Lion’s Mane

Our Lion’s Mane journey began on March 3, 2021. That was the day we inoculated our first Lion’s Mane logs on our farm. We chose a totem-style inoculation, which consisted of large stacked Beech log segments, with sawdust spawn between each one. We built 6 totems inside of plastic contractor bags and tied the tops with small holes for air circulation. We had no idea if this was going to work, but we knew how rare and special these mushrooms were, so we were certainly eager to try. We were not sure if the logs would dry out, so we opened them in the rain. Then we were not sure if the rain would introduce spores from molds or other weed fungi, so we closed the bags again. After a few months, we saw what looked like mycelium on the tops of the logs, but we were not sure if this was the Lion’s Mane or something else that had colonized the logs. Ants were eating some of the sawdust spawn out of the logs. It was very easy to panic and want to take action, but we waited for nature to take it’s course. On October 10th of the same year we saw the first fruit start to appear on one of the logs and we were overjoyed!

In spring of 2022, we saw fruits on 4 of the other totems. We were glad that the logs were able to over-winter without any additional protection. In June we noticed Turkey Tail mushrooms growing on two of the totems. Were these going to overtake the logs? What could we do to try to get rid of the Turkey Tail without harming the Lion’s Mane? We went as far as to burn some of the Turkey Tail mushrooms off of the totems with a propane torch! It turns out that these two species are able to coexist on the same logs at the same time, and it hasn’t seemed to negatively affect the Lion’s Mane harvests, so we just let them grow.

On October 11th, 2022, we inoculated 11 Lion’s Mane totems. Our research indicated that Lion’s Mane doesn’t colonize logs very well after a fall inoculations, so we put all of the logs inside our house for the winter. Worried that they might dry out, we began misting the tops of the logs with water every day. Upon opening the plastic bags to check on the mushrooms, we saw a whole mess of different growth on the logs. Yellow, white, and orange mycelium on the tops of the logs. White web-like mycelium wrapping around the sides of the logs. Black & grey molds, slimy dark molds, and Trichoderma (green) mold were covering the logs. The additional moisture sprayed on the logs as well as a lack of air flow created a perfect storm of mold growth. We sprayed the logs with vinegar, hoping to kill the surface molds and hoped that the Lion’s Mane would still be okay inside the logs. We took the logs outside in March 2023 and noticed that a lot of Trichoderma seemed to be taking over the logs. Did the vinegar create an acidic environment which was more favorable for this? Things didn’t look good. We left the logs in the bags until July, when we finally placed them on the ground. Large ants had eaten all of the sawdust spawn from some of the logs, but most of the logs were still showing yellow/ white mycelium on their tops, a sign of successful spawn run. Amazingly we saw the first fruits from these logs in October 2023, and they are still producing as of fall 2025. We don’t recommend fall inoculations of Lion’s Mane (however Shiitake and Oyster work well) and we no longer attempt to incubate mushroom logs inside of our house.

In 2023, we continued to inoculate more Lion’s Mane logs, trying inoculations with the drill & fill (Shiitake style) for the first time. We had a Red Maple and a Sugar Maple both blow down during seprate wind events, and we were grateful to make use of both of these trees. By using the larger (8-12”) trunk segments for totems and the smaller (3.5-8”) branches for drill & fill style (aka bolts) logs, we utilized the trees in the most efficient way we could. We experimented with waxing the ends of the logs during inoculation and saw no benefit to the extra work and wax used in this process. We also tried using a couple new tree species for logs, Tupleo (Black Gum) and Box Elder, neither of which did well at all for Lion’s Mane. A side note, we did get good fruits from inoculating Box Elder with Chestnut (Pholiota adiposa) and inoculating Tupelo with Shiitake mushrooms. Our best results came from Beech, Sugar maple, and Red Maple.

We decided to go big in 2024, really big. Working with a local landowner to selectively manage a large Oak/Beech forest, we were able to harvest around a dozen mid-sized Beech trees. The dense forest required the use of a ATV with a winch to be able to pull the trees in the direction they needed to fall. It took 5 days for Andy and his brother to fell the trees, clear the branches and haul all of the logs out of woods and back to our farm. They made good on their promise to the land owner to leave as little impact on the landscape as possible. Once the logs were back on the farm, we let them rest for 2 weeks for the tree’s natural defences to die off, before beginning inoculations. We ordered 250lbs of sawdust spawn from Field & Forest!! (38) 5lb bags were Lion’s Mane and 2 were Comb Tooth (Hericium americanum- Lion’s Mane’s cousin), as well as a few other varieties. All said and done, we inoculated 145 Lion’s Mane totems, 42 Lion’s Mane bolts, and 9 Comb Tooth totems.

The method that we had been using for totems required each log to have its own plastic trash bag to incubate in. The success rate which we saw with this method was very high, but it made us sick to think about buying this many plastic bags. We made the decision to switch to paper bags, however there was not as much information on this method. The information we did find indicated that there would be an issue of the logs drying out. We decided to try it out anyway. The sensible scientific approach would have been to test group of some of the logs in paper bag and a control group in plastic bags. This is how we usually test new techniques on the farm. But we REALLY did not want to use any more plastic bags, and figured that the forest spirit would be happy about this and help the mushrooms to grow, so we incoculated all of the new totems into paper bags. We spent March 8-13 inoculating all of the logs. We had a very dry Month, the tree canopy seemed to take forever to fill out, and upon opening the paper bags, the tops of the logs were very dry and cracked. The paper bag tops wicked the moisture away from the logs in the sun and wind, and shed the water away from the logs during the rain. We did not have enough shade cloth to protect the logs from the sun, so we divided the logs into several groups to try different methods for trying to maintain moisture. We watered some with distilled water because we didn’t want to introduce contaminants which might be in our collected rain water. This took a long time and after going through a few plastic jugs, clearly was not sustainable. We tried covering the tops of the logs with biodegradable bags, which worked okay until mold started to form inside the bags. We tested a few other ideas, but it was hard to tell if anything was working.

Fall 2024 saw a great harvest from the older Sugar/ Red Maple totems, but no fruits on the Beech logs in the paper bags. The tops of most of the Beech logs did have the whitish/yellow starburst pattern indicative of a successful spawn run. This was a promising sign, despite a many month long extreme drought we had over the summer. On September 24th, we were giving a woman a farm tour and noticed a Comb Tooth mushroom popping out from under one of the paper bags!! Success! No Lion’s Mane yet, but now we were confident that our technique could work. In Spring 2025, we decided we needed to protect all of the totems from the sun until the leaves opened up in the tree canopy, so we purchased a 250’ roll of 2.5oz frost blanket fabric. We draped this over the rows of totems, which had the paper bags removed by this point, and wrapped them pretty tightly. This held the moisture inside of the logs quite well, but having them wrapped tightly trapped in a lot of heat and the logs started pinning fairly early, around April 22nd. Mushrooms!! The Lion’s Mane mushrooms start out as little pink balls, before turning cream colored as they age. It turned out that the frost blankets were a game changer for protecting the logs. As long as they were just draped over the tops of the totems and not wrapped too tightly, they worked perfectly. They protect the logs from drying out too much in the sun and the wind, and during the rain they allow water to saturate and absorb through the tops of the logs while at the same time shedding water away from the mushrooms which mainly fruit off the sides of the logs. Nobody likes a soggy mushroom. We harvested 84 POUNDS of fresh Lion’s Mane mushrooms in the spring of 2025! We decided to leave the frost blankets draped over top of the logs for a while and came back to check on them and Turkey Tail mushrooms had grown up through the frost blankets, fusing them to the logs. This worked out well, because we were in another drought over the summer. The fall harvest came a little bit early this year and we started seeing mushrooms by the middle of September. Normally mushrooms will start to pin and then abort if the weather is hot and dry. They quickly turn yellow and hard and no amount of rain can revive them at this point. We harvested 68 pounds of mushrooms during the drought, and can only imagine how much more there would have been with a rainy summer. We Gratefully are looking forward to what next spring will bring (~;}

-Andy & Anna