shiitake in the garden

at last weekend's lawn and garden show, darry found himself to be the only person in the audience for a log innoculation demonstration.  a man from "the farm", a middle tennessee   mushroom business, was going to show people how to cultivate shiitake mushrooms using pre-innoculated pegs and hardwood limbs in order to grow the tasty little mushrooms in your own back yard.  since darry was the only one who actually showed up, he got the advanced course as well as one on one instruction.

for those of you who happen to know my husband, you know that this was the equivalent of a superbowl trip to didneyland.  but don't be fooled by his enthusiasm, if you take a few minutes to actually talk to him about his beloved fungi friends, you will find that he is actually quite knowledgeable on the subject, right down to the latin names for many of the species both poisonous and edible.  after all, he gave a short lecture on mushrooms at the same show on sunday and it is up on my demo garden blog.

after saturday's private lesson, darry began gathering wood from a neighbor who had cut down a tree with the intention of cultivating a shiitake garden in the back yard.  the wood was free but came with a promise to share some of the shrooms with our neighbor.  we're keeping our fingers crossed that this will be successful, it will take about 9 months for the first flush.

here is darry drilling holes in the logs for the innoculated pegs.

these are what the pegs look like

darry tapping the pegs in with a hammer

sealing the pegs in with wax

our new garden, shiitake logs out back in the shade near the leaf corral