
Soaking the shiitakes
I finally got my act together Tuesday and
started soaking our shiitake mushroom logs. I suspect that I
could have done this earlier in the year, but during our blueberry
patch clearing operation, a tree fell on the logs and I hadn't gotten
around to excavating them.
The logs we're soaking are two years old. We inoculated them in
spring 2007 and ignored them all that year. Then, in 2008, we
started soaking them and harvesting mushrooms. Each week during
warm weather, I soak two or three logs for 24 hours, which prompts them
to produce mushrooms.
Our soaking setup is extremely simple, but there are a few
tricks. We level the ground underneath the kiddie pool, then lay
down an old carpet to protect our $11 plastic investment. We
discovered that it's much easier to keep the logs submerged by putting
a cinderblock on each side and then two to four on top. Until you
try it, you probably can't imagine what a pain it can be to try to sink
three bobbing, rolling logs....
If everything goes as planned, we'll be eating mushrooms next week!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
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.
Want
to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the
RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Required disclosures:
As an Amazon Associate, I earn a few pennies every time you buy
something using one of my affiliate links. Don't worry, though --- I
only recommend products I thoroughly stand behind!
Also, this site has Google ads on it. Third party vendors, including
Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to a
website. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its
partners to serve ads to users based on their visit to various sites.
You can opt out of personalized advertising by visiting this site.