The Shiitake Mushroom Logs are Starting to Sprout!

"The mushrooms are coming!"  "The mushrooms are coming!"  I feel a little bit like a cross between Paul Revere and the Nanny in "101 Dalmatians":  both were excited to deliver their message of important news. 

So as not to reiterate the entire post from last January 31, 2011 (discussing the class I attended about growing your own shiitake mushrooms that was held at the Sussex County Fair Grounds) I will just give the highlights for the last year while the shiitake mycelium was devouring the log from the inside.  I had kept the logs in a shaded area up off the ground on two upside-down plastic buckets so that bugs, slugs and mold did not take hold before the mycelium had a chance to spread and to its thing.  Sometime in August, I submerged the logs in a garbage can full of water overnight.  I then replace the logs on the buckets in a less-shady-but-not-too-sunny location on the eastern side of my house - so they got maybe an hour or so of morning sun, and then were in the shade for the rest of the day.   They have not been protected from rain or that freak Halloween snow storm that we were treated to last fall when fully 1/3 of my silver maple was scattered like flotsam all over the yard, the fence, the garden,    ...and on top of my mushroom logs. 

I had been checking them regularly - at least 2-3 times a week with no detectable sign of any change.  I ran into Ian, the mushroom man from Sussex County, at the Slow Food Festival in early February 2012 in Morristown, NJ and he said that as long as the ends of the logs had discernible 'rings' on them, that all was probably moving ahead correctly, and that it could reasonably be another 6-8 months before any mycelium pushed through the bark as a mushroom.  As you can see, much of the bark is covered with tiny 'V' shaped cracks through which the white fruiting body, or mushroom, is emerging.

Now I just have to be patient, let the mushrooms emerge fully and grow to a decent size, and then beat the squirrels to them.  I was thinking about moving the logs inside the garden, but that part of the yard gets a significant amount of sun daily - and I don't want to dry the logs out too fast and wither the remaining mycelium inside.  As you can see, I still have more to learn about this process, and will keep you posted!

Green Blessings as we move into March and count down the days until the Equinox.