Harvesting Shiitake Mushrooms
Right now, we're harvesting shiitake. We loaded about, to count them now would be kind of crazy, but we probably loaded about close to 50 to 60 blocks of shiitake in the grow rooms, um, late last week or early this week, and then now we have a massive harvest. We haven't harvested this mini shiitake in one day in a very long time. We're probably end up with over 100 pounds of shiitake easy. Yeah, this specific strain takes from front to back over three months to grow, so, you know, if the yields look anything less than this, we're usually disappointed because it's such a long process, but we're just harvesting, talking all day long until we're done.
I mean, we've been going at it for about an hour, huh? Yeah, about 30, 45 minutes. So today, I'm, uh, harvesting shiitake, pioppino, some chestnut, and I'm making up some mix cases that I'm going to deliver to one of my distributors. So just getting, uh, getting everything situated, trying to pack the mix cases as carefully as possible, and then once it's packed, I'll just cover with a piece of this wax paper. This helps lock in the moisture and just keep the mushrooms as fresh as possible.
All right, layer the bottom of my cases with some of this wax paper as well. It kind of just keeps the mushrooms nice and protected. We have some lion's mane going in. This is one of the longer teeth strings. Load up some shiitake, and I just have a bunch of these piapinos that are putting out.
This is like a second flush. I'll just get these in the mixes as well. It's a wonderful mushroom to utilize for like mix cases. People, people just love it as a variety, one of the varieties that we throw in. It's very exciting to harvest this many mushrooms, and yeah, when we get busy and stuff, it's kind of like this every day, like one to two hundred pounds of mushrooms harvested daily or even more sometimes.
So it's nice. It means that, you know, things are moving right, and yeah, I like harvesting mushrooms. Block comes out, obviously caps facing up, right way. Take it off the rack. There's usually a good amount of mushrooms here, not as much on the top because it sits on the rack on this side.
So you usually want to clear off the top, the little force that keeps you from like, you know, seeing any of the stems, and if I were to try and trim from here, as you could see, like it's really hard not to cut through caps without hitting the stems or cut through stems without hitting the cap. So if you turn it upside down, give yourself a huge leg up, and that you could see the stems. The caps never get in the way. If you see a few in a row, like right here, if you see a few in a row, you could just line them up. There's like five or six little shiitake mushrooms right there, and this just keeps the caps in shape, you know, like no one really necessarily enjoys a broken cap, and shiitake are pretty sturdy, so if you don't cut through them, they usually won't split.
So yeah, this is more efficient, makes it more aesthetic because you don't have a whole bunch of caps that are cut up. It's like more like a trial and error too thing, you know, like first I was just holding the block up with one hand, and when you have like 50 or 60 blocks a person that needs to harvest, like your arm gets tired really fast if you're not Mike. Mike doesn't even put his blog down when you harvest these. I was like, all right, man, just hold it. We get it.
You're so strong. Yeah, that's really all there is to it. I mean, pretty easy. That's, that's the full scope of harvesting shiitake right there. It's the most labor-intensive mushroom to harvest, but yeah, it's still fun, but it's really rewarding.
It's rewarding. Yeah, you get these. Nice, nice mushrooms. Super long shelf life. It's one of the longest lasting mushrooms that we grow, usually two to three weeks in a fridge.
Yeah. So it's, uh, in a way, yeah, it's great. I love it. It pays off in every way. Yeah, it takes the longest to grow, but it lasts the longest.
There's most of it, yeah, you know what I mean? It really is good. Perfect mushroom. Yeah, yeah. Huge yields.
You think, by weight, this is definitely the the blocks that yield the most? I don't know. I'm using the oysters, the king of trumpets, too. Big boys. Good, uh, 150 to 200 biological efficiency.
Oh, yeah. So that's basically just, uh, the dry weight we start with and how much fresh water mushrooms are produced. Even the chestnut, I mean, even the lion's mane, everything yields real good. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
No, no, we all got good. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, out of all we grow, yeah. So off of, like, a 10 pound block, we do two and a half to three pounds of shiitake. So crazy. That's actually really good.
Yeah, especially with how light a single shiitake mushroom is. Yeah, and the stems are like, the stems are super thin too, so you don't have any, like, extra water weight in the stems. Exactly. The mushroom is a dance one. So let's see.
Let's go get these in the next warehouse. He's broken. Had a sick leg day tomorrow. I know, I know. Let me just put these aside.
Yeah, before I had a lot of hands, I would have to harvest to grow rooms like this by my other shiitake days kind of alone. It takes all day. It'd be like an eighth. Dude, if you were alone here, yeah, and again, I've done it before. It's a lot.
I've repeated myself a few times. If you're not Mike and you have to harvest these by yourself, dude, you are strapped in for some overtime. It's time. Yeah, you harvested two blocks right before I could harvest one. Oh, yeah, I'll harvest a couple right now.
I just rotate the block as I hold it and just cut directly into a tray or box. If I'm using a box, I'll just have it sitted, uh, upon a scale, and I'll just cut the mushrooms in until I reach the desired weight. But in this case, I'm just cutting right into the harvest tray and just rotate the block and just slice through, just go through and cut these mushrooms right off. And then you could hold it from the the top like this. You kind of just make your way around the block.
Yeah, you're harvesting about, like, two and a half pounds or so, sometimes more. And yeah, compared to, like, harvesting and oyster everything, it takes a little more time now just because you cut each mush, each mushroom is cut individually at the base where it grows from the block. But it's definitely a staple mushroom. It's one of the most popular. It is the most popular gourmet mushroom around.
That could be changing soon. I don't know what the popularity of all gourmet mushrooms recently. That's basically the harvest of a block. I'm about almost done with mine, and he started mine when his, when I was about halfway done with it. Pretty easy.
Shiitake could be a challenge for some people to grow just because it does take a lot of space in your incubation, and it takes like three months before we freed it. Uh, you could do, you could get away with, uh, two months, but when you wait the extra few weeks, you really get the most out of the shiitake. So yeah, they just produce nice canopies of mushrooms where the whole block is covered mostly. You really can't see much. Mushroom juice on you, like, is the grossest thing ever, but it's not.
It really isn't, but it is. It feels like it is. You get a bunch of mushroom juice going down your shirt, got into your beard, dripping down, like, oh my god. It's clean. Juice, yeah, but as I'm saying, like, it's really not gross when you think about it, but when it happens, it feels like you just got violated.
Big shiitake day. I'll do like almost 200 blocks for my inoculation day in my lab, and then when we're, you know, at our busiest, we'll do 200 bags, move those to incubation, and then 200 bags or so from incubation make it to the grow room, anywhere from one to 200 bags. And we could produce big crops at once because it's a popular mushroom. It's always in demand. You're always going to have an audience that wants shiitake, as with all the mushrooms we grow.
There's an audience for every mushroom, lion's mane, shiitake, chestnut. So we just try to make it to where people can get whatever they want, and I, I enjoy growing all of them. So yeah, you get really nice batches, and shiitakes, like I said, it's a little bit more work, but I do find it's a rewarding mushroom to grow, and I think it's fun, you