Growing Chicken of the Woods (part 2)

Mushroom Cultivation Part 2: The Inoculation

Start by gathering a few tools: hammer, 5/16" drill, ruler, plugs, and sealing (cheese or bee) wax.

It's been three weeks since we harvested our Douglas Fir stump.  This has given the stump enough time to breakdown the anti-fungal compounds in the once living tree, and it's also given mother nature some time to warm up.  There is a basic rule for inoculations, "Don't plug until well after the last frost".

The inoculation process is pretty straight forward.  I just used the 5/16" drill and drilled 2" deep holes about 1.5" apart all the way around the circumference of the log.  Make sure to keep your holes at least a 1/2" inside the outer bark.  This will put you in the Sapwood area.  The sapwood has a slightly darker color and is softer to the touch.  Placing your plugs in the sapwood part of the log gives your mycelium plugs the best possible food source.

Once all the 2" holes were drilled, I brushed some of the wood shavings back into the holes.  I'm hoping the shavings will make it easier for the mycelium to restart its growth.  I than pounded a plug into every hole, sank them to a depth of about 1/4" inch, and coated the whole cut face in hot cheese wax.  The cheese wax will help the logs water retention while at the same time blocking other wild mushroom spores.

I then flipped over the stump and repeated the process on the other side.  I even inoculated a side branch area on the side of the stump.  I then placed the stump outside along a north facing wall.  This area is shaded, protected from the wind, exposed to rain, and free of other mushrooms.

After moving the stump to its location, I sprayed it down with the hose for 5-10 minutes, and thats it.  Now I just have to forget about it for another 6-12 months.  In the dryer months of June, July, and August I may have to water once or twice, but Paul Stamets says "it's best to use the strategy of benign neglect".

Now that my work is done, we need to give the mycelium some time to work.  If all goes as planned, I'm hoping to induce fruiting sometime in October.  Therefore, keep watching for part three of Cultivating Mushrooms;  Initiating Fruiting.

Growing Chicken of the Woods

Mushroom Cultivation Part 1: Spawn and Wood Preperation

So while I was walking around the Northwest Flower and Garden Show on Friday, Feburary 25th I stumbled upon the Fungi Perfecti booth.  It was a relatively small booth tucked away in the corner just of the main gardens area.  They had all the basics: a few books, some T-shirts, a few varieties of Plug Spawn, and some helpful growing tools.  I spent a good amount of time looking over all the options, but I finally decided to go with a 100 plug bag of Laetiporus conifericola or Chicken of the Woods.

I choose this variety for a few reasons.  First of all, I have had some difficulties locating this variety in the wild, but more importantly, it is one of the few mushroom varieties that can grow on softer woods such as Douglas Fir.  And anyone from the Pacific Northwest knows, we have plenty of Douglas Fir laying around.

From the Fungi Perfecti Plug Spawn Manuel

Chicken of the Woods grows on softwoods including hemlocks, Douglas Firs, true Firs, and Spruce.  Stumps, rather than cut logs, are the recommended candidate for inoculation; logs can be used and buried vertically in sand, sawdust, or gravel after incubation.  Producing a multi-layered, shelf-like mushroom, Chicken of the Woods has an easily distinguished orange mycelium.  Given the right conditions, mushrooms will form in 6-12 months, also fruiting for several years thereafter.

For the past couple of weeks I have let my bag of plug spawn recover inside as instructed.  I left the spawn in it's original container, at room temperature,  in an area away from direct sunlight (never opening the bag). Take a look.

Here is the bag after 4 days

Now here is the same bag after 21 days.

The Plug spawn is covered in mycelium and is almost ready to use.  Now that the spawn is almost ready, I need to prepare my host wood.  Luckily enough, a few days back on my afternoon run I came upon a tree crew falling a fairly large Douglas Fir.  I approached the men, and they were kind enough to let me have a couple of there biggest rounds.  The rounds were pretty big, however, probably not quite a true stump size, but we'll just make it work.

The wood that I was lucky enough to find was freshly cut.  Therefore, I'm going to have to let it age for 2 to 3 weeks allowing all the natural anti-fungal compounds of the tree to degrade.  It should also be noted, never use a log that has been aged more than 6 months for 2 basic reasons: most of the sugars have degraded and most likely by than another fungi has already taken hold.

Now that I have all the main parts its back to the waiting game.  My logs should be done aging on April 9th, 2011.  Therefore, check back in a couple weeks to see the second part of Cultivating Mushrooms;  The Inoculation and Maintenance.