Spring has been very slow to arrive this year, but now it is coming on with a flourish! The peepers first started their croaking a week ago yesterday. Just three days past, the trout lilies started to poke out of the soil. Now, some of their leaves are two to three inches high, and today I saw my first trillium (not blooming yet) and snakes sunning themselves. Mushroom season is around the corner, so I jumped into action; cutting and stacking 25 four-foot maple logs for inoculating. I hope to cut at least another 15 before the trees bud into leaves. Now I can put in my mushroom plug order!
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| Maple logs stacked for two weeks or more before inoculating. | | | | | | | | | |
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These logs, should be able to house about 2250 mushroom plugs. With the addition of 15 more logs, that number can go up to 3000. The trees I cut were carefully selected for this purpose. First, the logs need to be between four and six inches in diameter. Second, I marked trees for harvesting based on woodlot management practices; to strengthen the woodlot and to promote tree growth. Given that we have about five acres of wooded area, this proved to be a bit of a challenge. I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that each tree provided two to four logs, meaning that I could leave some of the trees I marked for another year.
Getting the logs to my mushroom growing location was quite an adventure! As I haven't cut extensive bush trails into our woodlot, I had quite a bit of carrying to do through brush to get the logs from where they were felled to the tractor before they could be transported to their new location. An added bonus is that I have some firewood started for next fall!
