Rain! Moisture! Humidity, damp, etc! It has been very dry in our region. I heard the usual average this time of year is about an inch of rain a week - but we've hardly had any rain for going on 5 weeks or so. The logs have been drying out and I'm sure some mushrooms haven't been growing just because there isn't enough moisture. We've got hoses snaking all over the place, watering different areas - but it's hard to keep up.
The weather report has promised rain, or hinted at rain, now and then for the past month but then nothing happened. We had an 80% chance of rain yesterday so that seemed pretty promising. And it delivered! Sprinkles, mist, drizzles, downpours, on and off all day! Hopefully it's enough for all the thirsty plants and mushrooms until the next rain!
We may be in our last week of inoculating. It should be our last week, but we're so close I can imagine the guys pushing forward because it's hard to stop so close to the finish line.
Quite possibly there will only be 400 logs left by the end of this week! It would be hard to stop that close... but... force-fruiting has begun!
Most of the inoculated logs have been moved out to make room for force-fruiting and the first batches went in Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We'll probably be picking shiitake by this weekend, or early next week. We'll need all our energy and time for that and for moving the force-fruiting logs in and out. So we must (really must) stop inoculating... soon... this week!
We're having a brief cold spell (its 54 right now!) so it's perfectly fine to nap on a cozy warm blanket. Spore: showing us the proper ways to nap since 2017!
