To inoculate your totems with again either the oyster or the lion's mane, you'd
first cut your trees down fresh and buck up the log
into two foot sections.
Each of those two oot sections can then be either left in
the woods where they fell or you can move them to a more convenient location.
Once you've decided where you're going to set your logs then you would cut those logs
into two pieces - essentially one cut in the middle cutting the log in half and then you
cut a little two-inch cookie off the top of the log and so we're just
creating places to then insert that spawn into the log.
You really just need a chainsaw as your main tool to inoculate these logs but with that
comes some danger, so it's really important to have chaps when you're
cutting with a chainsaw, a good helmet with good head protection and face protection and
ear protection.
Gloves are really recommended and a saw that is not an ancient
dinosaur but actually has sort of some of the modern safety feature, so we're
going to cut up this log with all those things in mind.
We're going to cut about halfway through the log and then a
little cookie off the top so that we have those three pieces to work with when we inoculate.
So, it's important after you cut your logs, you want to cut them where you're going to
set them up because if you were to take these and
move them, let's say you cut ten other logs you might get really confused about the
order that they're stacked in, so I try to cut them exactly where I'm going to set this
log up.
This five pound bag of spawn will do about ten of these logs give or take so that's about
fifteen - twenty dollars a bag, so it's pretty inexpensive, a couple
dollars per totem to set this up.
Other things we'll need is just two bags, generally just regular, old shopping paper
bag or just a piece of cardboard and then one of those
larger leaf bags we can get at the hardware store.
So the basic inoculation is we'll first set the smaller bag on the ground because our
first bit of inoculation is going to be right here and we want to avoid contamination from
the soil so this helps kind of protect that.
I generally take about a good handful of the spawn and just break it up so it's nice and
small about the size of this first log and we'll just set that right on top.
Make sure it's nice and level.
Other handful and this time we'll make sure it's nice and small and it should cover the
whole surface of the log, maybe about a quarter of an inch.
Press it down a little bit and then we'll put the second piece on top and then one more
handful
and then finally that little cookie piece right on top there, and so, there's no reason
why you couldn't actually, if you wanted to, make this log longer and cut more pieces.
The important thing is about every foot, you're cutting it in half and putting that spawn
right in between your two pieces and then on top, this cookie just helps to keep the
top part from drying out.
So this example is a poplar log with golden oyster mushroom, again you could also be using
lion's mane with sugar maple or beech as well.
So, after we're done with the stacking, the final step is to put the leaf bag over and
the leaf bag is nice because it allows you to cover it and then sort of roll it down
to the base.
You might put a few rocks around the base the hold it in place and the purpose of this
bag is to keep rodents out as the mushrooms are colonizing and also to
keep it a little bit more humid and a little bit darker during that spawn run phase so
again, about the first year so is when the mushrooms are colonizing the log and then
they'll be ready to fruit.
So we like to set these logs up in the woods because of course these mushrooms are
found on growing on log substrates all the time so we're trying to emulate that
environment through the temperature, humidity, and especially shade that the forest provides
and so keeping your logs in the shade helps with good mycelium development and it helps
with good fruiting and it keeps the right conditions and especially in dry and
sunny and hot years we can have problems with mushroom production but in the woods generally
we see the temperature and humidity is moderated and so it's great for keeping consistency.
The ideal forest would be conifers because you have
year-round shade.
These woods here that we have on our farm is is all sugar maple
so the leaves will drop pretty soon and we'll have full sun for a good chunk of the year
so we end up actually covering all of our logs with
shade cloth just because we don't have any hemlock or pine
or anything to grow them under.
So if you have it then I would say conifers are best and if not, then any other
shade forest will do with the more shade essentially the better.