More Mushrooms–Maitake edition

My husband was feeling really ambitious when he was shopping for mushrooms, so in addition to the shitake spawn and all the tools, he also bought Maitake spawn, also known as Hen of the Woods.

So the process for this type of mushroom is VERY different from the shitake mushrooms that we did. First of all, Maitakes prefer oak trees, which worked out well for us, because my husband did some MAJOR pruning on our oak trees and happened to have large diameter branches for this project.

So he cut the little branches off of the huge branches and then bucked them into 12″ long logs. Then comes the weird/hard part. You have to boil the logs for an hour to make sure that you kill everything. So you may be wondering how do you boil a pile of 12″ long logs…. Well, my husband got a 55 gallon stainless steel drum from work, so he used that.

We burned a lot of the debris from the tree pruning, except for stuff that was large enough to use for firewood. We had the fire in the riverbed to make it safer. So he raked up all the coals from the fire and he put cinder blocks on either side of the fire and then put a steel grate on top of them. Then he added the barrel and filled it with water and added the logs and put the lid on top. Then he stoked up the fire and added more wood and brought it to a boil. He let it “cook” over night and then we did the next steps the following afternoon. If you don’t happen to have all this stuff, you can use a large pot or a pressure cooker. Please read instructions for doing it that way.

We pulled the logs out of the water and placed them in the bags that they sent us and we added about 1 1/2 cups of spawn to the bag.

Then we pressed the spawn all over the log from the outside of the bag–you don’t want to contaminate the spawn any more than necessary. You seal it up with a collar and a piece of foam so that it can “breathe”. Then it was time for their trip to live under the arborvitaes for a few months.

So that’s phase one. Once they’ve sat in the shade for a few months, we have to bury them cut side down leaving a few inches of the log sticking out of the dirt. Then we have to wait for them to fruit.

I’ll post more when we get to those steps.

Before you grow these, look up the health benefits and things to watch out for. They do help lower blood glucose levels which could be a concern for someone on medication for diabetes.