5 Things to Grow Mushrooms on Logs This Fall

The pick

Shiitake Plug Spawn, 100 count

$16.99 on Amazon

Plug spawn is hardwood dowel colonised by the fungus - hammer it into a drilled oak or sugar-maple log and the mycelium moves in over a year, then fruits every spring and fall for as long as the log holds together. A hundred plugs does three or four logs, and each log out-produces its cost several times over.

Logs want cutting from live healthy trees, rested two weeks - dead wood is already claimed.

The pick

Spawn Drill Bits, 5-Pack

$30.00 on Amazon

Plug spawn is sized to a 5/16 hole at one-inch depth, and freehanding that with a random bit gives loose plugs that dry out or tight ones that split. A proper spawn bit sized to the plugs turns the drilling into rhythm work - a diamond pattern every few inches, fifty holes a log, ten minutes.

An ordinary drill is fine; bits sized to the plugs are the part worth buying.

The pick

North Spore Log Sealing Wax

$9.99 on Amazon

Every drilled hole is an open door for wild fungi that will happily eat the log before your shiitake does. A dab of melted sealing wax over each plug - and over the cut ends - seals moisture in and competitors out. It is the least glamorous step and the one that most decides the success rate.

An old crockpot melts wax safely; it is ruined for food afterwards, thrift-store one.

The pick

Back to the Roots Oyster Kit

$14.67 on Amazon

Logs are the long game, and fourteen months is a long time to wonder whether it worked. A countertop oyster kit fruits in about ten days - it teaches you what healthy mycelium looks like, what pinning looks like, and when to harvest, all before your logs need any of those judgements.

Spent kits crumble into the garden bed and often fruit again from the mulch.

The pick

Opinel No. 08 Mushroom Knife

$28.21 on Amazon

Twisting mushrooms off a log tears the surface the next flush would fruit from. The curved blade cuts the stem flush, and the boar brush on the other end cleans caps in the field - dirt brushed dry beats mushrooms washed wet, which soak up water and go slimy in the pan.

The same knife is the foraging knife, if the woods call.