Fungi Ally Mushroom Plug Spawn

Mushroom plug spawn is best for inoculating wood logs or stumps. Mushroom plugs are made of 1” birch dowels covered with mushroom mycelium. This type of spawn is easy to handle and no extra tools are necessary. It is produced year-round in a sterile facility to ensure the highest-quality spawn. The spawn run and inoculation tend to take a little bit longer but if you are doing 40 logs or less it is likely the best bet for you. Please note that it may take 3-4 weeks to ship during the spring with covid19 precautions in place.

(Quantity of 100, 500, or 1000)

Using Mushroom Plug Spawn

Want to try growing mushrooms on logs or stumps in your garden or backyard? Have some extra hardwood logs laying around that you’re looking to put to good use? Mushroom plug spawn can help you grow mushrooms!

Log cultivation is best done on hardwood logs like oak, sugar maple, and beech. Other logs will work but will not produce as high of yields. It is best to select logs that are between 3-8 inches thick for this method of cultivation. Totems are best made with large diameter logs. Typically oak, beech or sugar maple logs with a diameter greater than 8 inches can be used for this method.

For totems, simply drill your 1" deep holes every 6" or so into the top of the stump, tap in the plug spawn, and cover with bees/cheese/soy wax. For log inoculations, 1" deep holes are drilled every 6" and mushroom plug spawn is tapped into the holes with a hammer. The log is rotated 2" and holes are again drilled every 6". It is best to off set the holes so the drilling will make a diamond pattern when complete. Every hole is filled with the plug spawn and then waxed over. The wax ensures the mycelium will not dry out, and that no other fungi will get into the log.

Whether you refer to them as mushroom plugs, plug spawn, or mushroom cultivate plugs, one thing is for certain: We can provide you with the highest-grade product for growing an assortment of mushrooms.

Mushroom plugs consist of mycelium grown out on birch furniture dowels. The dowels are typically 5/16 inches in diameter and 1 inch long. They are usually a little bit more expensive than sawdust spawn and take about 30% longer to colonize. Plug spawn is a good option for growers who are inoculating 20 or less logs each year.

The first step to mushroom cultivation on logs is cutting and selecting logs to grow on. Logs are best cut between November and March. In trials done by Field and Forest logs that were cut in October and allowed to sit until April for inoculation had much faster spawn run than logs cut later in the winter. In some cases logs were fruiting in the same year as inoculation. It is okay to cut at any time of year but yields and colonization time are affected.

A Cornell study showed yields were highest from logs cut in winter and inoculated in spring. Cornell did not look at cutting in the late fall and inoculating in the spring. The best results are achieved when logs are sourced in the fall when 30% of leaves have changed color. If logs have been sitting for 2+ months it is good to rehydrate them before inoculating by soaking them in water for 3-6 hours. The bark of the logs should be as intact as possible; avoid logs with large strips of bark removed. Dense hardwoods like oak, sugar maple, and beech are great species to use.