How to grow mushrooms on logs. Mushrooms need only 3 things to grow successfully: shade, moisture, and uncontaminated, appropriate wood. If you have spruce, you can buy mushroom that grow on spruce, but do not try shiitake on conifers. Before I hit my stride I had numerous less unsuccessful experiences, so all this is from experience. Wood: usually the seller will tell you which wood goes with which mushrooms. Most mushrooms will do well with hardwoods. A few will do well with softwoods, and a few specialize in breaking down the resinous conifer wood and only that wood. Three simple steps will virtually insure successful wood inoculation: use freshly cut, live wood appropriate for the fungus you are interested in, wait 3-4 weeks for fungicide substances to dissipate, and protect it from contamination at all times. I have had mixed results with wood brought in for free by tree companies. After all, when they cut a tree, it is already sick and often contaminated. I had best results with wood that I knew in person (from my yard or my neighbor's yards). I have successfully injected contaminated logs with shiitake and oyster, two tough mycelia, but many other times I failed. To protect from contamination, keep the wood in the garage until ready to inoculate, but the best solution is to simply cover all open wounds with liquid beeswax applied with a paintbrush. Logs are best cut to about 3 ft in length for ease of handling, with a diameter between 5 and 10 inches. As soon as they are cut, paint the ends and put them aside. Moisture: robust, fast growth requires a steady moisture supply. Let me also mention that all mushrooms appreciate a bit of nitrogen, whereas P and K in the wood are sufficient for optimal growth. Normal tap water is poisonous to the organism, due to chlorine. On a log, usually the water percolates slowly through the bark, in the process neutralizing its chlorine, but in a wood chip bed, with the mycelium enveloping the outside of the chips, one could really damage it. I use a variety of techniques. One could leave a bucket out overnight, or I mix a teaspoon of urea or of wood ash in the water. I also use a lot of coffee grounds (outdoors only, or they develop nasty, fungicidal molds), either to buffer the chlorine, or when I stack the logs, I fill the intra-log volumes with coffee on cardboard sheets to both provide N and keep the moisture in the stack high. I believe that lots of coffee in wood chips beds is also beneficial as the high surface area will quickly buffer tap water. It is best to water them weekly. I have a few cider gallon containers. They have a pinhole at the bottom, and placed on a stack, they will drip for several hours. But if I were a man, I would run a drip line there and be done with it. Shade: mushrooms can not stand full sun. Full shade is best, with minimal wind. Inoculation: initially you will be buying 5/16'' wooden dowels inoculated with the mycelium, though inoculating with sawdust is more efficient and substantially cheaper. When you receive the dowels place them in a cool dark place for a month or so. When ready to inoculate, soak the logs overnight. I use a trash can filled with water. Then use the 5/16'' drill bit and drill holes in the log. In the holes, whack the dowels. Close the holes with liquid beeswax and place where the log can mature, possibly not in contact with the soil. Here it is best not to start them after Sept. 15, but in CA one could start them year round. A majority of dowels will not take. Often a log is completely colonized by a single successul plug. Place at least 12 per log, 25 being best. You then wait, 9 months to 2 years depending on species. The logs will fruit for about 4 years optimally, and then they will decline.

This can be a problem if you buy seeds from a small individual who makes his own seeds and messes up. I like to get seeds that originated from a big seed wholesaler. If he messes up the news will get out and I will have a better chance to find out about it. I also like to save seeds because all too often the seeds are not available the next year. Seeds keep being dropped. ***** When dealing with OP seed there's not a company that hasn't had problems from time to time, but it really does depend on which companies you chose to deal with. And that's b'c some companies produce almost all their own seed, some subcontract out and some buy wholesale from the company that bred certain varieties. And some companies do a combination of those. Dan, I don't think you were here at GW when I used to do a wrong variety thread each year, which I did for several years, although I know you've posted here for a couple of years. There were those companies that rose to the top re seed purity, seed quality and service. At that time, and I expect that to be true today, the top companies included a couple of large ones as well as several small family owned companies. It's not whether a company is **small or large**, per your comment about not wanting to deal with a small company,rather, it's the specific company in question and their sources of seed as I mentioned above. The greatest amount of Xed seed at that time was seed that was traded between individuals and if I were to do those Wrong Varieties threads today I'm sure, from my readiong at several message sites, that that situation would still obtain. When I did those threads I was the one who contacted the owners of those companies that had wrong seeds b/c I knew many of those owners and still do. Some companies were glad to hear that they had a problem, but there were a couple of companies that wanted the persons who had problems to contact them directly so they could affirm that indeed the person had purchased the seeds from them. The ultimate responsibuility for reporting wrong purchased seeds rests with the person who bought them but I've also found that many folks just don't want to report errors. YOu aren't going to hear about seed problems any more frequently with a large company as opposed to dealing with a smaller family owned company. It's the seed purchasers you may or may not hear from on a public message board such as this one. There are those companies that have discovered a problem from feedback and then waitied until they got good seed and then replaced, at no cost, the bad seed with the good seed. It's a complicated issue, that's for sure, but I cannot agree with your contention that it's better to order seed from a large company versus a small one. Carolyn

Hi, I just got back on the computer and looky what I get to read! Wow! Such great planning went into this special swap package, Deb. Good going! Sharon, I can just picture everything you described, you are very adept at this. I don't know who had more fun, the giver or receiver. Sweet!

Point taken, wrychoice, this one does hit home and I'm having a bad day. I think what gets my dander up about hopper2008's posts is what other people have cited (the apparent arrogance and the striking need to prove herself superior, esp. to the former wife & kids), but perhaps I'm taking it more personally because of my situation. The only other thing I really reacted to that other people hadn't already mentioned as irritating is the projection factor. That is, hopper2008 making it out like SD is the one being childish, unreasonable, immature, insecure and manipulative about this situation. Which may very well be the case, but if hopper2008 isn't in some way, at some level, tugging the other end of the rope, then it's a non-issue. If it's a non-issue, then Hopper2008 would simply make sure her husband knows it's okay for him to go to his daughter's wedding without her (and doesn't stand on any principle or misplaced idealism about unity, loyalty or whatever and create a very difficult situation for DH and SD on her wedding day b/c she can't face the reality that she and SD simply don't get along and pushes it at the wrong time & circumstance.) I guess I reacted especially much to the projection aspect because my Dad's wife plays that game of telling herself & other people similar things (i.e. "whatever HE wants to do"; "HE's choosing to do such-and-such"). It's crap, don't buy it if you ever hear this sort of thing. No parent except the lowest form would EVER so quickly and unequivocably "choose", "freely", to leave their kid in the lurch, even if said kid was being a brat. These husband/fathers DO NOT WANT TO TURN THEIR BACKS ON THEIR CHILDREN and they DO NOT do so easily. I mean, unless they are scum, in which case I'd have to ask why anyone would want to be with scum like that. These men (or women, when it's women in these situations) may seem like they are "choosing", but they are BACKED AGAINST THE FRIGGIN' WALL and make these apparent "free choices" under tremendous duress of one sort or the other. For example, I know this because my Dad got me a plane ticket to visit him behind my SM's back (via money order) and always calls me when she isn't around; he called NINE TIMES on and around X-mas ---when she was out--- because he felt so guilty about telling me I couldn't come. Because it wasn't what HE wanted. I know for a fact that SM was telling people "he decided" to not have me there, b/c he was so "disappointed" in me, or whatever the H3LL.... Meanwhile, these "independent decisions" of his always seem to benefit SM, for example HER sister and brother-in-law were there at Christmas in my place, and she got some home improvements done (FOR her not BY her, to be sure). My SM isn't fooling anybody! (Well, I can't say that.... she's not fooling ME and several others ---including my Dad--- but maybe she's fooling somebody somewhere.) In this kind of scenario, if a parent seems to be making a choice to turn their back on their child ---especially on a really important or significant occasion like a wedding that they would otherwise never want to miss--- and their spouse is acting all "my dog ain't in that fight", or more obviously, even GLOATING about the parent's "choice": look closer, ask some more questions. Barring possible reasons such as the most scummy good-for-nothing parent or child on the planet, in most average situations with average people with average issues and flaws, there is more going on than meets the eye. It's more than one person tugging the rope. One way or another, the spouse is also manipulating the situation, or at the very least, is getting a big payoff (emotional, financial, circumstantial, etc.) from just "sitting back" and 'watching" the fight. Saying things in plain English (i.e. "don't go to your daughter's wedding without me or I will be very upset and might divorce you") is only one possible method of getting one's point across. Other methods include: -The Silent Treatment -Sexual Freeze-Out -Generally Being a Stone-Cold B***h Until He Changes the Situation to Your Way -Acting all Hurt and Crying ("Why Doesn't SD Love Me?!?!") to Play the Victim -"Forgetting" to Do Something You Promised (such as get groceries to have food in the house) So He Gets the Hint You're Not Pleased About X situation -"Forgetting" to Give Him His Prescription Medications That You've Made him Dependent On You For So He Gets the Hint... (a favorite tactic of my SM's; actually all of these are) ...and there's probably myriad other sick, twisted ways of controlling a situation that aren't even occuring to me because I'm just not that perverse. (Would have to get in that Stephen King "Misery" headspace to comprehend it more thoroughly.) Admittedly I have some bitterness about my personal stepfamily dynamics (on one side of the family anyways), but apart from any offense it gives anyone, I hope that at least hopper2008 and perhaps anyone else who feels they relate to her will perceive in my words the effect that her apparent attitude may inspire in an SD in that kind of situation. And to just be careful, as kkny said, about the hubris factor. It's humbling to hear it, but hopefully it puts things in perspective b/c it's never a good idea to go around thinking of oneself as being perpetually in a catbird seat. Not with the way our society and relations between men and women tend to go. Plus I think it's good 'tactical' advice, to be kind of Sun Tzu about it: a strategic choice to 'lose the battle' (over being at the wedding) in order to 'win the war', or at least *appear* the bigger person and pre-empt any feeling DH might develop about being on a leash and starting to resent it. (Men tend to wriggle out of a leash millimeter by millimeter... you don't see it coming, and then poof! They're gone! Or even worse, they stay...) This particular advice isn't meant to be about pleasing the man, or the SD, but covering your own behind and not thinking you're invincible or always going to win.... or even always going to be around! So picture the points I made in my last post but with a bit less 'edge'... and hopefully it's illuminating.