This is the second of two posts describing log inoculation with sawdust spawn. The first, covering tools and materials, can be found here

So now we have assembled our tools and materials and we are ready to go. The basic workflow is to drill holes in a log in a diamond pattern, fill each hole with sawdust spawn using a special inoculation tool, and cap the holes with edible wax.

1. Melt your wax

This takes a minute so I would start it first.

2. Drill holes

Here is a photo of a finished log. The holes are in a diamond pattern roughly 3 inches (~8cm) apart. The easiest way to accomplish this is to drill all the way down the log at a 6” interval, then move over a few inches and drill all the way down the log at an offset.

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3. Fill the holes with spawn

Open the bag of spawn, and firmly jab the inoculation tool into the spawn so when you pull it out it is flush:

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Line up the inoculation tool with a hole, push down firmly on the plunger and press the spawn into the hole:

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You will want the top of the spawn to be flush with the log because otherwise when you go to wax it will pull it up. If it sticks out a bit you can jam it in with your finger or use the tip of the tool with the plunger depressed.

Repeat this with the top surface of the log. The spawn is jammed in there tight so you don’t have to worry about it falling out, but I still prefer to do one side at a time.

3. Wax

Now it’s time to apply the wax. Dip your tool of choice into the hot wax and seal each hole generously.

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If you have a second person a really nice work flow is for one person to put the spawn in while the second follows behind with wax.

Turn the log over and repeat until all holes are filled and sealed. Check carefully as open holes are entry points for contaminants. This is the main reason I prefer red wax.

I like to wax the ends of the logs as well when they are finished, as well as any areas with missing bark. This is probably overkill.

4. Stack and wait

Stack your logs (see title pic) in a cool dark place (think forest floor) and allow them to colonize for 3-6 months. When you see mycelium colonizing the ends you will know they are ready to be re-stacked or buried, depending on your target species. I will post pictures of a stack shortly but am rate limited at the moment

Credit to @JoesFrackinJack who posted this two years ago

Background

This will be the first of probably 2 posts covering log inoculation from sawdust spawn. Log inoculation is a common technique for growing certain wood loving species such as shiitake. This is a nice activity to spend the day outdoors alone or makes a great group activity as well as there are discrete steps that lend themselves well to splitting work. An inoculation party could be a fun activity for a community garden for example, all you need is a reliably shady spot, some clean logs, and relatively inexpensive supplies to grow mushrooms for many years. You could also give away completed logs as gifts for friends.

Depending on the technique the finishing step may be different (shiitake gets log cabin like in the top pic, chestnuts, reiishi get buried etc) but the process starts the same way. Like all mushroom growing this is a probability game, you want to maximize the chances of your chosen mycelium colonizing the substrate and minimize the odds of competition, this is the same here. We will be drilling holes in healthy logs, injecting them with chestnut mushroom sawdust spawn, and sealing the wounds with edible wax.

Materials

1. Clean logs

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The best logs are from freshly cut trees, 3-6” in diameter and 6’ long on the high end. This is about the biggest size one can handle alone. Smaller is better for kids, or those with less lifting ability. The best time to fell trees is fall, but other seasons are fine too, I think. The main thing is to not let them sit too long, a month or so max. We are aiming for a sterile substrate, so the longer we wait the more competitors are introduced. Here I am using maple (as always) but depending on the species many hardwoods will work. The spawn supplier should be able to provide lists of compatible species.

2. Sawdust spawn

This is a block of sawdust that has been inoculated with the species of your choice. This is available from retailers online. I like north spore personally but I am sure there are others. Sawdust spawn comes in 5 pound bags which should be enough to inoculate 10-15 logs depending on size. When it comes in the mail it’s important to use it right away. It can also be kept refrigerated for up to six months as it goes dormant.

3. Wax

-Edible wax and something to melt it in. Emphasis on edible. Beeswax is a popular choice. I like using red cheese wax because it’s bright color lets me see what i have completed easily. Cut it into ~3cm chunks for easy melting. As a vessel here I used an old food can. Whatever you use will be covered in wax forever so disposable is best, though some people use dedicated crock pots for this. But you’d have to be doing a LOT of logs. As to quantity I bought a 5lb block from a cheese making supply store and it’s lasted me through 30 logs and will probably do more.

-A heat source. I am using a camping stove here, but a sterno, old crock pot, even a sous vide with the wax in a bag will work.

-Wax applicators. Anything absorbent will work, a small paint brush, maybe even cotton balls on sticks. The bespoke applicators are pretty cheap though and probably worth getting.

Tools

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-A drill. Highly recommend going corded here. Fresh wood is wet and dense and it takes a lot of torque to drill into it efficiently. A cordless drill could be used but it would have to be pretty beefy & have lots of extra batteries.

-An inoculation tool. This is probably the only specialty tool needed, and can be bought from where you buy your spawn. It’s a spring loaded plunger attached to a brass tube designed for collecting sawdust spawn and injecting it into holes in the log. These run about $30 or so.

-A drill bit. This should match the diameter of the inoculation tool. There exist specialty bits for this with a stop at exactly the same depth as the inoculation tool, but a drill bit with tape as a depth gauge would work fine too just be a little slower. The important part is to match the dimensions of the inoculation tool. You could measure the depth of the tool with a piece of wire. If you do decide to get the specialty bit, filing or grinding a flat spot on the shaft is a MUST:

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Again the torque from drilling into fresh logs is quite high so if you don’t do this the bit will strip and get stuck in the wood, leading to grief and frustration and slowing you down. Just file it!

-A saw (not pictured). Hand or chain. This is useful for cleaning up the ends of logs to remove mold and make it easier to wax.

-A table. Not a must but makes working much more comfortable particularly if you’re doing this alone. If you only have one you will want to set up your wax on it. If you have 2 use one for drilling and the other for wax. I wouldn’t recommend both on the same table because logs can jerk unpredictably during drilling and it can knock wax over, greatly slowing you down. You should be willing to cover this in wax, or put down some rosin paper.

In the next post I will cover the technique of inoculation. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Setup is the hardest part.

What are they?

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Looks old. Common lawn shroom from aroind here, they usually dont get this big due to the !grillman boomers mowing their lawns all thr time

No idea what its actual scientific name is, with the cap so curled and old (white edges witj browning on the middle) with no scales, i assume it might be aome lepiota or smth, idk its cool looking and theres others growing there so idk jusr vibe on little mushroom friend

not my yard, cross-posting from Mander

Mycology? More like Ourcology!

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Hopefully not a terrible joke. Welcome to federation bears!

I built an 8x4 raised bed too close to the wood line and it doesn’t grow anything successfully because of shade. I had a big tree come down in a storm, and, like any good mushroom guy… if there’s an arborist around, I’m getting wood chips.

My friend was telling me about wine cap mushrooms. Apparently they are delicious, dead easy to grow, and don’t transport well so you can’t find them in stores. So knowing I had a soft maple coming down, I went ahead and ordered spawn from north spore.

The first step was to take the weedy garden bed down to bare dirt. Since I actually weeded this spring it didn’t take too long. Once that is done, I covered it with 1” of fresh wood chips. I haven’t had fresh chips in a while and had forgotten how hot they get. The pile was steaming!

According to north spore wine caps do best on a variety of substrate sizes, so after the wood chips were done I layered in some straw and mixed it:

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Then crumbled the spawn and sprinkled it on top:

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North Spore says a bag does 16 square feet so I’m going at 50% the recommended rate here. The conditions are pretty much ideal, it’s warm, the chips are super fresh (2 days old), I have clean straw mixed in and the bed is drip irrigated, so I like my chances.

I then covered the bed with another 2-3” layer of fresh chips, watered heavily, and added the drip line.

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Finally I topped the bed off with some shade cover. It’s in full sun in the afternoon, although the spawn is buried deep and for the most part the bed is shaded, this seems like a prudent step.

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Now as always fingers crossed. These things are called “garden giants” and apparently the caps can get as big as dinner plates! Look forward to sharing harvest pics next year.

If you have a dead garden bed this might be a move worth doing!

On the top is artist's conk, Ganoderma applanatum. You can draw on the pore surface with a sharp stick. Its Japanese name — kofuki-saru-no-koshikake — means “Powder-Covered Monkey’s Bench” which like, come on, who doesn't love that. Apparently the spores can end up on the tops due to electrostatic forces (don't ask me) so imagine a lil monkey taking a seat on one of these and then he stands up and there's powder on his butt! Ha! 🤭

Also Diane Fossy wrote that they're a prized gorilla snack and they'll even fight over them.

Then we've got a funeral bell, Gallerina marginata. G. marginata is in some ways the opposite of a Good margarita as ingesting even a piece of the already small mushroom could have enough amatoxin to kill you if left untreated.

In the middle is crown-tipped coral, Artomyces pyxidatus. I was really happy to find this one as it was my first time coming across a coral fungus. At a distance I almost mistook it for the white jelly fungus that's all over the forest right now.

The bottom-right are a pair of cinnabar chanterelles, Cantharellus cinnabarinus. They're also called red chanterelles but to me it would be crazy to pass up the chance to use the word "cinnabar." They're usually small - maybe around two inches tall - but these were an inch, probably less. If it was a larger patch maybe I'd have taken some home to eat but there were only a few (all tiny) so I left em for the creatures.

Maple logs inoculated from sawdust in summer 2021. Red stuff is cheese wax which I used to seal the inoculation sites

Any identifications on these puppies?

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Fungi have crossed the CleanTechnica radar as a potential biofuel resource, a packaging and insulation material, and a plant-based alternative to animal-derived leather. The idea of making sustainable concrete-type blocks from fungi has also been percolating for several years.

In January, for example, NASA published a proposal from the University of Nebraska that describes how sustainable buildings could be grown on Mars by, combining the masonry skills of fungi and cyanobacteria.

“This research proposes that, rather than shipping prefabricated outfitting elements to Mars, habitat outfitting can be realized by insitu construction using cyanobacteria and fungi as building agents,” explains Congrui Grace Jin, an assistant professor at the school’s College of Engineering, with in situ meaning that the blocks would be fabricated at the construction site.

The self-repairing bio-material would incorporate native soil, aka regolith, from the planet’s surface to grow homemade building blocks.

“Synthetic biology toolkits will be employed to create a synthetic lichen system, composed of diazotrophic cyanobacteria and filamentous fungi, to produce abundant biominerals (calcium carbonate) and biopolymers, which will glue Martian regolith into consolidated building blocks,” Jin added.

A fungus (pl: fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from the other eukaryotic kingdoms, which, by one traditional classification, includes Plantae, Animalia, Protozoa, and Chromista.

A characteristic that places fungi in a different kingdom from plants, bacteria, and some protists is chitin in their cell walls. Fungi, like animals, are heterotrophs; they acquire their food by absorbing dissolved molecules, typically by secreting digestive enzymes into their environment. Fungi do not photosynthesize. Growth is their means of mobility, except for spores (a few of which are flagellated), which may travel through the air or water. Fungi are the principal decomposers in ecological systems. These and other differences place fungi in a single group of related organisms, named the Eumycota (true fungi or Eumycetes), that share a common ancestor (i.e. they form a monophyletic group), an interpretation that is also strongly supported by molecular phylogenetics. This fungal group is distinct from the structurally similar myxomycetes (slime molds) and oomycetes (water molds). The discipline of biology devoted to the study of fungi is known as mycology (from the Greek μύκης mykes, mushroom). In the past mycology was regarded as a branch of botany, although it is now known that fungi are genetically more closely related to animals than to plants.

Abundant worldwide, most fungi are inconspicuous because of the small size of their structures, and their cryptic lifestyles in soil or on dead matter. Fungi include symbionts of plants, animals, or other fungi and also parasites. They may become noticeable when fruiting, either as mushrooms or as molds. Fungi perform an essential role in the decomposition of organic matter and have fundamental roles in nutrient cycling and exchange in the environment. They have long been used as a direct source of human food, in the form of mushrooms and truffles; as a leavening agent for bread; and in the fermentation of various food products, such as wine, beer, and soy sauce. Since the 1940s, fungi have been used for the production of antibiotics, and, more recently, various enzymes produced by fungi are used industrially and in detergents. Fungi are also used as biological pesticides to control weeds, plant diseases, and insect pests. Many species produce bioactive compounds called mycotoxins, such as alkaloids and polyketides, that are toxic to animals, including humans. The fruiting structures of a few species contain psychotropic compounds and are consumed recreationally or in traditional spiritual ceremonies. Fungi can break down manufactured materials and buildings, and become significant pathogens of humans and other animals. Losses of crops due to fungal diseases (e.g., rice blast disease) or food spoilage can have a large impact on human food supplies and local economies.

The fungus kingdom encompasses an enormous diversity of taxa with varied ecologies, life cycle strategies, and morphologies ranging from unicellular aquatic chytrids to large mushrooms. However, little is known of the true biodiversity of the fungus kingdom, which has been estimated at 2.2 million to 3.8 million species.[5] Of these, only about 148,000 have been described, with over 8,000 species known to be detrimental to plants and at least 300 that can be pathogenic to humans.[7] Ever since the pioneering 18th and 19th century taxonomical works of Carl Linnaeus, Christiaan Hendrik Persoon, and Elias Magnus Fries, fungi have been classified according to their morphology (e.g., characteristics such as spore color or microscopic features) or physiology. Advances in molecular genetics have opened the way for DNA analysis to be incorporated into taxonomy, which has sometimes challenged the historical groupings based on morphology and other traits. Phylogenetic studies published in the first decade of the 21st century have helped reshape the classification within the fungi kingdom, which is divided into one subkingdom, seven phyla, and ten subphyla.

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I walked into the room after 8 hours and temp had topped out at 146. I was losing a tremendous amount of heat out the top.

I covered the top of the top with cling wrap and laid beach towels over it to insulate. After a few hours I had temps up to 205-208, which I allowed to run for 6 hours. I’m feeling pretty good that I got a decent kill on pathogens with that temp.

After that I pulled the logs out in the bags to cool to 80 or so, took about 4 hours, added 2 cups of spawn per bag, sealed and shook per the article.

Packed up and ready to go !

3-4 weeks now in the garage after which I will bury when fully inoculated. Fingers crossed. Best part is I have some spawn left over so I can go do that dying oak tree in the wooded lot next door !greensicko-laser

Maple logs inoculated spring of ‘21 just started yielding in earnest.

Totem method here but due to a shortage of big logs I lashed together 5 smaller ones, 5” diameter or so, with twine. Seems to have worked just fine!

0% chance this works lmao

I want to purchase a mushroom kit because theres no way in hell ill ever have the money or space to make a proper mycology setup and thats the closest ill get

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Spore is sawdust spawn from north spore and air transfer bags are from Amazon. I have a big storm fall maple I cut up a couple of weeks ago that I’m going to use for substrate. The tricky part will be sterilization. I have a big ass pot that can hold a lot of logs and fits in the oven so my plan is to fill that bad boy up with vacuum sealed logs and bake them for an hour in a water bath at 300

I’m not sure how to do the bags themselves, those I can probably just pressure cook.

Also welcome to /c/mycology :)