Shiitake Mushrooms?

[Mountaineer2020]

Anyone producing them? I have a few red maples I am thinking of cutting down to work with shiitakes. 

[Old Greenhorn]

It's late and I am really tired, I can respond to this with details tomorrow. You can grow shiitakes on Red Maple with careful timing and inoculating, but if you don't 'follow the plan' your results with RM will be very poor or worse.
 Where are you located and what do you have besides RM?
 More tomorrow morning when I am alert and oriented.

[Old Greenhorn]

OK, turns out I was REALLY tired and slept over 9 hours, very rare for me. So grab a cup of coffee or whatever you prefer I have some information for you and you will be reading for a while.

 I cut a lot of logs every year for clients, about 1,100/yr on average. My clients range from commercial farms to hobby growers and the knowledge gap is wide between them all, so I stay informed to help out the beginners. Around here it was widely known that shiitakes do not grow on RM, that's what I was told by long time growers and even the teaching growers at Cornell University all over and I never cut or sold a RM log to a client. Last year, that changed when I got in a conversation with a new mycologist I met who came here form the Midwest. She was really up on her research science and used RM when that was all that was available. She pointed me to two pieces of information, one was a blog post from Field and Forest summarizing a research project they conducted and the other was the full scientific report of that study. Both deal only with Red Maple. Link for Field and Forest post HERE, and the link for the full report is HERE. You will need to study these a bit to glean all the take-aways from them. The devil is in those details. I was blown away to learn that first flush results on RM could far exceed Sugar maple with a log resting period of a month or more. Do a little reading if you can on the mechanism in trees that kicks in when they are cut and try to protect themselves from invasive bacteria and other threats. Apparently this is strong in RM and you have to let the logs rest for an extended period so that this mechanism can run it's course, THEN inoculate.

 Since reading these articles I have begun to offer RM to my clients provided they clearly understand the required handling and planning characteristics. I don't offer them to hobby growers unless the 'get it'. I sell them Oak (red, white, or chestnut) or sugar maple for the best starting out results.
 
 I wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions I might be able to answer give me a shot. I am not a mycologist, or even a grower, but I work with 2 mycologists who are very knowledgeable, teach all the time, and stay current with the science and knowledge as it develops.

[brianJ]

Do you know or have any experience growing shiitake mushrooms on hophornbeam?


Does your experience indicate white oak is better than red oak?

I got a neighbor that does on both.

[Old Greenhorn]

If you are asking me, my answers come with caveats. Again, I am not a grower because I have no time for it, I don't eat mushrooms (my wife loves them), and my clients give me more freebies than my wife can use. All my knowledge comes from reading talking with big and little growers, observing flushes at an outdoor classroom I deliver logs to and other sources. I avoid simple hearsay and look at actual results and reports from my clients on the logs I supply.
 I rarely get access to hophornbeam or ironwood so I can't comment, but some growers have reported good results with their home cut logs. Between red and white oak I think it comes down to the actual conditions of the trees cut and the care taken with handling and inoculation technique. I do have some commercial growers that insist on WO only because they say a discerning chef can clearly taste the difference between WO and any other log. I don't get a lot of WO, so I can't supply it exclusively. You want physically healthy trees. Mechanical damage has no effect (broken tops, storm damage, etc) but reduced water flow does, meaning if they are uprooted for a long time and are nearly dead, your yields will likely be less.
 How and where you keep your logs after inoculation is also critical, cool, moist and shady, but watch out for slugs and they need air all around.
 There is lots of information out there, but there is also lots of mis-information and the science is improving all the time, so it pays to stay current.