I’ve been cooking for over 30 years. For most of that time, I have lived the cushy chef kind of life, or what I like to call “Fridge Life.” What I mean by that is I have either gone to the grocery store or ordered ingredients to be delivered to whatever restaurant I was working at at the time. For most of my career, food just showed up, and then we prepped and cooked it.
It hasn’t been until the last few years that I have started to take a step back, back to the beginning of where food comes from, and get a little dirty. We have started gardening over the past few years, and that has been a big learning curve for us. I have this dream of being able to grow beautiful fruits and vegetables from seed and homestead my two acres in the city. One day, I will make a meal where everything on the plate was grown on my land. Then I’ll save seeds and use them for the next year, continuing a regenerative growing cycle.
In reality, what I have accomplished thus far is an amazing talent for growing weeds, fungus on our fruit trees, and lots of mosquito bites.
It’s not all failure, though. I have found a few things that I really enjoy growing. Figs and mushrooms are probably my favorites.
So far, I have only grown shiitake mushrooms. About two years ago, we learned about mushrooms in our nature group. We are part of a fun homeschool nature group, and with working mostly nights teaching classes, I am able to join many of the homeschool activities with my kids. It’s a lot of fun.
After learning about mushrooms and fungi from our nature group, I decided to embark on a journey to try and grow some of my own.
Some mushroom varieties are easy to grow. Shiitakes are one of the easiest, so I decided to start there. Shiitakes can grow in a few different wood varieties, one of which is chestnut. I happen to have two huge chestnut trees. I picked a nice branch and cut it off, miraculously missing my fence by inches as the branch broke loose and fell to the ground.
To grow mushrooms successfully, it’s important to start with a fresh-cut log. Using a log that has already died and been lying on the ground can be dangerous because it may have other fungi already growing in it. Fresh-cut logs give you the best chance at targeting the fungus you want to grow.
I ordered mushroom plugs and paraffin wax online. They are super cheap to get. Mushroom plugs are basically wooden dowels covered with the particular mycelium needed for your variety of mushroom.
At this point, I recruited my kids for help. They love a good project. We cut the chestnut branch into roughly 2½-foot-long logs. Next, I found the correct-size drill bit, chucked it into my drill, and wrapped a piece of tape around the bit to mark the proper drilling depth. The kids and I took turns drilling holes all over the logs and hammering in the wooden plugs.
The goal from here is to give your specific mushroom a chance to take over the logs while limiting any competing fungi. That makes it important to seal them off. We melted the paraffin wax and used Q-tips to dip into the wax and cover each dowel in the log. Finally, we painted wax onto the ends of the logs to seal them as well.
Our last step was to toss the logs into a moist area of our yard that doesn’t get a lot of sunlight and then wait... and wait... and wait.
It takes about a year for the mycelium to take over the log and start growing mushrooms. After that, it should produce mushrooms during the fruiting seasons—usually spring and fall—for four or five years. Basically, until the log deteriorates and becomes dirt.
The process was so much fun that after a year had gone by, I decided to make a bunch more logs and try a second mushroom type. I cut down an entire hackberry tree (which is another suitable wood for shiitakes) and turned it into more shiitake logs. I am also trying to grow chestnut mushrooms.
I lost count of how many plugs I bought for the second round, but I think it was close to 1,000.
It’s still too early to share whether I have been successful with the second round of logs. I’ll update you when—or if—the mushrooms begin to spring up.
Later this year we may put together a small mushroom growing workshop for our homeschool group. That sounds like a lot of fun. If you love mushrooms, maybe you should make a few logs. They are fun and easy to do.
Keep Cooking, Chef Jeff
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