A late summer storm brought down a tree right on to the power lines for the entire neighborhood. It was laying by the side of the road so I decided to go cut it up and use it to try to grow some mushrooms. I’d been reading about growing mushrooms since I found out it was possible to do so in the Pacific Northwest. The two issues I had was, I didn’t have any mushrooms and I had no idea how to use a chainsaw. The internet fixed the 1st problem and my neighbor helped with the second.
Cup up the tree in a couple of hours and made 2 stacks.
That night, went online and bought some spawn plugs for Shiitake and Oyster mushrooms from Fungi Perfect. One mushroom for each stack. They were having a sale and I got a 3rd kind, Reishi, that I could put in random places. Also got some wax and the hammer from them. This was a great idea and super helpful.
The bottom set of logs got 20 plugs each increasing the number of plugs going up. I figured, the top logs are going to get more water and hold less weight so can probably hold more mycelium than the lower levels. Here’s some potato quality pictures.
Now, from the literature that comes with the plugs, I sit and wait for next fall to see what’ll happen. The real question is, will these mushrooms grow on what I think is Cottonwood, or won’t they grow because it’s just a bad idea in general? No idea.