Thursday, April 9, 2015

Mushroom moxie

Any day that I spend with my friend Lea is a good day.  She is game for trying new things, and we decided to try our hand at inoculating some logs with shiitake mushroom spawn.  She fed us lunch, and I obliged her by helping clean up the Easter candy.  Then it was off to work!
I enjoined her to sing a song while I sawed some properly sized pieces of a red oak her husband had felled for us.  She relieved me on the saw when I got tired (and she didn't even make me sing).
 
 Then we made lots of wood shavings drilling little holes for the mycelium plugs.
 
 
We tapped the plugs in with a hammer.  Cubs watched from atop the fridge.  It was somewhere along about this time Lea made a pun about plugging away.
 
She had beeswax melting on the stove, and we sealed the plugs with the wax.


 
The gray kitty, Ghee, was absolutely thrilled with the finished product.  What a fascinating scratching post, and let's have a lick of beeswax!
 
We took a walk afterward.  I thought Lea was picking up all the ticks, but I found two on me when I got home.  Lea kept one log and I took one home.
I enlisted the taller help to take the log from the car and put it in a shady place under the Leyland.
 
Hopefully we'll have some shiitake mushrooms come fall.
It was a great day (even though I almost backed out because of the cracked windshield).  Thanks, Lea, for the lunch and for a great time.



2 comments:

  1. I absolutely love the serious look I had while painting on the wax....I sure must have been hard at work! Bonnie, today was great... Here's to many more fun times !

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  2. Found a morel this past Sunday. Don't remember see any of them while growing up in Montgomery County, but there were lots of them south of Raleigh one time during a class at NCSU. I find if I hit the woods about the time asparagus pops up, I am close to the correct time.
    Inoculated about 30 shitake logs this past winter. With more time next year I intend to inoculate about 200 shitake and about 15 lions mane mushroom logs. I have an angle grinder set up to do the drilling now so it runs a lot quicker than the olden days.

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