Shiitake Adventure

I must admit, I cannot take credit for this awesome idea. It was all my boyfriend's doing! :)

After that bad ice storm we had, there were many fallen branches laying around town, including my back yard. So my boyfriend suggested that we take some of them and try to grow some shiitake mushrooms for us to eat! So he ordered us some shiitake spawn plugs from this place.

Last weekend we plugged the logs...

The first step was to drill LOTS of holes to fill with the spawn plugs. It was good that our wood was all nice and fresh, and that it fell during the winter, because the wood has a higher protein content in winter and the mushrooms will like it!

The plugs are small dowels cut from branches already full of shiitake mycelium. If mushrooms were plants (which they aren't) the mycelium would be the body of the plant, and the mushrooms themselves would be the flowers or fruit. These little plugs will (hopefully) allow the mycelium to spread to the rest of the log. Eventually, if the mycelium are happy enough, they'll go "bom-chicka-wah-wah!" and the result will be mushrooms!

After drilling the holes and inserting the spawn, the holes are covered with wax to seal them in.

Then we arranged the logs in the shady spot on the side of my garage, on top of some nice chunks of wood Velocibadgergirl gave me!

And now? We wait! It could be 6 or 9 months before we see any mushroom action, but I will definitely post photos if anything interesting happens! I'm super excited! I bet I'm the only girl on my block with a mushroom garden in her backyard! :D