We had some extra time Saturday so Sarah and I decided to make good use of an oak tree I had to cut down for a fence we're building.
We had a few packets of Warm Blue Oyster mushrooms from
Mushroom Mountain sitting in the fridge that needed to be used and this was the perfect opportunity.
After cutting the tree, the first step was to section up the trunk into approximately 2 foot lengths. Once that was done then next step is to start drilling holes in the log to tap the mycelium covered plugs into.
As you can see, the plugs in the packet are covered with white mycelium, so they should work great.
We started off the drilling by measuring 2" in from the end and drilling a hole the same size as the plug. Then we drilled another hole every 6" in a straight line down the log.
After the holes were drilled, we followed up by going down the line and gently tapping the plugs in.
After that was done we rolled the log about an 1/8 of a turn to start the next row about 3" across the circumference and 6" down from the end.
By doing this, we created a star pattern that gives maximum coverage for the mycelium to take over the log.
While we were drilling, we got our double boiler going to melt the paraffin wax we'd be using to seal all the plugs we'd recently tapped in.
The purpose of the wax is to seal the hole so insects or competing mycelium don't get in and take over the log before our warm blue oysters do.
The tree we cut wasn't huge, so we made the logs a little longer than usual. A rule of thumb is that you get a season of mushroom fruiting for every inch of diameter. It would seem good to get the largest diameter possible.
However, the larger diameter increases the amount of time it takes for the mycelium to fully take over the log. With this skinnier log, we're expecting 6-9 months before we get any fruiting. With a bigger one it would be proportionally longer, not to mention being harder to lift and handle.
Also, notice the aluminum foil at the end of the log. We wrote down the date and what kind of mushroom on it and stapled it to the end because, after 6 months, I'll have no idea what we used.
As you can see, the plugs are hard to spot once they're tapped in. We found it effective to wax them immediately after tapping them so we wouldn't miss any.
Plugs waiting to be tapped.
After a couple hours of work, we got them all done. We were able to get about 100 plugs put into about 20 feet of oak. Not a bad days work. Looking forward to sampling the fruits of our labor. (no pun intended)
