I went out a couple of days ago and found the shiitake logs had been *trying* to produce more mushrooms. It looks like the freezing temp caught them and these had more-or-less freeze dried before they were able to fully open. Since I learned that if left in this condition, all they do is collect moisture and rot, I plucked them off (I gave them the sniff-test, then put them in the dehydrator for few hours to fully dry and pasteurize just in case).
Back in the fall, I had picked up some just felled nice logs because I had discovered that I forgot to use up some of the Bellwether shiitake plugs and they had stayed alive and went through a mycelial run in the refrigerator. But life got in the way and I never got around to inoculating the logs, which stayed in the back of my SUV all these months (yeah, don't ask -- it's been an odd autumn season
). They had gone through the bursts of "indian summer" and pretty much dried out -- more like nicely seasoned firewood.
I really don't think this will do any good, but I stuffed some of the plugs in the big log that had cracked along the entire length, and put a second log over the crack. Then thoroughly watered with rainwater from a rain barrel that didn't get emptied like it should have been earlier. As it turned out, we had a soaking rain the very next day, so the new dry logs did get a chance be saturated some more.
I don't really expect these two logs to be colonized, but it seemed like I might as well do something within the limited time I had. I just hope they won't end up negatively influencing the existing logs. I also unstacked them and set them down in the rail-formation for winter protection.
Oh, yeah, I still had some more plugs, so I tried adding boiled and cooled brown rice to the bag and put the rolled and taped closed bag back in the fridge to see if they will come back to life. Very casual low expectation experiment.
