Growing your own mushrooms in SW Wisconsin


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.
 
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.
 
Field and Forest is a great source. By far the biggest bang for the buck (and effort) is the Wine Cap Stropharia spawn, which you mix into wood chips. Do it once you'll find them popping up wherever you have wood chips (and other places too). I was also successful innoculating logs with shiitake, nameko and oyster mushrooms, but it is pretty tedious. No luck with maitake or the hericum species.
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.
 
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.
interesting... ignoring the difficulty, have you been successful in cultivating morels?
 
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.
A starting point helps! So much information out there can be overwhelming and just getting started with something simple right be the right choice.
 
interesting... ignoring the difficulty, have you been successful in cultivating morels?

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.
 
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
 
I have seen a number of recommendations to use wood chips as a seed bed. Anyone have experience with this approach?
 
I have seen a number of recommendations to use wood chips as a seed bed. Anyone have experience with this approach?

You can use hardwood chips for stropharia and oysters.
 
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
 
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
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.
 
My shiitake logs are still going in Ontario. Impressive they lasted this long.
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I soaked them in the lake for half a day and gave each one a good whack with a hammer, and they flushed really nicely again. received_1737699799978465.jpeg
 
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