We’ve finally taken the leap after 20 years, 6 books, and 1 workshop. I know we’ll be taking more workshops, especially on identifying and collecting wild mushrooms. But for now, we’ve ordered shitake mushroom plugs. oyster mushroom plugs, and beeswax. We’ve harvested at least 8 – four foot long oak logs (from living trees – that needed to be trimmed). The shitakes should produce in the spring and fall, and the oyster in the summer. However, it takes 6-9 months for the logs to be inoculated.
Here’s the update – we plugged all the shiitake mushrooms. One hundred is a lot of plugs! After drilling the holes at specified distances, you have to remove the shavings, tap the mushroom plug in, then seal it with melted beeswax – it’s quite a little production. It took more logs than we thought, so we harvested more logs, and they have to sit for a week, before we work on the blue oyster mushrooms. Luckily, I read parts of a couple of our new books, and a newly cut log has natural defenses to keep the mushrooms from colonizing. So, next weekend we have 100 more plugs to look forward to. Also, we decided to move the growing operation to under the 9′ tall deck. It’s really a perfect spot.
