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 have let them sit for there for the last 3 1/2 years and soaking them occasionally to force them to fruit. 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.
Over several days we harvested about 10 lbs of shitake mushrooms.
We have tried a couple different methods of preserving them:
The first method was to use a dehydrator and dry them.
The first step was to the stems off of all the mushrooms. I borrowed my mom’s dehydrator, and I dehydrated the mushroom.
I dried them for about 10 hours.
I bought some oxygen absorbers from Amazon and I put the mushrooms and a few of those in my half gallon canning jar.
They should stay fresh for a long time. I did this big jar for us and I did a smaller jar for my youngest who loves to make ramen.
This was a really simple way to handle the excess mushrooms.
The other method is to freeze them.
The Ball Blue Book recommends freezing over canning.
Since my mushrooms were pretty large, I sliced them according to the instructions.
The next step is to blanch them in water with lemon juice–1 tbsp. lemon juice per quart (4 cups of water). The lemon juice helps them keep their color
After they were in the boiling water for 3 minutes, I removed them with a perforated scoop and let them drain in a colander in the sink. Then I divided them into 4 quart sized bags and squeezed the air out and laid them on a tray to keep them flat while they were freezing.
These will be perfect for stir fry and also for ramen.
We still have a bunch that we can use fresh. Fortunately, they last much longer in the fridge that white or portobella mushrooms.
