Mushroom Cultivation
shiitake on oak logs
Log cultivation is one of the easiest ways to get started growing mushrooms. Several components are essential:
Logs cut from live dormant trees provide the best nutrition for the fungi because more sugars are stored in the wood for the winter. But, don’t let a windfall go to waste, leafy wood will also grow mushrooms. There is still plenty for the mycelium to consume. Choose species depending on the mushroom you want to grow. For shiitake, oaks are generally considered optimal but maple and sweetgum work too. Oyster mushrooms grow well on tulip poplar and some of the local strains make beautiful mushrooms on Ailanthus.
Mushroom spawn of fungus that will grow on the tree species you cut. Typically, sawdust or dowel pegs are the forms of spawn most suitable for log culture. These wood products support living mycelium which is then inserted in the logs by filling pre-drilled holes or cuts. I sell the pictured log inoculation kit which includes 5 lbs. of sawdust spawn, a high-speed drill bit that makes a hole suited to the amount of sawdust held in the palm inoculation tool, daubers for wax and 25 all-weather labels. You can find these things for sale in the shopping cart. Wax is a good sealer to protect inoculation sites from drying out before the fungus has a chance to grow into the log.
Log inoculation kit
An alternative to drilling holes is cutting the log into discs or cutting wedges out of the log and packing spawn in and “reassembling” the log with nails. This is a fast way to inoculate oyster mushrooms to large logs or stumps. Wrap the newly inoculated log with plastic bag or sheet until the fungus establishes in the log (6 weeks or so) to prevent drying. the logs can be partially buried horizontally and used as a garden bed retainer or vertically as a totem.
Oyster mushroom on a poplar totem
Other log cultivation methods include the log raft which will also work for oysters, maitake, reishi, Pholiota nameko, and Hypholoma sublateritium. A log raft is built by laying logs side-by-side, scoring them and packing spawn into the space between and covering with wood chips.
Pholiota nameko log raft
