Mushroom Cultivation

After a couple of fun years foraging for wild mushrooms we thought it would be interesting to try growing our own. Not to replace the foraging, since that remains one of our favourite hobbies, especially now that we have Jake the dog to take with us on foraging trips! But we wanted to see if we could grow different varieties that we couldn’t find growing in the woods on our property.

We did a little research and found a company in Maine that provided a fountain of information on their website about growing your own mushrooms and they also sell everything you could possibly need to do this at home yourself. North Spore is now our go-to shop for knowledge as well as supplies!

There are many different ways that you can grow mushrooms at home yourself and we intend to eventually try all the methods to see which ones work best for us. But to start with we thought we would give the log method a go. This involves harvesting your own healthy, living trees (the type of tree depends on the mushroom you intend to cultivate) and inoculating them with either sawdust or plug spawn. We opted for Shiitake and Lions Mane to start with and ordered the plug spawn from North Spore. Plus spawn is basically compacted sawdust dowels that have been colonized by mycelium. Mycelium being the fungal network, or root system, that the mushrooms fruit from.

The best time to harvest the trees is in winter before the trees begin to bud so Steve headed out and bought us back 40 oak logs in late February 2021. The diameter of the logs determine how many years of fruiting you will potentially get with every inch of diameter giving you about a years growth. We harvested mostly 4'-6” wide, 3-4’ long logs so we hope to get about 5 years of mushrooms from them!

The inoculation process involves drilling rows of holes into the logs in a diamond pattern, about 4” apart with 2” between the rows. The plugs are then inserted into the holes and usually need an extra bang or two with a hammer to get them fully in there. In order to prevent other mushroom species from colonizing the logs it is important to seal the plugs, and any other cuts on the logs, with wax. The wax can be heated in a crockpot and dapped on with a paintbrush.

The logs are then stacked in a pile in a shady place while the colonization takes place. For Shitakes this takes about 9-12 months and for Lions Mane between 12-24 months so we left them in the woods near the house for a full year until the spring of 2022. To enable good air flow, and also for easy access for harvesting, the logs should then be stacked in a log cabin style, still in a shady spot so they don’t dry out.

Busy with other spring projects we forgot to check up on our logs until late May and unfortunately missed the first fruiting of Shiitakes but luckily enough they tend to grow in monthly cycles so we quickly got busy and stacked the logs one warm spring day. A month later we saw some new buds emerging and before long we were feasting on delicious Shiitakes!

Shiitakes are a tasty and meaty mushroom that cook up really well in various Asian styled meals. We especially love them in ramen soups and Asian stir-fries. If left on the logs they can grow quite big, we had some that were about 8-10” wide, but they tend to be the tastiest when they are still young. They hold their size well when cooked so you don’t need a whole bunch to fill you up!

We had a relatively dry summer in 2022, which meant some of our regular wild mushrooms like chanterelles and oysters did not grow in the same abundance as other years. So we were extra happy to have a good crop of Shiitakes growing in our new mushroom farm all summer and into the fall.

We haven’t seen any sign of the Lions Mane yet but it’s been 2 years now since we inoculated the logs so we are hoping to see some this year!