Fungi

During the past few months we have purchased (from Fungi Perfecti) 200 inoculated dowels for each of three different kinds of mushrooms.  We have Shiitaki, Lion's Mane and Pearl Oyster.  The birch dowels, also called plug spawn,  have mycelium growing in them.  You drill holes in logs and insert the dowels, then keep the logs moist for about a year while mycelium eventually grow throughout the logs.  At some point, usually after a rainy spell, the mushrooms sprout on the logs and you can pick them.  The logs are supposed to provide mushrooms for several years.

We have 18 logs in all and they are stored in the woods behind our house.  The black tub is for soaking the logs if we have a dry spell.  The red dots are where the dowels were inserted into the logs, then covered with red cheese wax.  The wax keeps foreign fungi out and keeps the dowels moist.

The next picture shows the red wax melting in our solar oven.  If the oven looks a little beat up it is because it floated about 1/2 mile down the creek during the flood last year and was recovered from our neighbor's property.  We straightened out the reflectors and bought a new glass top.  It works fine now.  We had this solar oven on the deck of our sailboat!