By Maggie Conklin
Mushroom Farmer
Last year the dear husband and I were gifted “leftover” shiitake mushroom spoors from a friend in Alabama.
It took us a couple days to drive home and we tried our best to keep the spoors cold in a cooler, but the ice kept melting. It was free so we weren’t too concerned.
We were told it would be fine in a “cool dark place like a pantry or basement” once we got home, so we left it in the pantry until we had time to harvest a small oak tree to impregnate with the mushroom mycelium.
We were given directions to let the wood rest for exactly two weeks after harvesting before drilling holes into the logs, pushing the mycelium into the holes, and then covering the holes with melted paraffin wax.
It was a lot of work.
We laid the logs against an old, downed cherry tree and hoped they would decide to sprout delicious shiitake mushrooms by autumn. We even gave logs to friends and family with directions and the honest opinion that we didn’t know if they would fruit.
Well, they didn’t.
This year we bought Oyster mushroom and Lion’s Mane mushroom spoors directly from a reliable source and have been keeping them in our refrigerator, as directed by the company.
We harvested a sugar maple tree that was looming dangerously over our dining room, as well as two very small beech trees that weren’t very healthy to begin with. We then invited friends over to help us drill holes over about 5 days’ time, and paid them by allowing them to pick their own logs to take home.
We ended up with dozens of logs ready to sprout Oyster – PoHu™ (Pleurotus ostreatus) mushrooms on the maple logs and Lion’s Mane (Hericium erinaceus) mushrooms on the beech logs.
The type of Oyster mushrooms that we got should, with luck, start blooming in four to eight weeks, depending on rain and temperature. Once they start, they should continue sprouting on-and-off for the rest of the summer. If they don’t sprout this year, likely due to dry weather, they should go gangbusters in the spring.
Lion’s Mane mushrooms are a different beast, likely will bear fruit next spring or autumn, and can sometimes take two years to begin. If you know anything about Lion’s Mane mushrooms, then you know that it’s worth the wait. Now you know why they are so expensive and scarce at the local farmers’ markets.
Selfless promotion: We will have some of these logs for sale at LadyHawk Nutrition in Douglas. They are priced by the number of holes filled with mycelium (mushroom spoors). Please stop in if you are interested in bringing a small mushroom farm home.