Fungus Fair 2024

How to take care of a mushroom bag:

Store your spawn bag in a cool, dark place. Optimal growth will occur from 55-75°F, so indoor spaces like closets are ideal. Keep an eye out for contamination, which most often appears as splotches of blue-green mold in the bag. It's a slow process, but over time white mycelial filaments will spread throughout the wood shavings.

After starting, it usually takes 4-6 weeks for the mycelium to fully colonize the bag. When it's ready, small "pins" will appear on the mycelium near the side of the bag, which will grow into mushrooms when exposed to fresh air. Once you're satisfied with the number of pins, make a slit in the bag in a place with many pins present. The pins will follow the fresh air and grow out of the slit into mushrooms.

Depending on how thoroughly the mycelium colonized the bag, you can often get 2-4 harvests out of the same bag by repeating the slitting process in other places that pins have appeared. Afterwards, the mycelium can be used as parent material to make more spawn bags. Our bags are made with dust-free aspen shavings as spawn material, which is generally sold as rodent bedding at pet stores. We soak the shavings in a diluted peroxide solution, made by mixing 1 part 3% hydrogen peroxide with 9 parts filtered water. Try to keep things sterile to avoid contamination. By introducing chunks of mycelium from your bag into fresh bags of new spawn material, you can create many more spawn bags.

How to take care of a plugged log:

Maintenance of plugged logs consists primarily of keeping them moist. If the cut surface of the log is dry to the touch, you can wet it with a hose to keep the inside from drying out.

Plugged logs take longer to fruit than spawn bags, as the fungus has to work its way through solid heartwood. Fruiting will occur when the log has been fully colonized. The amount of time this takes varies greatly depending on the size of the log, how wet the logs are kept, and how vigorous the species is. Once the log is fully colonized, fruiting bodies will emerge without human intervention, and can later be harvested once they're large enough.