Long Logs

We’ve been busy in the mushroom yard, rearranging to make room for and inoculating our new “long logs.” It always takes a bit of searching to find all the trees we want to use.  They need to be accessible, retrievable, and just the right species. Like a houseful of kids at dinner time, each type of mushroom prefers a different kind of tree (of course). Given what trees make up our woods, the menu is indeed somewhat limited. Oyster mushrooms like maple trees. Chestnut mushrooms prefer birch. Shiitakes love oak trees. Hericium prefer cottonwood, but do “well enough” on our readily available maple trees, so that’s what they get. Like my mother used to say with a loving smile, “Sorry, THIS is what’s for dinner.”

We cut the trees while they are still dormant and wait a couple weeks for the tree’s naturally occurring anti-fungal enzymes to break down. There is no point trying to inoculate the logs while they are still actively fighting it. When they are ready, we drill 40-50 holes in each 3-foot log, fill the holes with mushroom spawn and then seal each hole with wax. Once inoculated, the logs are set aside to incubate. The incubation process or “spawn run” takes 1-2 years depending on the type of mushroom.

When the fungi has spread throughout the log, it begins to “fruit” (produce mushrooms). Once it starts to fruit it will hopefully keep fruiting for several years.  The trickiest part of growing mushrooms is keeping the logs from drying out or being colonized by more aggressive mushroom spores. The two cut ends on each log are where all the evaporation and infiltration takes place. So last spring we tried something quite different. Instead of cutting the trees up into 3-foot lengths which is the industry standard, we kept the logs in 15-foot lengths, drastically reducing the number of cut ends. I was ecstatic with the results.

Our shiitake, chestnut and oyster “long logs” produced mushrooms much faster than our usual 3-foot logs and there was a lot less infiltration of unwanted fungi. But it was our Hericium logs that were truly remarkable. Hericium (which includes Lions Mane) is one of the slowest growing, least aggressive, fungi around so it notoriously takes the longest to fruit.  With our 15-foot logs though, instead of taking two years to produce mushrooms it only took 6 months.

I was so impressed that I contacted the company that sells the spawn. They were equally impressed and sent us free spawn to further test our theory and see if we could duplicate the results. The 15-foot logs are definitely more cumbersome to work with but for us it’s well worth the effort.

With distinctive lobster overtones, log grown Lions Mane is one of the most delectable culinary mushrooms in the world, and far superior in flavor to its cousins grown indoors in plastic bags. But even more exciting than the flavor are the studies which have found it to be neuro regenerative, neuroprotective and cognitively stimulating. With a resume like that, who cares what it tastes like! With renewed excitement, and a free bag of spawn, we’ve ramped up production of our long log Lions Mane and will know this fall if we get similar results. I’m sure I’ll remember to keep you all posted.

Neurotrophic and Neuroprotective Effects of Hericium erinaceus - PubMed (nih.gov)

Neurohealth Properties of Hericium erinaceus Mycelia Enriched with Erinacines - PubMed (nih.gov)

Improvement of cognitive functions by oral intake of Hericium erinaceus