Tips on How to Grow Shiitaki Mushrooms
- Danielle Klaff
- Apr 24, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: May 28, 2019
Many people enjoy various mushrooms for culinary, medicinal and health purposes.
Different varieties of mushrooms have incredible health benefits: they’re antiviral, antimicrobial, anticancer, antihyperglycemic, cardioprotective, and anti-inflammatory.
Many of our favorite gourmet mushrooms can’t be commercially cultivated since they are “mycorrhizal,” i.e. they form symbiotic relationships with the roots of plants, vastly expanding the reach of the root footprint to help draw in additional water and nutrients. In return, the plants provide the mushrooms with a constant source of carbohydrates via glucose and sucrose. It’s estimated that 95% of all plants are mycorrhizal. So, when you’re walking through the woods and you see mushrooms, you’re seeing a very small portion of the actual organism—the visible fruiting body—while a massively complex, interconnected web of organisms are dancing invisibly underneath your feet (similar to seeing an apple on a huge apple tree.
Not all mushrooms are mycorrhizal, however, and many of the best mushrooms in the world can be easily cultivated by the home gardener.
Here are some tips on how to grow your own shiitake mushrooms - as there are tons of different types of mushrooms that can be cultivated, and many of them can be grown pretty easily using the same principles.
Shitake mushrooms are best grown on logs in warm weather. Their health benefits include fighting cancer and boosting the immune system.
Different growing media can also be used, depending on the space that you have available and the variety of mushroom you select.
Spawn
There are two ways you can get your spawn. You can make your own using a sterile culture. In the long run, this can be less costly, but the start-up costs can be very high. Instead, consider buying ready-to-inoculate spawn from a supplier.
Spawn is a pure culture of mycelia (slender root-like filaments) that has been grown in specially prepared media and will continue to grow when placed in a suitable environment.
A home gardener cannot be certain that the compost will be at the proper stage for use when the spawn arrives. For this reason, it is more reliable and easier to use dry flake spawn or dry brick spawn. As the names imply, these are dry and dormant, so either may be kept until conditions are conducive to good growth in the mushroom house.
By using inoculated shiitake mushroom plugs, you are guaranteed a harvest. Use recently cut hardwood tree sections with bark still on such as oaks and other thick barked hardwoods.
Cure the logs
Allow the log to “cure” for 2-4 weeks in a shaded, dry environment off of the dirt or forest floor.
Make sure the logs are out of the elements, as to reduce/eliminate other mushrooms from colonizing your logs.
Drill the Holes
Once your logs have cured and your shiitake mushroom plugs have rested, use a power drill with a 5/16″ drill bit attachment to drill offsetting, parallel rows of holes in each log.
Insert Spawn
Insert your shiitake plugs into each hole, and tap them in with your rubber mallet or hammer.
Wax Over Holes
Using a paint brush, seal each cut end of the log completely with melted wax. Next seal each hole thoroughly with wax so that each shiitake plug has its own tight little “house,” safe from other competing fungi
Place your logs in a shady, moist location off of the ground but within reach of a garden hose
Cover your logs with a breathable cloth (such as a shade cloth) to help keep out sun while allowing moisture to come through - don’t use plastic.
Once the logs are stored, you’ll need to plan to water them regularly.
Patience
Under ideal conditions, your shiitake logs will be ready to fruit after 6 months, but it’s recommended that you wait at least 9-12 months before “initiating” them (i.e. “forcing them to fruit”) to ensure that the colony is really strong.
If the surface area looks dark and mottled, then you know the colony has taken over the log and is ready to fruit
Submerge in Water
Once you’ve determined that your shiitake logs are ready to be initiated, you’ll need to submerge them in water for 24 hours.
Use non-chlorinated water - rain, spring, boiled or filtered tap water.
Mushrooms will fruit about 5 days later.
Extra Tip
Here is a simple technique courtesy of famed mycologist Paul Stamets that literally allows you to harvest sunlight to produce Vitamin D (Vitamin D2 to be exact, not Vitamin D3 which is produced from animals
and used in most D vitamin supplements). As Stamets says, “Vitamin D is an essential vitamin that boosts the immune system and plays vital roles in human metabolism,” i.e. it’s incredibly good for you and you need it regularly to stay healthy, especially in the northern hemisphere or during the fall, winter, and spring months when there is less sunlight, preventing your body from producing its own Vitamin D.
Once you’ve harvested your shiitake mushrooms, put them in a sunny location gill side up for 24-48 hours. This has been proven to drastically boost the shiitake’s natural Vitamin D2 levels from around 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams!
History
According to an article in Wikipedia…
“Shiitakes are native to Japan, China and Korea and have been grown in all three countries since prehistoric times. They have been cultivated for over 1,000 years. The Ming Dynasty (AD 1368–1644) physician Wu Juei wrote that the mushroom could be used not only as a food but as a medicinal mushroom, taken as a remedy for upper respiratory diseases, poor blood circulation, liver trouble, exhaustion and weakness, and to boost qi, or life energy. It was also believed to prevent premature aging.
The Japanese cultivated the mushroom by cutting shii trees with axes and placing the logs by trees that were already growing shiitake or contained shiitake spores. Before 1982, the Japanese variety of these mushrooms could only be grown in traditional locations using ancient methods. In 1982, Gary F. Leatham published an academic paper based on his research on the budding and growth of the Japan Islands variety; the work helped make commercial cultivation possible in the west.”
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