Growing Mushrooms On Logs
- Image by FreeWine via Flickr
If you’ve been attempting to grow your own mushrooms, you may have heard of or even used logs as growing mediums for your mushrooms.
Growing mushrooms on logs may require a little more knowledge in some areas compared to growing mushrooms using the more common soil and box methods.
To successfully grow mushrooms on logs you would need to know several things.
The first of these being, what species you intend to grow because not all species of mushrooms will grow on any medium you choose. Depending on the species you want, such as shiitake mushrooms, you would need a hardwood log or stump.
If you were planning to grow truffles, you would not be able to use a cut log, as truffles require a live tree and they grow near the base of a tree, not actually on it. And for mushrooms like chicken of the woods you would require softwood logs or stumps.
The preferred size (diameter) of the log or stump may also vary from species to species of the mushroom you want to grow so there is no definite answer. Also because you are growing mushrooms on a log or stump, there are different procedures to follow.
So before you try growing mushrooms on logs take some time to get to know your species and the methods to a successful harvest.