Mushroom, mushroom!

My friend recently blew my mind when he told me about mushroom logs - logs that have been "inseminated," as it were, with different types of mushrooms. Needless to say, I had to have one.

I bought two, actually: one that produces single shiitake mushrooms from various holes poked into the log. It's supposed to produce about eight or so, but it appears my mushroom log only produced one:


Still, he's pretty cool. He was big enough today for me to eat, so I cut him off, chopped him up, and ate him in a salad. He was a very beautiful mushroom - no dirt, obviously, because he came from a log in my apartment! The underside had beautiful little mushroom rib things, completely perfect. I enjoy my mushroom log.

The other log, the oyster log, is producing a bit more than my shiitake log. It's kind of a non-traditional log, because it's a log covered in some kind of creamy substance that is inseminated with mushroom spores. You keep it in a plastic bag and cut slits in the bag and spray with water whenever you want to produce mushrooms.

It went a little crazy:


Dave helped me a lot with this one, and he cut the two slits for the mushrooms. you can see them obviously sprouting out of the sides, and also why they are called "oysters" - they are pretty flowing and gnarly-looking. Like oysters. I haven't cut these off yet, but I'm guessing they will make it into some sandwiches or something in the next few days.

I've got to let my shiitake log rest for two months now, though I need to read the instruction sheet to find out how to do this. Hopefully I'll get more growth next time. Still, it's been an interesting experiment, and I look forward to cultivating more mushrooms!