So in the EARLY spring of 2023, my husband cut down a sweet gum tree and bucked it into six logs that were about 4′ long or so. He drilled a bunch of holes in each log and we innoculated them with shitake spores–they are pegs that you pound into the hole, and the cover with wax to help retain moisture.
He stacked them in the little area of woods by the house and we let them sit for about 18 months. He went to check on them about a week ago, and found that they had started sending up mushrooms, so he brought them out of the woods. He filled our big wagon with water and soaked them for several days and just look at what has happened!
Shitake Time
We watched a video about how to stack them when they are ready to fruit and we have these stacked on a pallet and have 3 layers of 2 each stacked perpendicularly.
We love shitake mushrooms and they are so expensive at the store and this process takes a while to get started, but it’s pretty easy. I thought that I had done a blog post about getting these ready, and I was going to link to it here, but I apparently didn’t do one. We bought the pegs on Amazon (they weren’t very expensive) and the instructions are included and I am sure that you can find more information on YouTube.
Would you try it?
Cathy At Home on the River 
Enjoy. It was a long time coming.
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