Its way early for shiitake innoculation but because I had to fell a large oak tree that the bulldozer scraped I decided to try a little experiment and after about 30 minutes with the chainsaw and some hard work I had a stack of oak logs ready for innoculation. So I have like 100 plugs and I’ll never get them all used up. But I figured this is a good time for an experiment. If this works I can prolong my harvest rather than getting a flush of hundreds of mushrooms at once. It might mean the difference between being forced to find a market and enjoying them all to myself!

Logs, drill, hammer, and spawn dowels.

Holes drilled. Traditional pattern is in a grid with holes drilled in lines 2″ apart vertically. Each hole in the line is 6″ from the other.

Another view of the holes. As I said, my pattern is wider.

Plug getting ready to be hammered!

Hammer action!

All the way in.

Wax melted.

Wax is applied, sealing the plugs into the wound.

Simple aluminum labels made of a Pepsi can.

I wrote on: Name, Inoc date and variety.