I’m sorry, was this your log? Unclear if it was these larvae that ate it, but whatever did was hungry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe Nameko plug spawn expired on December 1, but I only got started with the log inoculation on December 18. It felt way too difficult to drill the holes, until I realized that the 8mm drill bit I was using was very dull. Not wanting to wait for a replacement I used a 7mm instead. That was faster, but caused problems when trying to hammer in the plugs \u2013 most of them only went halfway in.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Drilling with dull bit and failing to hammer plugs all the way into holes that are too small. Also visible: trails of whatever ate around the logs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHaving not finished that day, the project went on hold yet again. The bag of Shiitake plugs \u2013 no longer airtight \u2013 went back in the fridge. After buying a sharp 8mm drill bit and procrastinating some more, I resumed on January 7.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Quicker and better progress with a sharp bit of the right size.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBy now, the Shiitake plugs had a suspicious looking fuzzy white growth on top. While clearly mycelium, it’s not clear at all if it was Shiitake or something else. The Nameko plugs were wet and slimy and long expired. I hammered them all in anyway.<\/p>\n
To recap:<\/p>\n
\nThe first round of Shiitake plugs only partially went into the holes, then spent almost a month unprotected in the rain<\/li>\n The second round of Shiitake plugs were likely contaminated with something<\/li>\n The Nameko plugs were long expired<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFeeling lazy and discouraged by all this, I skipped the wax sealing step. If the logs get inoculated and edible mushrooms grow, yay. If not, oh well. We’ll try again either way.<\/p>\n
Things we’ll do differently in the future:<\/p>\n
\nFor mushroom beds, either use a different type of spawn or put the grain spawn in burlap sacks to protect against critters<\/li>\n Cut and prepare the logs right before there’s time to actually inoculate them<\/li>\n Verify that all tools and supplies are in working order before starting<\/li>\n Pay attention to the ergonomics of the working area: drilling and hammering all those logs was uncomfortable<\/li>\n Seal all holes with wax right after inoculation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nInoculated logs in their resting spot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes you discover a topic, get interested, and dive right in. You pick a project, gather supplies, and quickly do an impressive job for what is the first attempt in an unknown field. This post is not about one of those occasions. During the last two years, both of us read several books about mushrooms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1229,1230],"tags":[467],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homestead","category-permaculture","tag-mushrooms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32668,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/32668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alo.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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