Save Money By Growing Your Medicine: Starting A Maitake Mushroom Patch

The Japanese word "maitake" means "dancing mushroom" because people in ancient times were said to dance for joy when they found these mushrooms, which were literally worth their weight in silver. In North America it is called Hen of the Woods because its appearance looks like the ruffled feathers of a chicken.

Now, we will try our hand at growing the dancing mushroom.

Why Grow Maitake

Even Web MD touts the health benefits of Maitake mushrooms.

Maitake mushroom is used to treat cancer and also to relieve some of the side effects of chemical treatment (chemotherapy) for cancer. It is also used for HIV/AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), hepatitis, hay fever, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weight loss or control, and infertility due to a condition called polycystic ovary syndrome.

We had pretty good success with our Shiitake mushroom log culture inoculation last spring. Thus, I am hopeful that our temperate zone 7 climate will favor the maitake.

There is a good bit of money savings associated with good health.  Adding home grown mushrooms to your diet of other garden foods, saves money. If nothing else, that is another expense you have eliminated. If it is a pharmaceutical expense, then all the better. A lot of those chemicals they sell just make us dependent and weak due to side effects, and there is often a natural alternative that is just as good with fewer unintended consequences.

Procedures for Growing

It may be that the log culture used for growing shiitake will not work so well with maitake. My research indicates that the best culture for naturally growing maitake (and reishi) mushrooms is on decomposing oak stumps. We do not have any freshly cut stumps presently so we are trying log culture. 

First, I ordered some spawn from Mushroom Mountain in Liberty, South Carolina. The mycelia produced locally will give me a better chance of successfully growing this mushroom. As you can see from the picture above, the mycelia are contained in small dowels.  

About three weeks before the spawn arrived, I cut a large branch from my white oak tree, and cut it further into three three foot-long sections.  The log was between 5 - 8 inches in diameter.

Next, I used a drill to cut holes the same size as the dowels in a diamond pattern around the logs. The holes were about 4-5 inches apart. The idea is that the mycelium will spread throughout the wood and produce fruit next year or maybe two years from now.

I tapped the dowels into the holes and sealed the top with melted bees' wax.  It's rainy season here in western North Carolina. I set the logs against the north side of a large white oak. This should keep them protected from the sun and the prevailing wind. You want the logs to stay moist to promote growth of the maitake mycelium. 

The best practice is to bury the logs in sandy soil so that they will stay moist. I will probably do this later when I figure out where I would like to set up my maitake patch.

Poison Ivy as a Productive Crop

One thing that I have noticed about poison ivy is that it produces quite a bit of organic material. The trick is using the stuff in a productive way. In this post, we look at how we set up a system to use goats to convert a poison ivy patch to food.

Most people give up on making use of poison ivy and spray it with a herbicide. Aside from the health risk, there are three practical problems with this approach.

1. Herbicide detrimentally affects other plants and animals;
2. Herbicide costs a lot of money for each application, and takes a lot of energy to apply; and
3. You lose the stored energy manifested in the poison ivy plant.

Besides, we are natural gardeners and do not want to use herbicides on our place. We don't like it.

We bought the following supplies for our temporary fence project:

1. From Timeless Fencing, fifty 40" Step-In Posts.

2. From Premier Sheep Supplies, three 660' spools of 4.5 Intellirope electric fence cord, three Supareel T-post brackets, and a Patriot P10 battery energizer kit.

3. From the local Walmart, a 12 volt deep cycle marine battery.

I know these were capital expenses that probably exceeded the cost of a few gallons of Roundup. But unlike Roundup, this was a one time expense, it is natural, and using them, we will make productive use of poison ivy.


To set up the system, we connected one end of the Intellirope to a post. Then, using the spools, we strung the wire around the circuit hanging three strands on the Timeless temporary fence posts. At the end of the circuit, we hung the rope spools on a T-post using the Supareel brackets. Next, we installed the ground rod, wired the strands to each other, and hooked up the energizer, fence, and battery. The electric rope fence energized as soon as the clamp hit the post.

Our goats are very happy to be out of the sun. They are enjoying the browse in the wooded area and eating a lot of poison ivy. They love it.

I will post an update later to show you how the plan worked.

In the future, we can move our temporary electric fence and goats around and into any 500 foot patch of brambles on our place and it will not cost us anything but the time.

We now look at poison ivy as a free food source for our goats. The ivy plant converts solar energy into lots of leaves and vines. The goats convert the poison ivy leaves and vines into meat and milk.

Voila!

Poison ivy is a productive crop.

June 14, 2014 UPDATE: Three strands does not seem to be enough to contain my does in the electric fence area. They just get a running start and dodge through the lower electric rope lines. I am ordering a fourth spool, to see if that will stop them from escaping. 

The other possibility is the Patriot P10 may not pulse frequently enough to deter goats. It is rated at 40 pulses per minute. This is good for preserving the battery, but makes the charger less effective if the goats can time out and scoot through between pulses. 

My goats generally are not escape artists. I think there may be some bugs that are bothering them, and perhaps the shelter situation is less than what they are used to experiencing. They are pretty spoiled goats who like to hang out in a horse barn.