Shiitake Saturday

The shiitake mushrooms we grew last year were so delicious we decided to grow even more this year.   600 more to be exact.   We left home at 7:30 a.m. early Saturday morning to drive 2 1/2 hours to our friends Rick and Pearl’s home, across the river from our property.  Rick’s Dad had picked up the mushrooms from the Co-Op the day before.

While Pearl and I caught up with each others life, the guys hiked into the woods to retrieve a maple tree which had blown down earlier in the spring.   Mushroom spores are very fussy when it comes to moving into a piece of wood, it has to be at a certain stage of decay.

The 600 mushrooms came in small thimble size plugs on a plastic tray. While Rick cut the tree into manageable lengths and my DH routered out 1 1/2 inch holes with the drill,  we cut the plastic tray into manageable strips. The instructions read  push the plug into the drilled hole by pressing on the end of the plug. After a few attempts we found it much easier to cut the strips into individual thimbles.

Within the first half hour we had perfected our own stuff the mushroom plug into the maple tree limb trick.  A small slit in the side of the plastic thimble (my  pink Swiss Army knife was the perfect tool), a slight push on the other side and out popped the plug.  Wearing rubber gloves to prevent contamination and working in a assembly line, we finished the job within 2 hours.   We left all but one stick with Rick.

To celebrate, we had lunch at the local country diner (beans, home made raisin bread, ham and potato scallop).  Our husband certainly know how to show us a good time.

We made a quick visit to check on the property.  This will be the spring time view from our front door. Can’t wait to be there harvesting the mushrooms.