom kit. I sprinkled the spores on the agar and a week or so later it was ready to cut into small pieces and put in the composed cow manure. A few weeks later the manure was full of white mycelium. A month later no mushrooms but the whole container of cow manure was solid chunk of mycelium. A month after that still no mushrooms. I kept watching and waiting but no mushrooms ever grew. I did everything like the kit said but no mushrooms. ?

We go camping and do lots of hiking, in the spring if I were to push a wheel barrel along a hiking trailer I could pick a wheel barrel full of mushrooms in 30 minutes. I know a farmers cow pasture at the dead end of Pate Rd in the spring you could fill 5 pickup truck beds heaping full with 1000s of mushrooms. I see lots of different mushrooms in TN, high humidity and lots of rain perfect conditions for mushrooms in cool weather but I can not grow mushrooms from a kit. LOL.

I studied mushrooms in college, a person needs to know what they are picking in the wild before you eat them there are look alike mushrooms that are poison. I did all the test & spore prints to determine what the mushrooms are but I still never felt save to eat a wild mushroom.

There are professional mushroom hunters in TN that make $1000s selling mushrooms to restaurants. I have always wanted to eat some of those mushrooms but I refuse to pay $10 for a mushroom to see what it tastes like, if I don't like it I wasted $10 for something that has almost no food value. I have lost interest in mushrooms, it has been many years since I even looked at a restaurant menu for mushrooms in season. If I could grow mushrooms i might get interested again.

[ElizabethB]

For years growing mushrooms has been on my bucket list. I waited too long. I no longer have the necessary shade - full sun front and back.

[Lindsaylew82]

Apple,

They look like Turkey Tail fungus to me. They grow on every downed log to be found around here. Literally everywhere. did you eventually get more shiitake?



(They are supposed to have medicinal properties when dried and processed, but I am ignorant of the methods... Proper ID would be a good idea too, as I am also ignorant of proper mushroom ID. )

[applestar]

...remember I gave up on my shiitake logs this summer because foreign fungi had taken over?

I was bummed to see these -- some kind of shelf fungi -- growing on two of my shiitake logs.

I don't know if the shiitake on those logs were spent, or if they were tired from all those flushes and, in their moment of vulnerability, were invaded.

...well, today just by pure chance, I happened to walk near the logs and just happened to glance at them — I Hadn’t been paying much attention to them since I thought they were goners — and THIS is what I saw!



They were frozen — 32°F when I went out — but Heck no I wasn’t going to leave them behind!

...the really small immature ones would not come off, so I did leave them, but these filled 1/2 of a gallon size ziplock bag. I decided to put them directly in the freezer since they were already frozen solid.

[applestar]

I found some more harvestable shiitake today.



I just had some of them for early lunch — soaked to defrost and shed debris in filtered water, blotted dry and sliced, then gently heated in evoo, then added to upgrade leftover lobster ravioli and whole wheat pasta and meatballs in button-mushroom marinara. Yes I mixed them all together.

[applestar]

...aaaand more today! I guess I could call this “winter flush” — I really think it matters which “strain” you grow and from which source. I bought this one called Bellwether from Field and Forest Products, located in Wisconsin, hoping to find a strain that is hardy enough for my Zone 6 negative single digit winters.




...I need to find out what this interloper is... it’s really pretty fwiw:

...current best guess is False Turkeytail because it has smooth underside and no pores. Not toxic — not eating it but was going to remove if they would contaminate the shiitake.

[applestar]

Yesterday, I went out for quick inspection of the garden to see if Friday’s crazy snow/ice/windstorm had caused any damage.

These shiitake had been growing

— they are much smaller than the other ones I harvested recently ...maybe last of this flush...