(and volunteers are welcome)

Last weekend we made the first log pickup of the season, about 6 weeks after when I did this a year ago. We moved over 300 logs from Wisconsin to Maplewood. We are in a mad rush to harvest the rest of the logs we need for the year – perhaps another 1100-1400.  Harvest should happen before the trees start to bud – and shift their energies into leaves.   But there is also a lot of inoculating to happen in the next two or three months.

If you’re interested in helping out with inoculations, we started them last week, and are going full-bore. Please view the volunteer tab of the CTHM website for more details, and to sign up for dates: http://cherrytreehousemushrooms.com/volunteer/

Thank you!

You should think about starting your own mushroom logs, or just learning more about mushroom cultivation. April is a great month to inoculate logs, and it is also when I lead most of my cultivation workshops. Classes are at Egg|Plant Farm Supply, Seward Co-op, Mississippi Market in West St. Paul, Linden Hills Co-op, and PRI Cold Climate.

Workshop dates are listed on the workshops tab, but you should confirm the date/time and details with the workshop venue before you arrive. And you should sign up for the class with them before-hand to make sure you have a spot!

First in the lineup are twin workshops at Egg|Plant Farm Supply in St. Paul; mushroom basics and shiitake cultivation classes are scheduled back-to-back on April 6th. See the Egg|Plant website for details: http://eggplantsupply.com/Classes.html and I’d call ahead to reserve a spot!

Last week I got it in my head that I needed a farm trailer, for doing log inoculations and for keeping a fridge for mushrooms, as well as for storing other odds-and-ends.  In the past I’ve done inoculations in Minneapolis before moving all the logs again out to the farm.  This year I decided to cut out that step.  Enclosed trailers such as I wanted looked expensive and not very adaptable, so I decided on something different…

This is the farm trailer in all its glory, situated next to my fruiting tents, where I’ll be temporarily storing new logs before and perhaps after inoculation.  Fortunately I chose to set up the trailer before the snows late last week.  Believe me, it was difficult enough without snow!

I hoped to get this chore completed within one day, but it actually took two and a half days.  The first day dead-ended fairly early, as my hydraulic jacks were way too unstable and short to do the job.  On the second day I brought new floor jacks, and my friend Jon.  I told him it could take the whole day, but I don’t think either of us predicted that it would be 1:30 the next morning before we both landed back at our Minneapolis homes.   Below is a night shot of the trailer bed just as we slipped it under the shed, which was being propped up by jacks and concrete blocks.  That was a pretty heady moment, but we still had more than six hours left of effort.  We placed more and more weight on the trailer bed while backing it up further under the shed.  Helpful were the tank-like rolly things that the front of the shed rested; they eliminated any friction there as we shifted things.  When most of the weight was on the trailer, we used a come-along (winch) to pull the shed the rest of the way onto the trailer bed.  Then we strapped and bolted the two together, weighted down the shed interior with concrete blocks, and avoided the freeway and freeway speeds.  We made it to the farm with flying colors!

The next day I returned to the farm to move it into position.  This was a tricky operation, since I needed to maneuver it fairly far off the road but between trees and my fruiting tents.  I moved a large brush pile that was in the middle of all this, then promptly got myself stuck in the fill at the bottom of all such piles.  In the end, AAA pulled me out, and got the trailer into position in the process.

I’ll try to post about my next steps on the trailer, which will probably include adding a window and setting up lights and the inoculation table.

With the snow upon us at last, I had no choice but to take down the shade fabric from the main structure. You see, the seams between fabric panels and the structure itself aren’t designed to tolerate snow loads.

Last year I dismantled the structure so that I could use the main fabric to cover the logs during the winter, but this year I have enough – or nearly enough – to cover them without that main shade fabric.  On the right in the photo you can see black fabric lower down, which sits directly on the log stacks.

Covering the logs like this is important to shade the logs during the winter, but also to protect them from winter winds – which will freeze-dry them otherwise. I used some tarps and plastic sheeting when I ran out of shade fabric, since these will do the same thing during the winter. You do have to be careful though to open things up again during winter or spring thaws, or your logs will get moldy, which can happen above 40 degrees.

If you only have a couple of logs, it is probably better and easier to just move them into your garage or shed, but that certainly isn’t an option for me!

A few days ago I discovered that there had been some prolific fruitings by the new golden mushroom logs – logs that I inoculated only a few months ago.  These mushrooms were done and gone – rotted in place.   Now that these logs are productive, I pulled off the biobags that I’d put on to keep them moist while the oyster mycelium spread through the aspen wood.  You can still see pieces of these bags around the logs – which should decompose over the coming months.  With the bags off they can fruit better – especially along the sides of the logs.

Golden oysters love hot weather and we’ve had plenty of that, so I guessed that they would fruit again soon.  Once I pulled the bags off these logs, I was proved right within a day or two.  Unfortunately these logs are producing mostly at their bases – right through soil – which makes clean-up difficult.  But they are still beautiful and delicious.

A mushroom “totem” is a name for a mushroom log that is made up of sections of large-diameter log that are stacked up on top of one another with layers of spawn in-between.  I use most of my oyster spawn with this technique because it is supposed to be more productive than small-diameter cultivation (drilling).  Folks have used the totem method with shiitake and lions mane mushrooms as well, and probably others.

Some of my logs are a foot and a half in diameter and four foot long and around the 200 lb. mark, so it is wise to make your large totems where they can stay forever!  Mine are located in some woods where they can get shade during the summer.  I cover them with shade cloth during the winter months.

I have been inoculating my inventory of large aspen logs off and on for several months this spring.  I probably have several more blog posts about this topic, but here is the basic technique that I used this year:

Start by cutting your logs into sections.  I wouldn’t do this until you are ready to inoculate, since it will dry out the log unnecessarily.  This year my new logs are only 3 foot long, so I cut a two or three inch “cap” for both bottom and top and divided the rest into three sections, so each is about 10 inches high.  I make a cap for the top to protect the spawn from drying out there, and I use one at the bottom instead of putting spawn directly on the ground.

Open up a large garbage bag and put the first cap in the bottom.  I use biobags since they eventually decompose.  Many folks use bags since they retain the moisture present in the fresh wood, making it unnecessary to water during this phase, which we call “spawn run.”

Spread a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch layer of sawdust spawn on top of the log section.

Add another log section between 10 and 18 inches high on top of the first one.

Keep adding layers of spawn and remaining log sections, and finish by adding a log cap.

Finally, pull the bag up around the totem log and tie closed, leaving some opening for the mycelium to breathe.  I generally add a tag to the cap, so that I know what species/strain of mushroom it is and the year it was inoculated.

Leave the totem log in its bag for two or three months, by which point it should have a white mycelial coating at the log ends and over much of the bark.  At that point you can pull of the bag and it will be ready to fruit, provided that the right conditions exist of temperature and humidity/water.  Keep watch for my next post on totem logs, since I’ll show you how my logs have been progressing, and what a fully colonized oyster totem log looks like!

Watering should be pretty simple, right?  Just train a hose on something like a mushroom log for a few minutes until it looks wet, then go home.  Well, that is what I did my first year mushroom farming.  Those logs turned out pretty well considering that this little water doesn’t really penetrate into the logs.  What you need in the first six months of mycelium growth – what we call “spawn run” – is a weekly or biweekly watering of about an hour of continuous watering.

I wised up my second year of operation and invested in a couple of sprinklers.  They both fit on the end a 5/8″ water hose and delivered water to between 20 and 40 logs at a time.  I balanced the sprinkler up on the log stack and turned the nozzle to start the water flowing.  Back then my logs were scattered in a few yards, but all close together, so I would bicycle over to each yard every hour to move the sprinkler.  For one yard this lasted most of the day.

My third year I bought a fancy new sprinkler on a tripod.  The tripod meant I wouldn’t need to balance the sprinkler on logs, and come back to a sprinkler that was spraying right into the ground.  This sprinkler also produced finer droplets, which watered in hard-to-reach places better.  It was a fine sprinkler, but I still had to move it every hour.  This took on a ridiculous cast after I introduced hundreds more mushroom logs and moved them to a central location at Grow! Twin Cities.  Yes, last year I would spend a day and a half at a time watering.  Fortunately this was largely unnecessary until midsummer, when the rains tapered off.  Then I started fantasizing about my next watering system, and I had lots of time to contemplate it.

That fall I purchased some micro-sprinklers, tiny sprinklers that work together in tandem so that you can water a larger area, and using less water.  I used standard hose, but with lots of complicated and expensive brass fittings recommended to me.  I attached these sprinklers to u-posts – green painted metal posts like you might use to hold up rabbit fencing or tomato plants.  But the sprinkler setup was expensive enough that I had only enough to water a hundred logs at a time, so I was still moving this around every hour.  Also it didn’t look so impressive.

Not like my latest set-up, which I put together this spring, and is doing well so far.  It is also a micro-sprinkler system, but the fittings are cheap enough that I was able to buy enough to outfit my whole operation.  Theoretically that means there will be micro-sprinklers among the woods log stacks as well as in the shade structure, but I haven’t tackled that yet.  I only have four or five micro-sprinklers on a line, and each line is controlled by a shut-off valve (see top photo).

individual micro-sprinkler on riser anchored with ground stake, connected to 1/2 inch poly tubing with 1/4 tubing.

These individual lines lead back to a whole series of components, including a water meter, 30 psi pressure regulator, filter, and backflow regulator.  Oh, and there are a couple of adapters and shut-off valves in there for good measure.  They all do their thing, but I was most anxious about putting in a pressure regulator, since the woods area is uphill and about 30o feet away, and there will inevitably be a loss of pressure.  So far all these fittings have done the trick; the micro-sprinklers work in the shade structure, and I have used my old tripod sprinkler to good effect in the woods laying yard.  This is all very good, but what watering system will I use next year?

the whole bloody series of watering components just outside the house where our farm pump is located

The Mill City Farmers Market is only a few miles from our house, so I have been bicycling over there on Saturday mornings. A friend is lending me his bike trailer, which is at least six foot long and has a capacity of 300 pounds. I am utilizing most of that, carrying fresh and dried mushrooms, mushroom log kits, table cloth, bags, and mushroom books.

My friends at Stone’s Throw Urban Farm have been generous in bringing my tent and tent weights with them, weight that would most certainly put me over the edge. Even so, I avoid hills on the trip to and from the market!

Here is my table at the Mill City Farmers Market, with log kits, shade tarps, books, dried mushrooms, and only a couple of fresh mushroom baskets.

weeding/pruning forest floor stacks (new shiitake logs)

One of my most neglected tasks is managing the log stack environment.  It is important to finesse humidity and air circulation in order to encourage growth of your mycelium while discouraging molds and competing fungi.  Molds build up when you have too little air circulation and high humidity, and can inhibit mycelium and mushroom harvests.  Mycelium thrives on the humidity, but it can tolerate more air movement than mold.  Hence my recent efforts to improve air movement in forest floor stacks (above) and shade structure stacks (below).

landscape fabric controls grass in shade structure log stacks (new shiitake and oyster logs)

For the latter I put down landscape fabric, since the grass is so vigorous.  I’m hoping the forest plants will take longer to recover and I won’t need to do more than occasional pruning/weeding.  How did I think to make these changes?  Mold of course, which I found in sometimes generous swathes along the bark and sometimes at the log ends.  The good news is that most of it was white mold and that the mycelium also seems to be thriving, which I can see from the white sections on the log ends which line up to the inoculation points (below).  I’ve found a few logs with blue/green mold, which is more malevalent.  I try to isolate all moldy logs – since they bring up the mold counts for the laying area altogether – but I make a special effort with logs with blue/green mold.  I have a “bad children” pile for this purpose that is a hundred feet or more from the other logs.  These moldy logs can still be quite productive, but they won’t infect the others.

mycelium growth at log ends and corresponding inoculation points (new shiitake logs)

Last week I put together some “coolers” – boxes to keep mushrooms cool during the farmers market. The idea came from mushroom farm and spawn supplier Field and Forest Products.

I cut foil-backed bubble wrap to fit into a cardboard box, taped it in with foil tape and I was ready to add mushrooms and some ice packs on top. I used enclosed ice packs about the size and shape of ice cube trays – and they can be cut apart as needed. The ice packs sweat a little, so I kept a layer of paper bags between ice and mushrooms. However the whole setup performed admirably!