Telemark
5 year old buck +
Morels are very difficult, but it can be done. It's a lot of work, and the beds have to be redone every year. Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort, so I don't bother.
Growing your own mushrooms in SW Wisconsin
- Thread starter ajtxwi
- Start date
Morels are very difficult, but it can be done. It's a lot of work, and the beds have to be redone every year. Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort, so I don't bother.
Telemark
5 year old buck +
I would start with blue oyster and Italian oyster mushrooms on logs about 5-10 inches in diameter. They are relatively easy for beginners and have a flavor profile that matches Western food well. You would probably enjoy King stropharia as well, but it is a very different method of cultivation, and wood chips can be difficult to source.
ajtxwi
5 year old buck +
Great reference - thank you. I had not heard of Nameko. quick search on Field & Forest and they suggest that it might grow in ironwood (I have lots) as well as cherry (I have some). I might also try the wine cap - I do have quite a bit of wood chips and saw dust, so I might give this one a try also.
ajtxwi
5 year old buck +
interesting... ignoring the difficulty, have you been successful in cultivating morels?
ajtxwi
5 year old buck +
A starting point helps! So much information out there can be overwhelming and just getting started with something simple right be the right choice.
Telemark
5 year old buck +
I don't bother with it anymore. I was never successful in the places I tried. It seems the easiest way is to grind up some morels and dump the slurry on a pile of mulch at the landscape company, then go around the next spring where the mulch was spread.
ajtxwi
5 year old buck +
nice. something tells me that picture was not taken today.
Late april, last spring. Dad has been growing oysters the last few years in north Mo
Telemark
5 year old buck +
You can use hardwood chips for stropharia and oysters.
rocksnstumps
5 year old buck +
Fella that sells at local farmers market does wood chips for most of his shrums. Recommends however to pretreat with heat almost like a kiln to start out with relatively sterile growing medium. That's his method and assume that everything that pops up he can sell. Maybe if you are confident with ID skill set you could just use wood chips as is but a bit of risk that not all fungus that pops up is safe to eat. Maybe if you process the chips yourself from green wood also a better approach.
Sropharia/Winecaps may be the easiest I've grown on sawdust/woodchips from my friend's sawmill at the top of the hill.
I plugged a bunch of oak logs (sawtooth, white oak, Southern red, Water Oak, pin oak) with 4 or 5 strains of Shiitake and Lions' Mane spawn. The sawtooth bolts have done better than others. Neat video on Japanese Shiitake forestry practices here: http://www.woodlanders.com/blog/2018/2/8/episode-23-japanese-shiitake-forestry
I plugged a bunch of oak logs (sawtooth, white oak, Southern red, Water Oak, pin oak) with 4 or 5 strains of Shiitake and Lions' Mane spawn. The sawtooth bolts have done better than others. Neat video on Japanese Shiitake forestry practices here: http://www.woodlanders.com/blog/2018/2/8/episode-23-japanese-shiitake-forestry
ajtxwi
5 year old buck +
Awesome video - quite the commercial production. Interesting about having to rotate in new logs every year with a maximum lifespan of about six years.
I'd grown and sold about 200 sawtooth seedlings about 20 years ago... ended up with 3 trees in the nursery area that must have been tiny things that got left behind... dropped them and cut them up for plugging with dowel spawn. Bark on the sawtooth bolts has held up far better than on any other oak species I tried. Enough so that I gathered a small bag of sawtooth acorns this fall to plant as a source of 'poles' to be harvested 10-15 years out (if I live that long) for more mushroom production.
