My Attempt at Inoculating Logs For Shiitake Mushrooms This Fall

Shiitake Spawn dowels plugging drilled holes in a recycled log

After seeing so many different versions of others making mushroom logs, I figured this would be a great little project in the meantime, while I wait for the snow to melt, to prepare some passive food supplies. Shiitake mushrooms are a great addition to the farm, if I can get them to grow!

I would say I am more of a picture kind of guy, to show #steemit how we do things here. Lots of pictures help describe what we have done today. I called upon my friend @docroulston to lend a hand in preparing the logs for inoculation, and he answered that call without hesitation.

Backstory, yesterday I spent a portion of the late afternoon looking for a tree to cut to use for this project. I thought I had found the right tree to cut, not on my property but the vacant lot, I was indeed a bit hesitant to do so and felt weird thinking of cutting this perfectly healthy tree on a different lot... well Ironically, or that my prayers were answered.. today as I was dropping @kelsnm at her car, we drove past a recently fallen tree, which had been cut up and left strewn about on the side of the road!

Well some of those pieces looked perfect for this project so I thought ahh what the hell, they'll just chip these up anyways, I grabbed three logs that I thought would work best. Needless to say, the Lord answered today and spared the young trees life. I may have held off on the project altogether perhaps if we had no seen this fallen tree. Anyways, on with the project.

The recovered logs from a few miles away

Cheese wax used to seal the plugs and ends of the logs

Today's cloud type, Cumulus Congestus

The cloud layer in the atmosphere was very well defined today. The bottom of the clouds were flat, the clouds themselves were dense, and the top ends of the clouds were flat. The moisture packed densely into a thin layer, like the chocolate crumb inside layer of an ice cream cake.

Double boil setup for the cheese wax

Only used about 1/3 of the block I had ordered. I could order more dowels of course... but I need the wood first to consider ordering more.

@docroulston getting down to business drilling the holes for the dowels to plug

Tedious work is work well shared with a friend and beer... and pizza

Cleaning the drill core saw dust

I threw some leftover mushroom spawn stuff into the bag with sawdust to see if I could feed the spawn with the sawdust to keep it alive, if the goo is even spawn.

The 100 wooden dowels covered with Shiitake spawn

Ordered off amazon so we will see how it goes! Yeah I hate that I ordered from Amazon but I had a gift card to use so why not.

Saved the gooey stuff and put it back in the plastic bag with sawdust

Plugging the dowels into the logs with a hammer

All the drilled holes plugged with dowels need waxing

Melted cheese wax in the double boiler setup yields a clear liquid

As the wax cools, it becomes opaque

And harder to work with... To anyone attempting this easy to do project to grow your own mushrooms, I advice thinking ahead that the wax cools quickly so devise a plan to work around that. Like use a large pot of water to hold more heat for longer.

The finished wax sealed logs

Keeping these puppies indoors over night tonight and perhaps a few more nights until the morning lows are consistently above freezing. All the research tells me that freezing temps are bad for an undeveloped mycelium, but once the log is fully incorporated with the mycelium of the Shiitake, then they can be left out in the freeze of Winter...

and it is only three logs... not a back breaking effort to move in and out doors.

Hope to report this back when I find a more permanent outdoor location and when I start to see mushrooms fruiting... which can take months! So hopefully by fall we will have some shiitake to harvest.

Thank you to the @steemit community for having the shared knowledge and experiences to learn from and form my own projects!