What to Expect from your Plug Spawn
New to growing mushrooms?
New to growing mushrooms?
Grow something that grows you back
Grapevine Road
Marshall, NC, USA
Cherokee Homeland
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Welcome!
Thank you for purchasing some of our plug spawn. We’re here to help your mushroom growing experience be joyful and fruitful!
It might take longer than you expect!
Check out our handy guide here to make sure you are selecting the right plugs for your needs.
Growing mushrooms on wood (instead of grain) produces mushrooms with the highest medicinal and nutritional benefits.
And it gives you years of production.
It’s worth the wait!
Each bag contains 100 plugs which is enough to inoculate 4-5 logs (depending on size)
Each mushroom species has a preference about which wood it wants to grow on. Selecting the right wood is your first step to success.
Here’s a quick reference by mushroom species:
Now you have the best tree species let’s look at which logs to select.
Now you have all your logs stacked and ready to receive their plugs gather the few other things you will need.
Set yourself up a comfortable work space and start drilling holes to receive the plugs.
This is it! You are about to introduce vibrant, alive, mushroom mycelium into these logs.
Now you are going to seal the holes so your mycelium is protected from drying out or being eaten by tiny critters.
Your mycelium is in the log! Congratulations! Now give them a drink to help give the mushrooms a good start in life. There are two options here.
Now it is time to take the logs to wherever they will live. This is the colonization phase, the mycelium you inoculated into the log will begin to colonize the wood before it is ready to fruit.
Your logs want to live somewhere:
They don’t need much at this point. Water is the only essential element.
If it rains at least once every two weeks there is no need to do anything but tell your logs they are doing amazing!
If they don’t get rained on in any two week period then:
The mycelium running through the wood eating the cellulose and lignin takes anywhere from four months to two years, depending on mushroom and wood species.
E.g. Oyster on poplar = four-six months.
Shiitake on White oak -12 months.
Be patient…. keep your logs hydrated and they will eventually make mushrooms.
Look for the ends of the logs to turn white with mycelium after a soaking rain as a sign that the spawn run is nearly complete.
At this point, you can force your logs to fruit by soaking them for 24 hrs. If the weather conditions are right for the species that you are cultivating they will fruit naturally on their own. If you continuously force fruit your logs they will not last as long.
Oysters, Shiitake: The easiest to fruit species; can be fruited above ground stacked in a pile or leaning against a fence or tree. Soak, stack, harvest. Keep in mind that the more often you force your logs to fruit the shorter their life expectancy is. We recommend a 4-6 week resting period between forced fruiting. Shiitake logs benefit from a strike to initiate a good flush. Strike the ends with a baseball bat or wooden mallet after soaking, but avoid damaging the bark.
Reishi: More of a challenge to fruit; half bury the logs either horizontally or vertically once the spawn run is nearly complete. You can bury short sections in planters with potting soil. This is especially effective for Reishi. Reishi can also be fruited directly on the ground, without burying.
Lion’s Mane: Patience! Depending on the wood species it can take 1-3 years for it to start producing. The woods that produce the fastest (but will not last as long) are softer woods such as: maple, tulip poplar, willow, or paulownia. Woods that take longer to start producing (but will last longer) are harder woods such as: any oak species, hickory, or black walnut.
Join our Beginners Mushroom Growing online course. We will send you more spawn and be there to help you get your first harvest.
And come into right relationship with the forest.