Producing shiitake mushrooms is not as easy as sprinkling a few spores onto dead wood. As such, Alcona/Iosco Conservation District Forester Andrew Beebe shared a detailed account of his own experiences in growing garden giants and his recent endeavors in growing shiitake mushrooms with over 65 people at a seminar sponsored by the Michigan Forestry Assistance Program held March 14.

While shiitake do naturally grow on dead hardwood tree logs in moist, warm environments, in order to have a successful shiitake harvest hardwood logs must first be selected fresh, prepared and then inoculated with shiitake spawn before the mushrooms grow.

Beebe’s interest in mushrooms stems from his own background and his desire to provide educational outreach to local residents.

“My wife’s senior project at Michigan Tech was on (mushrooms), and I have been interested in growing shiitake for quite a while. I’m also interested in non timber forest products in general,” he said.

Beebe first inoculated, the process of introducing mushroom filaments into wood, white oak logs almost a year ago and is expecting to harvest his first mushrooms in about a month after he forces the shiitake to fruit by soaking the logs.

“We fruited garden giants and had several flushes in the fall. Those were inoculated into straw bales in the spring and by early fall we had mushrooms popping out,” Beebe said.

Waiting for the shiitake has been a slightly longer process.

“It’s been good and pretty hands off. I’m excited to see mycelium on the ends (of the logs), and I’m excited to see what this year holds,” he said.

Beebe pointed out the white patches on the inoculated log he brought to the seminar and said this was a good sign that mycelium, interwoven filaments forming the vegetative portion of a fungus, were successful in growing throughout the young portion of the wood during the incubation period which can last anywhere from one year to 18 months.

While the waiting period for shiitake mushrooms is fairly hands off, Beebe said the steps to getting the mushrooms prepared is quite specific with the most important element being sanitation.

“Make sure the logs don’t come into contact with soil,” he said. “It’s an easy process but don’t take it for granted, follow the process to a tee and once you do you will have a pretty good chance of success at keeping other fungi out.”

Part of Beebe’s interest in mushrooms is due to the role mushrooms play in the environment.

Beebe said mushrooms are much more than what people often think of as the mushroom with mycelium forming 90 percent of the mushroom mass.

“What you see growing on top of the ground is a small portion of the mushroom,” he said.

Beebe’s focus during the seminar was on one type of mushroom, saprophytes which he said are easy to grow because they grow on logs and eat dead material. Other mushrooms, such as morels, form mycorrhizae associations with roots of plants and are much more difficult to grow.

“If we didn’t have mushrooms in the woods we would just have sticks, limbs and trees piling up. Leaves would pile up and essentially it would destroy the forests because of a lack of nutrients being decomposed from that organic material,” Beebe said.

Additionally, Beebe said about 95 percent of known plants associate with fungi while 70 percent of these plants would not be able to live without the fungi.

“There’s a huge, huge benefit and mushrooms allow life to exist as we know it today,” he said.

As such, Beebe encourages people to attempt mushroom cultivation as long as they consider why they want to grow, what locations are available to use, do they have time to manage the operation and do they have good access to the growing location which can be done in a woods or through mediums such as straw or other natural mulch in gardens.

“For a lot of the mushrooms lifecycle, especially within the log, there isn’t a lot you have to do, but once the mushroom begins to fruit you are going to need to be there everyday for two weeks,” Beebe said.

The steps Beebe recommends include procuring logs and spawn, inoculating, letting the spawn run, managing moisture, fruiting the mushrooms, harvesting and then repeating the process.

As different types of shiitake mushrooms exist, Beebe said obtaining a strain for the environment and species of wood is important. Beebe used white oak cut during the dormant season, late winter or early spring, and a strain of shiitake obtained from a northern location.

After harvesting trees, Beebe said the logs need to season for ten days up to two months to allow oxygen to destroy tannins which would prevent the shiitake from growing.

Beebe used dowels with mycelium running throughout to inoculate his logs early last spring when the logs were still green and moist. He created a diamond shaped grid pattern for spacing. He then used a drill and a rubber mallet to place each dowel into a tight fitting hole drilled into the log before sealing the dowels with a soy based food grade wax.

Beebe said shiitakes inoculated into white oak should last three to five years.

For first time growers Beebe said managing the log moisture content can be the most challenging aspect but utilizing reference logs to determine the water weight by measuring moisture content of freshly cut slices and comparing to oven dried slices will help ensure success.

For those less concerned about having regular harvests, Beebe said longs should be watered every two weeks for six to twelve hours at a time in between rainfall.

“When the logs feel spongy it means the mycelium are growing under it,” Beebe said.

In order to force fruiting, as Beebe will soon attempt, soak the logs for about 24 hours which will allow for harvesting about two weeks after the soaking.

“This is definitely the most exciting part and pretty darn easy,” Beebe said.

Shiitake should be picked before the caps fully unveil, just before the edges turn up by cutting or twisting off the mushroom.

After harvesting resting the logs for four to eight weeks will potentially allow three harvests during the summertime.

Come winter, Beebe said simply stacking the logs works because shiitake are accustomed to winter.

For questions or specific guidance on mushroom cultivation contact Andrew Beebe at 989-335-1056.

Paige Trisko can be reached via email at ptrisko@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693. Follow Paige on Twitter @pt_alpenanews. Read her blog, Scribbles on Pa(i)ges, at www.thealpenanews.com.