In the coming weeks I am very excited to teach a mushroom log making workshop. Mushroom logs are a great way to get started with mushroom cultivation as they are low maintenance and largely rely on the mycelium's own goals for them to work. Mycelium are the driving force of the fungi, with mushrooms being the fruiting body. While we would rarely conflate an apple with the tree, we do this often with fungi. This is fair to a certain extent as the mycelium are so hidden from us most of the time. Imagine if an apple tree was all underground, poking an apple above ground when it was ready to fruit. We would likely conflate the apple with the whole of the plant. By inviting a mushroom log into your yard you are able to observe, above ground, the life cycle of fungi.
With a mushroom log we "plant" myceliated plugs into the wood, encouraging mycelium to eat the cellulose of fairly fresh logs. We seal each of the places that we plant the plugs with wax to limit competition with other fungi because the world is full or spore ready and waiting to take over a nice wound in a tree. Then it is a waiting game in which our mycelium, in the case of the upcoming workshop two excellent oyster varieties, eat their fill of the log. When the environment becomes too harsh for the mycelium, with too little food, they wait for water to create fruiting bodies. A mushroom is 85% water, give or take, and 15% mycelium (which is pure protein)-- and spore. Spore, or the tiny nearly invisible genetic "seed" of the mushroom, are released in copious amounts to find soil and trees to be in relationship with out in the wild (or our yards).
If you are interested in joining the workshop contact us before the 18th of April!
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