Saturday, December 28, 2013

Another new gateway.

I know that a lot of people know about all this organic business and small farming etc. but after trying it in my twenties then fleeing to the city and turning my back on Mother Earth News, I have rediscovered how much fun this all is. We are now planning on growing mushrooms indoors which is a little more complicated than inoculating logs. We are having so much fun learning and experimenting. I am totally looking forward to our trip in February to Jekyl Island for the Georgia Organics Conference. We are also looking at a few other things to do in our small forest farm. Now is a great time to plan and research since the weather is cold and rainy - cold for Georgia anyway. I still miss the road, and find myself day dreaming about Florida, or Arizona, or Nevada, or Texas.... But having Christmas here at the house this year was terrific. And making our house a home again feels right. Stay tuned for more on mushrooms.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Maitake

Today we placed Maitake spawn in logs using the wedge method. This mushroom is also known as "hen of the woods". It is considered a medicinal mushroom used in treatment of cancer, the immune system, diabetes and heart disease. They are also very delicious to eat. There is tons of information on the web about all these mushrooms and that is where we get our info as well as from other growers and from books by Paul Stamets. Even though we did our research, this was our first time so, again, as with the shiitake, we followed what we learned and seeded our land with maitake spawn and hope for the best. Here are a few pictures.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Finished with the logs

December 1st and our shiitake inoculation is complete at least as far as using logs is concerned. We're still going to "seed" our small forest with maitake spawn and perhaps look into using our shed for shiitake fruiting in a substrate of sawdust and wood chips. Our research into growing ginsing is coming along as well. We have a lot of work to do to prepare the beds, but plenty of time to do it. We didn't inoculate as many logs as planned but look forward to the first flush, hopefully this spring.