Mushroom Gardening?

[Lindsaylew82]

Jelly!!!

Where did you get your shavings/sawdust?

[applestar]

There is a small local furniture manufacturer that works out of one unit of one those small pocket industrial warehouse business parks. They ONLY build with Douglas fir -- no composite materials, and when they get their stock lumber, first thing they do is run the boards through a power planer. They bag these shavings and sell them for $3 each in a commercial trash bag -- I'm pretty sure it's a drum size or 55 gal. Found them on Craigslist.

Next time I go back I'm going to rummage through their scrap lumber pile, too. Short ones are free.

[applestar]

Subject: 8 bags of treasures in my car -- D. FIR SHAVINGS for mulch

I was perusing the local craigslist for the first time in ages and came across an advert offering clean douglas fir shavings $3 a bag. I was picturing trash bag size and decided to go for 8 bags to mulch my blueberries and raspberries. When I got there, they told me the bags were 55 gallon size, loosely filled.

...Had to put down the rear seats but I managed to get all eight bags in the back of my suv.

I might have been able to stuff a 9th bag in the back if I wasn't concerned about leaving space to see out the rear window, and if I hadn't been going to Trader Joes before going home, I could have put another bag in the passenger's seat. (as it was, I forgot all about it and when I rolled the shopping cart to my car, had a moment of panic when I thought I wouldn't be able to fit 5 full grocery bags in the passenger's seat and floor.

But they told me they always have these bags of shavings and local farmers come get them for their chickens, rabbits and other livestock. So now I know I could get 10 bags next time if I tried.

...these are clear bags and I can see using them for protecting my tomato plants after planting them, too.

...and you know what? These 8 bags of Douglas fir shavings made my car smell WONDERFUL! -- MUCH better than those Christmas tree shaped artificial car air fresheners

[applestar]

[applestar]

Harvested these -- they look like the caps might open up too much by tomorrow or the soggy rainy weather might ruin them. I hoped to let them dry out a bit today, but it poured all day. They are inside in a basket in front of a fan right now.

[Lindsaylew82]

Do the spores run out?

Do the plugs have to be replaced?

Can you split the plugs and get twice the mushrooms?

[applestar]

Sorry for not noticing your questions, L. The spawn (mycelium/"rhizome") in the plugs colonize the logs and when mature, they "fruit" I don't know if the spores falling from the mushroom gills will have significant effect.

There is an optimum spacing, just like plants, and you can speed up the fruiting phase with a bit of crowding while spreading out further can cause delay.

Once the log is fruiting, it's just a matter of time, then the spawn runs completely consume and exhaust the nutrient part of the log for fruiting (making mushrooms) so larger logs with more mass provides more nutrients and lasts longer.

[applestar]

I harvested the three shiitake in the top left photo last night because they looked like the gills were flattening out, then harvested the 2nd bowlful this morning. The caps aren't that big -- 2-2.5". I let them sunbathe for a while to develop Vitamin D

Photo of the shiitake logs from this morning before harvesting.

[applestar]

We had another dry summer with some extraordinary heatwaves, and I had been afraid that the shiitake logs must have died. There have been some signs of fungal growths that didn't look like shiitake. But we have been having some fall weather and rain. On Sunday, when I was out in the garden last, I noticed a couple of nubbins on the logs that I thought might be shiitake growing, and maybe three more possible nubbins starting. So I was thinking maybe I will get half dozen, and that would be better than none.

...imagine my completely stupefied exclamation of delight mixed with astonishment when I saw these today

[applestar]

Once a flush starts growing, you have to be vigilant -- they grow fast!

I already had to harvest the ones I left to grow a bit more (bottom-left in yesterday's collage above)



De-stemmed (reserving stems to dry for later use), sliced and wedged caps gently warmed in butter and evoo, then a splash of lemon juice and sake to deglaze, sea salt.... more butter... then tossed with a bit of roasted sesame oil and a bit more lemon juice with Korean buckwheat/tapioca "angelhair" noodles and seved with hot (not cold) kimchee radish broth. Oh, yum!

Organic shiitake is precious stuff -- feels rather luxurious to chop up as many as we all want to eat as main course because we might as well eat the freshly harvested stuff at their freshest.

...drying the rest...

[applestar]

Harvested the last of this flush. I love it!

[applestar]

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.

[applestar]

-- that's actually a small (about 1/2") weather dried shiitake cap that I stuck in there. I'm guessing there were viable spores on it.

[applestar]

Swung by the shiitake logs after taking out the kitchen scraps to the compost pile, and found these growing



...I spread the logs out from the winter huddle a bit so the other nubbins that are trying to grow will have some room.

[applestar]

Here's that shiitake spawn in brown rice substrate experiment -- slow progress/development but definitely doing their thing in there without getting moldy

[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
https://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...

[Chris222]

This is a great thread. Thanks for all the updates! I see that this project was stared back in 2015 - I'm assuming the continued flushes are from the original plugs? If you could put a number on it - how many flushes do you think you've had?

I'm having a couple of mature pin oaks cut down in a few weeks, and will be able to basically build as many of these as I have room for. I've been wanting to do it for several years, but haven't had the right combination of time and materials until now. I'd be a happy camper to get anywhere close to those results!

[applestar]

Yep same logs, same plugs. If I was more dedicated to this project, I would have started more logs every year. — but I’m LOVING how well they have performed. I really couldn’t tell you how many flushes...sorry.

...btw that bag of spores in brown rice substrate in still in the fridge — solid white block. I really should have inoculated with them before. Now I don’t know if they are still viable, but I managed to procure two oak stump rounds ... I might try a (modified) totem technique.


I’m looking forward to hearing how yours turn out

[applestar]

Unfortunately, it looks like my shiitake logs have been taken over. This is what I found today.



...I have tried picking up fresh oak logs and rounds to start new inoculated logs, but have not been able to get it done for one reason or another. You can see a couple of rounds I had hoped to make totem style stacked rounds in the collage growing “weed” fungi as well.

I’m planning to move these logs and use them for pond-side landscaping.

___
ETA — bottom-right is a polypore and almost definitely Turkey Tail, so maybe good to use for immune system enhancing tea. But the other lighter colored one has gills, so I’m not sure what it is.

...maybe it’s this ...
Trametes betulina - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trametes_betulina

[applestar]

Aaaargh! I forgot to take pictures!

I just inoculated a large oak trunk round with Lion’s Mane E. americanum. I really, really wanted to do a totem, but I couldn’t get the right kind of logs, and ran out of time even for fall inoculation and indoor incubation/colonization (in the garage), so I “winged” it.

... single big trunk round in a brown kraft paper-cushioned black plastic bag, inside a wheeled bucket, then liberally inoculated with crumbled spawn on both cut surfaces then papered with more brown kraft paper, then covered with second black plastic bag and string tied/tucked in on all sides... Wheeled into the center of the unheated garage where hopefully temperatures will stay above freezing long enough for the spawn to colonize a bit before going dormant for the winter.

Since I very carefully wrapped it up with plastic — loose enough for air vent but tight enough to hold in moisture, I refuse to go uncover and take pics. Let’s just say “stay tuned” for the reveal in the spring when I can put it outside.

The Mushroom Forager – Lion’s Mane: A Foolproof Fungus
https://themushroomforager.com/2010/09/2 ... /#comments

Lion’s Mane on Logs
https://www.fieldforest.net/pdfs/Lions_Mane_web.pdf

- I have about 3/5 of the Lion’s Mane sawdust spawn left since I couldn’t inoculate another one before it started to rain buckets, and I needed to drill the log for the 2nd inoculation strategy.

- I have to see if I can saw a 1/2 round trunk piece in half for inoculating with Maitake/Hen of the Woods. This one is tricky because you have to pasteurize the Log first, and, as it is, it’s too big...Oh! hmmm maybe I could put it Whole in the kettle grill and steam it....?

[applestar]

I’m finding myself dragging “mushroom growing” to the front burner.

...I might be getting ahead of myself, but am currently toying with the idea of pressure cooking some substrates in 1 qt canning jars to inoculate with some of the Lion’s Mane spawn, Maitake spawn, and some scraps of the Beech mushrooms we had yesterday, ...

Also pressure sterilizing larger amounts of substrate in autoclave bags for Lion’s Mane and also this Shiitake —

Subject: Mushroom Gardening?
Fri Jan 13, 2017

-- that's actually a small (about 1/2") weather dried shiitake cap that I stuck in there. I'm guessing there were viable spores on it.

...I STILL have that and need to get it out of the fridge. It looks like the spawn is still alive, but I’m not sure if they have enough life in them to make a run....

[applestar]

I’ve mentioned it before — my garden has internet access and secretly monitors what I post about them on-line... then respond to show what they think of my misconceptions. They are particularly impressive when refuting any suggestion that they are “done” or when I post that I have “given up” on them.

This morning:


— and if you look to the left of the beautiful lone shiitake, I think I see another pin forming.

[SQWIB]

That is so awesome.
I'm starting some Winecaps "King Stropharia" this weekend
Spawn should be here by Friday, have one bed prepped for them and a few other spots.

[applestar]

Ooh keep us posted. I’ve been wanting to try that. Starting them in the fall might be the better idea — I had to give up this spring because I couldn’t find straw.

[applestar]

Having spent the last several days researching Turkey Tail mushrooms, and having actually braved making and trying a decoction tea from freshly harvested samples, I have decided to accept them as part of my Mushroom Garden.

Despite some bodacious health claims, there are definitely widely varied opinions on efficacy, but at least it is researched and sufficiently widely consumed to let me feel more confident. But you should definitely do your own research and make your own judgment.


Apparently, I am fortunate enough to have the more frequently described Turkey Tail look-alikes growing side by side for ID comparison and verification — I am prettty confident in my ID of these ...

Trametes versicolor
“The” Turkey Tail


Stereum ostrea
“False Turkey Tail”


Trametes betulina
The Gilled Polypore
(formerly Lenzites betulina)


...even this...

Trichaptum biforme
Violet-toothed Polypore

(https://www.mushroomexpert.com/trichaptum_biforme.html)

...and possibly this, though still not absolutely sure, based on this description...

brackets soon lose their pristine appearance, developing brown radial lines and deep furrows near the margin on the upper surface and a yellowish tinge to the fertile underside.
https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/tram ... escens.php

Trametes pubescens
a bracket fungus

- Wondering if his yellowed brown dried up one is also Trametes pubescens



But pretty sure (and excited) that these are likely to be also well colonized Turkey Tail, promising future harvest to come


...even this big trunk round that I had *intended* to inoculate with shiitake this spring but didn’t get around to it seems to have been colonized by Turkey Tail...

[SQWIB]

My better half thought I was crazy when I brought this home and ate it.
I do a bit of backpacking on the AT and I am laways looking for something to supplement my meals.



Here's a small one I found at work. This was was rather good












For the dip I used Outbacks Blooming Onion dip recipe, this dip is great with anything breaded and fried.
If I were in the field this guy would be chopped and added to eggs or a stew or something.