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thejenx
Garden Addicted
I'm not sure if I told anything about it here, I know I did on Facebook so I'll just do it here too.Yay!
Jen, you should tell us about your ..
. mushroom growing, sometime. Did I already miss it? We have (dry) shiitake in broth for noodles, now and then.
Steve
In the summer of 2016 my mom had a professional trim back the 40 year-old oak that was too close to the house. Later it turned out that he killed the tree, it's in a bad shape now.
I took a dozen or so branches 6 to 10" thick against my mothers will, since she wanted it all for the fireplace. I put them in a shaded place under some trees and let them die for 4 weeks, then I ordered 3 kinds of mushrooms. The mycelium was grafted on wooden plugs, the ones you might use for making furniture.
Then the most relaxing job ever: drilling holes in the branches every 6-8" and hammering in the plugs.
I placed them horizontal under trees. Then I left them alone only watering them when it was dry weather for many weeks.
After 1,5 years I harvested the first shiitake mushrooms, and have since then harvested a lot, probably 5-6 times a year. Last year I had 10 pounds in one go!
Unfortunately only the shiitake mushrooms were successfully grafted, the other 2 didn't take. Next time I need to dig them in a bit like this:
Because now you get mushrooms close to the ground that are in the small corner and are hard to pick.
This fall we had mushrooms but didn't get to eat them because flies had layed eggs in them and we had maggot like creatures in them, yuck.
But all in all a big success and I should be able to harvest for a few more years from these branches. In total 5 years is possible.
What I love most is that my mom is now very proud of the mushrooms and tells everyone about them!