Mushroom, Mushroom: Lucky chance! Power Oak Tumble!

I live off a boulevard, near a really big park that's basically a small forest. There's a lot of trees around here, and in some attempt to make the area look greenish and friendly, trees are often planted along islands int he road. The boulevard I live off of has a lot of really nice oak trees. I woke up on Tuesday to find that a tree had fallen down in front of my house.



It looked like it was hit by a car, judging from fairly large scattering of window glass, and might have even caught fire at some point. You can see the inside is kind of rotted out at the base of the trunk, but for the most part the wood further up the tree is actually pretty okay.

So anyway, There were a few loose cut logs outside the yellow tape, and being entrepreneurial and an innate scrounger, I took one of them.

So, stories about fallen trees and scrounging wood are boring. The reason why I was completely elated at this opportunity is because it allows me to do a home science experiment.

I want to grow mushrooms, but instead of doing it with the pre-inoculated 30 dollar kit, I decided to do it the old-fashioned way; gill inoculated farming.

The methodology seems simple enough. Take some wood-loving mushrooms, cut out a section of their gills, and stuff them into the wood with a small amount of sawdust and seal them up. Keep moist, wait 6 months and watch for mycelium formation at the ends. Shock however and watch fruiting.

It's probably not gonna work, but I wanna try anyway, 'cause essays are dumb, and I wanted to do something involving sharp, pointy tools.

So I got to work on a 4 foot log I liberated from the whole mess and cut it into smaller chunks, with a little nub leftover to try doing a test log. I have three 15 inch-ish chunks and a 6 inch chunk.

Sawing logs is hard work, whoever thought of making the analogy to sleep based on the sound should be shot for not thinking it through.

I'm fortunate enough to have just about everything I need to get this done. There's an old drill in the basement, and a good chinese market up the road and then some where I could pick up fresh shiitake. I picked up a drill bit today, and decided to give it a shot on the small log to see if I could do the very basics. In about a month or two, I'll probably give it another go on the larger logs if this one isn't a complete failure. It'll also give me time to maybe grow some spawn in some of the sawdust I got from all that sawing.

I got just enough sawdust to pick up a few ounces of vomit. I'll save it for the next gnome kegger or for when there's a really really tiny snowstorm hits my front yard.

I didn't have enough batteries for the camera at this point, but the setup is simple. In the side of the log, I drilled holes 1 inch deep along the side. After each hole, I rotated the log about 45-60 degrees and drilled another hole about an inch to the left or right. I repeated this until I came full circle. If you're making another helix, holes on the same line should be about 6 inches apart. I did mine only about 4 inches away mostly becuase I didn't have enough log.

Prior to use I used 70% isopropanol to sterilize the sawdust, the chopstick and any work areas before I did the inoculations. There's not much can do for aseptic technique without a bunsen burner or autoclave.

I cut pieces of mushroom that contain the gills and any other structures that might trap spores. Unfortunately, the spores are white, like the gills, so it was hard to know if I had spores or not. Using a chopstick, I stuffed them pieces into the holes, then added sawdust and packed it fairly tightly. I used candle wax to seal it up, as that was the only thing available to me.

And there it is. Mushroom Log Zero. Not pretty, and there's absolutely no guarantee it'll work, but it's done. All I have to do is water it every few days and hope it doesn't grow anything but shiitake mycelia.

Concurrently, I'll be using the sterilized sawdust to try and grow some spawn from spores. It's not likely, but I'll see what i can get in about a month.

And yes, I was humming the log song throughout this whole adventure.