Mushroom Success

I have been inoculating logs with mushroom spawn to no avail for years & years.

I just don't water enough, I guess. That's not news. And probably it's not shady enough where I put the logs, but I thought it would be.

I had one success several years ago: turkey tails. Now turkey tails are decorative and medicinal and apparently easy to grow, and make a great addition to soup stock, but there is no way they could be described as a culinary mushroom. So even though I don't find them as often as I used to on my hikes, and I'm glad to have access to them, they were kind of a disappointment.

A couple of years ago I inoculated one of my plum stumps. Fruit wood is not renowned as a substrate for mushrooms, but after I took the tree down I had no other way to get rid of the stump. I hoped that since it had roots in the ground, it would stay a little moist through the summer despite being in an exposed location that was far from ideal for growing fungi. Some fungi prefer their logs to be partially buried in order to fruit, and I hoped this would be similar enough - perhaps even the original condition that partially burying the logs emulates.

After a year and no sign of mycelium, I got an idea. A few months ago I piled up woody debris around the base of the stump and converted it into the heart of a hugelculture bed. I put dirt over the entire heap and planted it to favas and clover and buckwheat and radishes and let the soil organisms start turning the wood into humus. The cover crops keep the dirt covering the wood, but occasionally a hole appears in the surface of the bed where there is too much empty space between the buried branches. This morning I found a big hole in the top of the bed behind the stump.

When I find a hole like that I pour dirt down it to fill the gaps between the logs. I got my bucket of dirt and my trowel, and caved in the sides of the hole as best I could, to enlarge the opening and begin filling the cavity. I was standing there holding my bucket, starting to pour dirt into the hole when I saw the side of the central stump exposed a couple of feet down into the hole. And it had fungi growing out of it! Unfortunately, before I could register what I was seeing and stop doing what I was doing, the hole was full of dirt and I was unable to inspect the stump more closely. But two of the fruiting bodies are above dirt level where the stump sticks up a foot or so above the top of the rest of the bed.

They're immature, so I'm not sure what I have. I don't recall what I put in the stump; I figured it would be obvious if it ever fruited. I may have inoculated with more than one kind. I know you're not supposed to, but I suspect I had remainder quantities of several types, and figured the conditions might be support one species better than the rest, so why not try all of them? I know I have seen downed trees with several species of fungi growing out of them, so why not try to replicate that here?

I hope they are maitake. Maybe they're reishi, their texture feels a little hard for maitake. Reishi are good too, again for medicine and soup stocks. But it would be really grand to get a nice chewable edible mushroom.

They're turkey tails.