The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Recording Mushroom Logs

Tagged and innoculated mushroom logsWe finished up mushroom innoculation on Tuesday, more than doubling our number of logs.  Two years ago, I didn't really take any data during innoculation, so I went a bit overboard this time, recording the number of plugs, mushroom variety, and the diameter for each log.  In a few years, I might be able to tell if there's an optimal diameter and number of plugs in order to bear early and/or continue to bear for a long time.

The disappointing part of the day was when I added up the number of plugs we'd pounded into logs and discovered that Field and Forest Products had shorted us on every variety!  We ordered 250 plugs of two varieties and 100 plugs of a third variety, but ended up with only 580 plugs (20 short.)  The good news is that when I called them up and complained (nicely), they immediately offered to send out "something" to make up for it.  I'm excited to see what our something will be!  I thought you all should be warned that they pack their mushroom plugs by weight, not number, and seem to lean toward the light side (and that you can get "something" very easily by calling up when you're short!)


This post is part of our Innoculating Mushroom Logs series.  Read all of the entries:





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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I have been thinking of growing from plugs but am limited for space. Tell me please if the logs need laying down, standing up or does it not matter (I assume standing logs will have less chance of rot.

Chris Jagger

Comment by Chris Jagger Sat Nov 7 06:21:05 2009
There seem to be pros and cons for standing and lying logs. Standing logs have less chance of getting colonized by other fungi species, but they also can tend to dry out. Lying logs are more likely to be colonized, but tend to stay moist due to proximity to the ground. (Moist is good.) If you want to go for standing, you may need to use sprinklers or some other method of keeping your logs moist between soakings.
Comment by anna Sat Nov 7 08:37:47 2009





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