Having Fun Experimenting with Fungi!

Garden Journal Shiitake Time.png

Hello friends! Once again I'm emerging from winter blogging hiatus just in time for the spring planting season to begin. It seems like that stretch of time between November and March has become a bit of a challenging time for me to keep up with my little corner of the internet, but I'm grateful that this time of year always allows me the opportunity to dust off the blog and get excited to share our garden adventures in the seasons ahead.

While the seedlings are still small (more on that in a later post, hopefully), @dksart and I started our adventure with a new "growing" medium this past month--mushrooms!

After getting a few big old trees taken down, it was the perfect time to finally get some mushroom spawn to see if we can grown some of our own fabulous fungi to add to our 2024 harvest. My sister was so kind as to get us the Shiitake plugs from North Spore Mushrooms as a holiday gift. I have read that they are one of the more forgiving varieties to grow, not to mention they are delicious.

We've been lucky enough to harvest some Lions Mane from the backyard on old logs in the past, but Shiitakes will be a fun one to try to deliberately inoculate the logs with! We opted for the plug spawn, but they also sell sawdust spawn that you can use in a similar manner. The process was fairly simple after we watched a few videos for reference.

Here is our basic process:

Step One: Use a drill with the proper sized bit to make the holes for your plugs. @dksart was smart enough to mark the bit with a piece of tape so he drilled the correct depth.

Step Two: While he drilled the holes, I melted the wax in an old slow cooker to have ready once the plugs were in place.

Step Three: After he drilled the holes, it was time to pop in the inoculated plugs.

Step Four: Seal the plugs with the melted wax.

Step Five: Place your logs in an area that doesn't get too much sun so they don't dry out! We've got ours next to the deck in the shade so we can wet them down during times where we don't get much rain.

And now...we wait! Apparently it can take quite a while for the mushrooms to get to the fruiting stage, especially since our logs are quite hefty. The good thing is they may fruit multiple times, so hopefully they'll be worth the wait!

A few of the other videos showed how to grow mushrooms in your garden beds as another way to not only enjoy them to eat, but also to help add nutrients back into your beds. Wine caps may be next on my list...

As always, we are just having fun and trying to learn as we go. I love not only the process but having something to look forward to watching as the growing unfolds. Not to mention the more food we can grow on our own the better, right?

I look forward to once again connecting with the @gardenhive folks and seeing what everyone else is trying to grow this year!