Maitake Harvest + Mushroom Gardening

I was so excited to find this beautiful and flourishing maitake aka hen of the woods growing around the base of a huge oak tree behind our shop. After harvesting it twice, I decided to use the mushroom scraps to start my own substrate and expand the patch into a mushroom garden!

Cleaning the maitake is a tedious process which led to scraping and cutting off sections, mostly stem, that I didn'twant to eat. I pondered for a while about what to do with all that waste and decided to mix some of it with sawdust and the rest would be returned to the same harvested area.

I mixed the mushroom pieces with sawdust from an apple tree root bag - hopefully it's clean enough and will work since I didn't do anything to sterilize it. Then I left it in my newly built greenhouse to stay warm outside. For the other mushroom pieces, I started looking at the huge oak tree that had fallen across our meadow and figured I'd find some logs to spread them on. They were too heavy for me to deal with in the cold morning so I went with scrap slices leftover from projects.

Through a bit of research, I learned that mushroom can be grown from logs, wood chips, sawdust, and straw. I decided to experiment with laying wood slices down as a base, placing mushroom pieces on top, layering with corn stalks and leaves. Do not use hay because of the seeds that you will be growing instead. I caught that mistake I was in the process of making and went with corn stalks, since I didn't have straw readily available and read it was a good alternative.

I tried to fill up holes in the wood slices with mushroom pieces and laid it all on the cut sides. Next, layered with my pitiful corn stalks, grown in pitiful clay dirt and rocks that grew tiny corn not worth eating. But because of the high sugar content in corn, it's nutritious for mushrooms and will hopefully help feed the current colony and develop new growth. I could've taken an extra step here to chop or grind the corn stalks but it was cold and a 6 year old needed my attention.

I also made sure to mark with sticks and branches a bit of border for the new mushroom garden bed. Since we're in Fall, more leaves will be dropping and I don't want to stomp around or lose the space to other family activities. I will expand on the border with the cut logs I plan on inoculating with the sawdust substrate once it's ready.

I laid a branch on top of the corn stalks to hold everything down. Which leads to the charred wood and the fire we had here over a year ago to clean up a brush pile. The wood ash may have created the perfect environment for the mushrooms to grow in. I added a layer of leaves to this and held it down with a few more oak branches.

After I was done, I watered it with several cans scooped out of the fish tank. The biggest downfall of this area is the lack of a water source. But that might change soon if we get the well working. It's important to keep the area moist and warm with air flow so I'll need to water it whenever I get to the greenhouse to take care of those plants. More mushroom scraps will be added to this pile and a mix of wood chips, soil, and leaves on top. As I write this, I've already harvested a third time from this patch and plan on making more maitake teriyaki jerky!