Various species grow on hard or soft wood logs. If you have access to fresh logs, this is a great way of turning dead space into a garden. These will produce 1-3lbs of shiitake per log per year. I got them for free when a redditor was cutting down a tree on their farm so it can be very low-cost high-yield.
Oh hell yeah chicken of the woods are so damn good I’m gonna be watching this project keep us updated!
this is really fucking cool
This is wild. The ~year wait for fruits is because it takes a solid substrate like a log that long to colonize I guess?
Yep, it’s just colonisation time. Grain colonies take about a week, sawdust colonies about a month, logs take a year but fruit for up to five years.
Holy shit that’s amazing that they keep going for years. Absolutely love shiitakes but I’ve only ever read how difficult they are to cultivate and never really looked into it.
If you have a good drill bit and unseasoned hardwood logs, it’s very easy. Drill, insert the inoculated dowels from r/mycobazaar, cap the holes with bees wax, soak them for a day, and then you just stack them in the shade and water them every few weeks. 1-3lbs of shiitake per log per year.
Shiitake are really good culinary mushrooms that replace meat’s role in a dish. You can cook them fresh or dry them. Chicken of the Woods is another good culinary mushroom which replicates the taste and texture of chicken pretty well. You can use this same technique to grow medicinal mushrooms taken in a tea too, but I only grow edible ones.
yo that’s pretty cool. I think selling mushrooms would be a good side hustle.
