Shiitake

After another bad experience with morel mushrooms making me feel like I was having a near-death experience over the weekend I was happy to finish “planting” my crop of shiitake mushrooms tonight. We used logs taken from a dormant oak tree late this past winter to inoculate with the Snow Cap shiitake variety, using a diamond pattern to drill, fill and wax nine logs. It will take around 9 months for the shiitake mycelium to colonize the logs so I hope to harvest my first crop later this fall but not holding my breath until early spring next year. The logs will fruit for 7-10 years though the first 3-4 years are the most productive. Looking forward to some tasty fungus to compliment some walleye dinners next year

This coming weekend we’ll be inoculating 8 more logs for my girlfriend’s shiitake garden so we should have an abundant supply of ‘shrooms for years to come.

My neighbor is now harvesting his second crop. We are customers and benefit from this “eat local” enterprise. I do so love living among folks who partner with the earth. I don’t mind melons from Peru and other stuff from wherever. But it’s heartwarming to know that we are not addicted to public produce.

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After another bad experience with morel mushrooms making me feel like I was having a near-death experience over the weekend I was happy to finish “planting” my crop of shiitake mushrooms tonight. We used logs taken from a dormant oak tree late this past winter to inoculate with the Snow Cap shiitake variety, using a diamond pattern to drill, fill and wax nine logs. It will take around 9 months for the shiitake mycelium to colonize the logs so I hope to harvest my first crop later this fall but not holding my breath until early spring next year. The logs will fruit for 7-10 years though the first 3-4 years are the most productive. Looking forward to some tasty fungus to compliment some walleye dinners next year

This coming weekend we’ll be inoculating 8 more logs for my girlfriend’s shiitake garden so we should have an abundant supply of ‘shrooms for years to come.

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i am about to cook up my first batch of morels ever. should i be worried? are you saying they made you sick??

I’ve been hunting and eating morels since I was 15–I’m 34 now. A couple of years ago I had my first bad experience with morels which had me purging out of both ends, non-cooperatively, 5 hours after eating them. Everyone else I cooked them for had no side effects. Saturday–my first time eating them since the first bad experience–I had the exact same experience 5 hours after eating them…My girlfriend was just fine. I did some research on it and a small population of people have or develop an allergy to morels. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m part of that population which is too bad because I love morels sauteed in butter with chunks of sea salt ground on top of them. The reading I did said to eat a small serving of them your first time if you are concerned, but I’m the first person I’ve ever met with the allergy so you likely have nothing to worry about. Though, if your mouth starts watering about 5 hours after eating them head for the porcelain and plan to cautiously fart for the next few days

The same reaction happened to a friend of mine but he ate morels in huge amounts. I blamed it on a lack of moderation,he blamed it on bad luck.

I’ve began eating Dryads Saddle (polyporus squamosus). Delicious. One book describes it as a consolation prize for unsuccessfull morel hunters. Another description was that if morels were the “lobster” of spring mushrooms,Dryals saddle is the meat-and-potatoes.

as long as the shrooms you collect are all hollow you should be good! if they are not they are false morals! toss them out!

me and the family will make just morals for supper! we all love them!

I would try to grow oysters. Would like to try the logs too though. I like mushrooms a lot but not so much drowned in butter. Haven’t eaten the saddle. Found one a few years ago. I read they tasted like watermelon rind? Smelled that way at least.

Sounds like black morel poisoning I know someone posted somewhere how deelish they were but they are toxic to most….

Or maybe you fried a slug?

Lot of ‘safe’ mushrooms are getting linked to weird disease later like hemolytics etc….

I used to hunt them but after a loss of friend quit.

I wonder sometimes about the oak savanna we innoculated back in 83ish..

OK this is news to me, what do shiitake scrooms taste like?

Shiitake have a stronger mushroom flavor and can be described, in my opinion, as a little smokey and woody flavored. I think they are a little tougher than a portabella but have much better flavor. More information here.

I’m on my third year with the shitaki logs and have some that need cutting right now. Keep those logs damp. My fall crop is always better than the spring crop. Last year I had a couple shitakis as big as dinner plates. Sliced 1/4″ thick and sauted with some sliced onion and just a touch of beef base and you’ll be in for a taste treat.

So after a hot and dry summer and me not doing a very good job at watering my logs I was presented a surprise yesterday. I figured my shiitake experiment would make good firewood next summer but maybe I’ll have some cooking fodder after all.

Good job!

I just cut a pile off my logs and should get another flush before they freeze….I hope.

I am looking at another strain of spawn plugs to add to the current logs that yields during the summer months more and doesn’t need live wood to get the innoculation done. I have six logs marked that have minimal yields and the new spawn plugs will go in those.

Those sound very tasty