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.

Shiitake Mushroom Dowel Spawn Innoculation and Lessons

This weekend I used up all my soy wax innoculating white oak logs with shiitake mushroom dowel spawn. I bought 1000 from Fungi Perfecti.

I made several purchases from Fungi Perfecti to create our first shiitake mushroom garden. First, I bought 100 plugs and one pound of soy wax.

The 100 plugs were not even enough to innoculate one 7 inch diameter, four foot log.  Therefore, I called and ordered 1000 plugs.

I used the 1000 plugs to innoculate the rest of the first log, and three more.  Then, I ran out of wax and gifted the rest of the spawn to my neighbor.  I think I had around 300-400 plugs left.

It is a pretty good bit of work to make a shiitake mushroom garden.  I'm talking about just the drilling and innoculation process after you gather the logs.  I have a pretty good drill and it still took several hours to do all the work.

Here are the steps you should follow to efficiently innoculate logs.  (These steps were discovered to be the most efficient after trial and error.)

• Drill all of the 5/16 inch holes in a log.   Each hole is 4 inches from the next laterally.  Go down the log drilling holes.  Turn the log and drill holes about 2 inches below the first line, staggered so the new row lines up roughly in the middle of the previous row.  Turn and drill. Turn and drill.  Do this until you have rows of 5/16 inch holes all around the log.
• Hammer in the plugs with a rubber mallet.  Hammer plugs into all holes.
• Melt about 3 ounces of wax in a metal container.  Apply the was with a brush on each of the plug spawn to seal the log.  If you need more wax, refill and keep covering your spawn plugs.
• Repeat the process log by log.

I used an empty bean can for my wax container and heated at very low over my gas stove.  If you try to cover too many plugs your wax will cool down before you can finish.

I like to do one log at a time because it gives a sense of accomplishment with each log. Also, my hands got tired of drilling after so many holes in a log.

I discovered that chickens like the taste of soy wax.  Keep your chickens away from your project or they may decide to eat your wax off your logs in your garden location.  Hopefully, my chickens do not decide to eat my wax!

I ran out of wax after four logs.  One pound is not enough.  I recommend you purchase the ten pound bag of wax and 1000 spawn.  That should insure you have enough wax to cover all your spawn.  1000 spawn will innoculate about seven or eight logs (6-7 inch diameter) cut to four foot lengths.

I stacked my logs horizontally about twenty feet into my zone five edge under the canopy of a large oak. Fungi Perfecti recommends a vertical stack, but I did not want to risk getting invasive fungus into my logs before the shiitake spreads throughout the wood.

I will need to move my stack from its present location.  I discovered that even though they are located under a large oak, my logs are getting some sun in their present location in the noon sun. The sunbeams shine right down through a hole in the canopy on top of my stack.  

No problem.  It just takes some manpower to move them.

Hopefully, we have shiitake next year around this time.  

Shiitake Cultivation Planning

Maximizing Your "Mycelial Mileage", published at Fungi.com, has some interesting thoughts on mushroom cultivation.

My cultivation will be outdoors on oak logs.  Figuring out the best technique and location are in the cards.  One item in this article that jumps out is the recommendation to cut logs one to three months before innoculation.  Trees emit a natural anti-fungal substance soon after cutting.  This means I need to trim up my white oak so the branches can begin to calm down in preparation for innoculation later this year, in the spring.


The video below, issued by the UK Forestry Department, has a fair amount of technical information about shiitake cultivation.

Mushroom Cultivation Links

Research

1. Windward Education and Research Center, Shiitake! A long time ago we inoculated some logs... , Andrew's Notes (Dec. 10, 2012)
2. Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, 3d ed., Paul Stamets (Ten Speed Press 2000)
3. 
   

Supplies and spores

1. Fungi Perfecti
2. Field and Forest Products