Shiitake Mushrooms

Mari

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An out of focus closeup of a shiitake mushroom's gills gives the photo a dreamy quality.

At the end of last year, I started growing my own oyster and shiitake mushrooms. Watching the shiitakes grow beyond the stage where you would normally pick them has showed me that I really didn’t know shiitakes like I thought. Their shapes can encompass so many frills and scallops that I don’t normally see in grocery store shiitakes.

While they tasted better than any shiitakes I’d had before, I enjoyed watching a few of them grow for so long that they began to decay.

Looking up at the underside of a shiitake mushroom growing out of a grow block. It's white and made up of delicate gills.
Shiitakes growing out of a mushroom grow block. The low light gives it a moody feeling.
Overhead view of shiitakes growing out of a mushroom grow block. Low light gives the image a moody feeling.

Unfortunately, letting the mushrooms grow for so long meant that my brick of mushrooms stopped growing. My very basic and potentially incorrect understanding of the situation is that because I let the mushrooms release spores all over the brick, it signalled to the established mycelia that they didn’t need to sprout more mushrooms. Afterall. the mushrooms we eat are basically the mycelium’s sexual organs.

Here’s hoping I can grow more mushrooms in 2023.

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