The Mushroom Picture that Doesn't Exist

Back in late spring, my dad and I inoculated a couple of oak trunks from Casa de la Hush with shiitake and maitake mushroom spawn. We used the old techniques of drilling the logs, hammering in the dowel rod spawn (I guess I should have pictures), and coating the holes with wax.

I imagined the logs would need a good year's worth of incubating, but as of yesterday there was a little sprout of a mushroom (called a pinner in myco-language) coming out of one of the inoculation points. The funny (actually annoying) thing is that as of today there is no more mushroom to be found. That pinner was eaten down convexly into the log. Some critter had a happy hour on my baby shiitake.

Regardless of what happened to the volunteer shiitake, this is a sign that the log is ready to bear a flush of mushrooms. Me, as cultivator, need to nudge this process along. The nudge will come as a cold water bath for the log. Pictures to follow...I hope.